TOBY PETZOLD

I don’t know if I belong to his same generation, but I am sure that my conception of what post-partisanism entails is vastly different from Barack Obama’s. It is my generation that will eventually have done with and put paid to the Democrat-Republican dichotomy that the American Republic depends on. Something else will arise and by a different name. I think a transitional three-party era is nearing. I think the Democrats are about to split in half.

Party is American, but I don’t belong in either of the major ones. Or in any of the minor ones but to my own self. So, for me, the old dichotomy is personally irrelevant.

But do you suppose the same is true of this man, less than a decade my senior, who now runs for the Presidency of the United States? Party is entirely relevant to Barack Obama. So what is he going to do to show that he is above partisanism, as he claims? Because that’s all he does is claim to be above or past such things.

I have never heard a politician resort as readily and insistently to the idea of page-turning, bridge-building, consensus-seeking, and change for change’s sake as this man does, so where is he going to break away from the Democratic Party and reach out? What issue will he exploit to show that he can be trusted on foreign and military policy? What else will he do, besides disown Jeremiad Wright, to show that he recognizes the group psychosis that is the social gospel of his church? When will he show the courage to disagree with his party? And how is he not a typical Leftist politician, spouting bromides about rising above it all when he has no moral or experiential authority to persuade me that rain falls?

If this guy is a revolutionary, why don’t he show up and kick it?

Check out this comment from Byron York at The Corner:

John Edwards’s appearance in Michigan to endorse Obama just happened to be set for 6:30 P.M., at the top of the networks’ nightly news feeds. ABC’s World News went to a live picture off the top, but Edwards apparently missed his slot, so ABC went to its China coverage and promised to return to Michigan live.

Unlike cable news, the network newscasts do not usually carry live events in their carefully-timed programs. But after China, ABC went back to Michigan while anchorman Charles Gibson explained that the Clinton campaign had hoped “that the headlines would be all about her victory in West Virginia, and yet with this…they seem a bit trumped.” Gibson explained that Edwards’ appearance was “timed for maximum exposure…timed for the evening newscasts.” And with that, guess who walked onto the stage, with ABC carrying it live? “George Stephanopoulos, this is the kind of publicity that you can’t buy,” Gibson said. “This was designed to completely squash the West Virginia story,” Stephanopoulos added. And with that, ABC took Obama’s introduction of Edwards live, and…completely squashed the West Virginia story. Didn’t even report it in any real sense. A big victory for Obama — the kind of publicity that you can’t buy — courtesy of ABC News.

Big Media supports the most left-leaning politicians possible as leverage against the essentially conservative impulses of Government to censor and fine certain incidents of programming. That is part of the explanation for why rectal thermometers like Olbermann, Matthews, Williams, Gibson, et al are so deeply embedded in the Obama candidacy: it’s an economic issue. It’s a control issue. It’s self-serving.

I regard Hillary Rodham Clinton as a hero to her party and to the Republic. She is all that’s keeping an unqualified “post-partisan” charlatan from the nomination of the same party that gave us FDR, Truman, and Johnson.

Why should my opinion of Barack Obama be so low? Easy: Keith Olbermann supports him.

Mrs. Clinton is a tough chick and I think she knows the Presidency better than this cultural interloper. I hope she stays around long enough to make her case and to leave a mark on the ass of these hippie idiots so fucking interested in absolving themselves of racial guilt that they would support a man for the Presidency of the United States who is unknown and unprepared to take that mantle just because he says he can “unify” this nation. What a confidence job.

Here’s to grown-ups. Like Mrs. Clinton. But, frankly, more like Mr. McCain. I hope President McCain will give Senator Clinton her due.

One of the most beautiful women I know is also a waitress at my favorite restaurant —a great Vietnamese place in South Austin— and, today, she told me that I remind her of her dearly departed horse because his name was also Toby. Because of the name. The name makes her happy, so when she sees me, it…uh…

I’ve been going into this place for years and I think that’s maybe the most she’s ever said to me at one time. Naturally, I’ve taken the time this afternoon and evening to completely zapruder the hell out of her completely unprecedented remarks and to contemplate polluting myself to their memory, but I am more bemused than anything else. If bemused still means horny.

Oh, and who cares that John Edwards endorsed BHO? Keith Olbermann, who is a miserable propagandist craphound, seems to think Edwards’ coronation today of the Southside Messiah is far more important than the 2-to-1 shellacking Mrs. Clinton gave to him in West Virginia yesterday. Get a clue, Olbamamann. People know what this race is about.

Here’s some crap I really disrespect (emphasis added):

Luis Vera, LULAC’s general counsel, said LULAC wants a judge to toss the results of the March 4 primary because it believes delegates weren’t allocated fairly, considering Latinos invariably support the party’s nominees. The party bases the delegates awarded within each state senatorial district on the percentage of voters who turned out and voted for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the most recent previous general election.

A key factoid: Latino-heavy districts end up fielding fewer delegates to the national convention. Why? Turnout in those districts often drops in general elections partly because Democratic candidates in those districts face fewer serious fall races.

Vera, set to be a delegate to the state convention pledged to Sen. Hillary Clinton, said it’s possible Clinton would benefit from a change in delegate allocations. Clinton, after all, bested Sen. Barack Obama across the Texas-Mexico border region.

“Of course, it’s possible,” Vera said. “That’s inconsequential. I could care less. This is not about Hillary Clinton and this is not about Barack Obama. My loyalty is to the Latino community.”

Man, is this guy gonna have a problem in Obama’s America of post-racial transcendence or what?

Barack Obama’s candidacy disappoints me because he’s not what I would have wanted in a possible black President.

He doesn’t hail from the historical tradition of Black America (I think even Jesse Jackson raised this point), so it is much more difficult for me to think of him as a transcendent figure when there is no narrative of his family’s triumph over slavery and Jim Crow to appreciate. His choice of church in his mid 20s was, it appears to me, a purely political thing made by a newcomer —nothing he inherited, say, through a pious black grandmother or the larger Black Christian community. He is literally an African-American, not the Black American that I know —as a lover of American History and a son of the South— I will some day rightly embrace as my choice for President.

I can’t really justify this view as a matter of fairness or logic, but it is something I have considered. Mostly, I think Obama disturbs that romantic ideal I have of the first descendant of men and women enslaved here becoming the President of the United States. And, so, in a corner of my mind that has nothing to do with assessing the policies, preparedness, or strategic judgement of the next President, I will continue to harbor a certain resentment towards Barack Obama for the presumption in this accident they call his candidacy.

I was pleased to hear of Hillary’s substantial victory in Pennsylvania last night —as was a certain female relative of mine who updated me multiple times by phone as I am a presently unwired at home.

I say Hillary is doing the party and the nation a great service by sticking around to expose Obama’s candidacy as the dangerous, but very well-told, joke that it is. She may be fighting a lost cause, but some of us like that in a campaigner. Especially in one whose opponent has been fluffed by every Big Media toilet attendant from Keith Olbermann on up.

Oh, and Obama’s supporters owe the rest of us an apology for their recklessness.

I’ll be waiting, losers.

I could only spend about ten minutes this morning watching Russert talk to the Obama and Clinton campaigns’ chief strategists until I began to notice that they suck and are barely able to form a worthwhile thought between themselves.

There’s really nothing else to say about the Democratic race: the party has decided it will go ahead and confirm the ignorance and lizard-brainedness of its base and award its nomination —its Presidential nomination— to someone who is clearly unqualified and cannot win. What are they thinking of? 

For a party convinced that their view is the only right one, they sure seem determined to make an obvious error.

As usual, Hillary outdid Obama in the debate in Philadelphia the other night. That’s because the debate format, such as it is, does not serve Obama’s preferred method of communication, which is apparently subliminal and pre-cognitive. Hillary, on the other hand, can’t reach the masses in that way, so she actually has to share specific ideas and details. Even when they may be questionable.

But, as time goes by, Hillary’s plan of wearing the Southside Messiah down appears to be working. On the question of his most recently expressed disdain for the God-n-guns crowd, Obama attempted to elaborate: 

And so the point I was making was that when people feel like Washington’s not listening to them, when they’re promised year after year, decade after decade, that their economic situation is going to change, and it doesn’t, then politically they end up focusing on those things that are constant, like religion.

Get that? When the Government doesn’t give you the answers or the help to which you are entitled, it’s no wonder that you’d turn to religion. 

Did Hillary notice this Marxist rambling? Yep:

I don’t believe that my grandfather or my father, or the many people whom I have had the privilege of knowing and meeting across Pennsylvania over many years, cling to religion when Washington is not listening to them. I think that is a fundamental, sort of, misunderstanding of the role of religion and faith in times that are good and times that are bad.

And I similarly don’t think that people cling to their traditions, like hunting and guns, either when they are frustrated with the government. I just don’t believe that’s how people live their lives.

That’s why Hillary’s the grown-up in this race. Not that she’ll get credit with most for being less of a socialist than Obama, but I’ll point that out here, anyhow.

I would never have guessed that I should now expect an apology from the Democratic Party for the recklessness and stupidity of their nomination, but that’s what I’m wanting. What nonsense that these stupid hippies should try to foist such a mistake on the electorate.

By the way, it’s a lie to say that Americans like me won’t vote for a black man. I just won’t vote for this black man. This false choice doesn’t make me a racist; it just makes me mad. 

I don’t know much about her, but she’s sorta cute.

Oh —and she’s the one Ronnie Earle didn’t endorse. That should tell you everything you need to know. In fact, it’s the only legitimate reason I had for voting for her last week.