Bird Brains

Saturday cat blogging

2008-07-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Drinking from Seagull's waterglass is Gladys's mission in life.

The narrow view of the "leave us aloners."

2008-07-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

Seattle P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. writes today about Grover Norquist's new book, Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives. His column, ironically titled "America needs to get past partisan potshots," manages to unintentionally highlight the real rift between how conservatives and progressives view the world. I haven't read the book, but Jamieson describes the way it divides politicians and activists into two categories, "Takers" and "Leave Us Aloners":

The first, he [Norquist] says, is the "Taking Coalition" -- those lawyers, unions, government types and nanny-state meddlers that view the role of government as just taking stuff -- our rights, our freedoms, our hard-earned dough.

Yes, those mean ol' takers, always taking our stuff...surely no one could be in favor of that.

...there's a second group, Norquist says, that pushes back -- "The Leave Us Alone Coalition."

Folks in this group believe government works best at a minimum. If the capitalist system is given a chance to operate, economic forces will make society right. Many of these folks just want to be able to tote their guns and homeschool their children.

Isn't that nice? They just want to be left alone.

Jamieson then goes on to identify Tim Eyman, a local anti-tax activist and annual fixture in the initiative process, as a "leave us aloner." But only two years ago Eyman tried (unsuccessfully) to get an initiative on the ballot that would have made it legal to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. Apparently people who want to be "left alone" in their private relationships are not as worthy of respect as people who don't want to pay taxes.

This is the kind of narrow view always espoused by conservatives like Norquist, who don't care what the government takes from others' freedoms as long as their own pocketbooks are secure and no one tries to take their guns away.

Them reg'ler folks don't get this Obommer feller

2008-06-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has an article about Americans in a place renamed 'Flag City' who live in a blissful sea of willful ignorance and racism.

A quarter of the population will always believe lies when it's convenient, so this doesn't worry me. What gets me is this little paragraph:

Does he trust a local newspaper article that details Obama's Christian faith? Or his friend Leroy Pollard, a devoted family man so convinced Obama is a radical Muslim that he threatened to stop talking to his daughter when he heard she might vote for him?

That's one heck of a "devoted family man," there. In Republicanland, devotion is apparently conditional on your politics.

From the department of "Wait, what?"

2008-06-27T12:04:00.001-07:00

Larry Craig and David Vitter are sponsoring a 'Marriage Protection Amendment.'"

Just let that sink in.

Larry Craig, who tried to solicit gay sex in an airport bathroom, and David Vitter, who did solicit prostitutes from "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jane Palfrey, are out to protect marriage.

From the article:

With a Democratic controlled Congress it is unlikely the bill will be brought up for a vote in either the Senate or House of Representatives.

No, but they might take a vote up on whether they should take a few hours to roll on the Capitol floor laughing at it.

I Drew This

2008-06-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Wait a minute. Obama's a politician?

2008-06-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Crooks and Liars becomes peeved at Obama's statement on the Supreme Court death penalty decision.

For some background, the Supreme Court rejected states' death penalty decisions for child rapists. As I'm against the death penalty, I think it's a good decision in general. However, when asked, Obama had this response to reporters:

“I disagree with the decision. I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama told reporters at a press conference in Chicago.

The expected Democratic nominee said he believed the rape of a child “is a heinous crime” that fits the circumstance...

Hands up, everybody. Who out there thinks that "Oh, a child rapist may be bad, but I don't think he deserves death. Just lock him away without parole!" would be a political winner for a Democrat in a hostile media environment?

Now, while most of the blogs get that, they seem to be believe that Obama's suddenly made a hard right turn in his overall politics. Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Perhaps, in his toughened Chicago political fights, he's seen so much unfettered crime that he takes a hardass approach to punishment. Perhaps this is a part of his "I don't do cowering" philosophy that he recently espoused in Rolling Stone.

Whatever the reason, we should never have expected Obama to agree with us on everything. Ideological purity is almost unattainable in the modern political scene without becoming a fringe personality like Dennis Kucinich. I'm certain to have my own disagreements with him as well, but in these tough times, I can't argue with 80% success. If we were talking 40% success, I'd wonder why he was a Democrat at all and didn't join Joe Lieberman, but so far, Obama has kept to the platform and stood for some solid ideals.

To quote Hawkeye Pierce in the M*A*S*H TV show, we have to stop "looking for a custom fit in an off-the-rack world."

We've lost the gun control issue

2008-06-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court has struck down the gun ban in Washington, D.C.

Justice Scalia, expressing the opinion of the 5-4 majority, invoked the Second Amendment (of course). What "a well-regulated militia" means these days is apparently open to interpretation. I feel it's come to define any yahoo owning a firearm bluntly and openly.

The fact is, however, that not many liberals are willing to fight for gun control anymore. In the last eight years, with the Patriot Act and new FISA regulations pushing the politics of fear, a paranoia has struck the average citizen to the point where they look to any avenue for self-defense. Add those voices to those who already treasure their guns and it's clear that gun control, a nearly moribund issue for some time already, is all but dead now.

As a result, the Democrats no longer will tote it as a part of their platform. With most libertarians hostile towards the Patriot Act, and personalities like Jon Tester whipping up anti-Patriot Act frenzy, the Democrats are more able than ever to seize upon gun ownership as an immutable subsection of basic civil liberties. That's something I don't deny. However, car ownership is also a basic civil liberty as well, and that doesn't mean I want any unlicensed doofus off the street being able to drive a Hummer wherever they want to.

Still, I've had to shrug it off. Gun control was an issue upon which we botched the narrative. Because guns = strength for so many people, we could not hope to counter their defiance and determination with our passion or appeals to reason. And we have a lot of larger issues to deal with, so for now, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just... be careful with those damn things, okay?

An open letter to R____

2008-06-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

Dear R____,

It's okay. You can come out of the closet. You'll be much happier.

I know you're reading this, since you seem oddly fixated on "rebutting" things I write. It mostly seems to consist of half-demented scribblings and drawings of yourself looking like you're about to snap and bite the head off a kitten, which you then post as if you've really shown me a thing or two. I hate to break it to you, but I am not offended, though I am moderately amused, in that way in which watching someone unravel is amusing. I further hate to break it to you, but I am not actually the liberal establishment. Though I am flattered that you seem to think I'm their spokesperson.

My favorite was that one where you called me a "wet-nosed, androgynous little metrosexual." In fact, that's my favorite insult anyone's ever tossed at me. If you were somebody who mattered I'd quote it on my next book jacket. I hate to break it to you, though, that your terminology is wrong. Metrosexuals like girls. The word you were actually looking for was probably "queer" or "tranny." There's a rich tapestry of offensive words that apply to people like me. I'm sure you can do better if you try.

Anyway, the point is, for whatever reason, I seem to have your ear. So I'd like to use that peculiar privilege to say this to you: you aren't fooling anyone who's really paying attention. (I don't know how you've managed to fool anyone at all, but then, you do seem to have fooled a small audience into thinking you're a cartoonist.)

I've been exposed repeatedly to your anti-gay shriekfests for going on a decade, now, dating back to when you used to rant in all-caps on the Ozy and Millie mailing list about how sick and disgusting and unholy and horrible gay people are, sometimes apropos of nothing, and then threaten acts of violence against people who disagreed with you. That isn't normal behavior, though at the time I kind of thought you were just a colossal prick.

But, having a few more years behind me, and having seen the exposure and fall of such fellow ranting homophobes as Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and Jim West, I see it differently.

The pieces all fit. For one thing, you exhibit, and sometimes even admit to, the kind of misery that can only come from intense self-loathing. For another, you exhibit a fixation on homosexuality as a uniquely dark sin that, again, seems to be born most often of intense self-loathing. For yet another, if I understand correctly, you're unmarried and almost twice my age. I mean, big hairy spittle-emitting humorless redneck troglodytes aren't my type, personally, but I'm sure they're someone's. It's a big, overpopulated world out there.

Basically, you act, in every respect, exactly like a textbook tormented, self-hating closet case.

Come on out of the closet. Admit guys turn you on. It's not so awful as all that. God will not drop a piano on your head, I promise. And, the thing about being a tormented closet case is, there's no other kind. If you want to stop being miserable (and inflicting your misery on whoever lacks the good sense to ignore you), you have to start being honest with yourself.

This is the one and only time I'm ever going to address you, R____, but, really, come into the light. Life on the outside has so much more to offer.

Friday cat blogging

2008-06-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Gladys: "Look, I came in the mail!"

Commodity bubble?

2008-06-18T15:19:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post; things are going to be kind of slack this week and next because of visiting family.

NPR has a nice Q&A summary about the commodities market and whether there's a bubble going on. The jury is still out, but I think it's particularly sad that part of the reason we don't know what's going on is market deregulation originally lobbied for by Enron. It seems like by this point we should have figured out that if Enron was involved, it probably wasn't a good idea.

What a shocker!

2008-06-11T07:50:00.001-07:00

McCain Unlikely to Use Cheney In Campaign.

I don't get it. Why wouldn't he want an old, cranky, evil, low-rated, sneering geezer to help him out? I mean, just being seen with Cheney ought to score some political points with those young people I've been hearing about lately. The best idea would be to bring him to some southwestern state where they're afflicted with drought. The dark stormclouds that automatically form over the vice president's head will give the thirsty residents some hope.

From that article:

In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006... McCain said: “I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.”

"They had a goal of bringing down the administration's approval ratings, and by God was he an achiever in that regard."

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

"For instance, if there were some kids on the White House lawn making trouble, I'd bring him out on a chain in order to scare them off. If they were poor children, maybe I wouldn't even use the chain."

I Drew This

2008-06-10T22:22:00.003-07:00

Friday cat blogging

2008-06-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Gladys: "Ha ha ha, yes, the cat's in the bag. Are you going to make that joke every single time I do this?"

The value of experience

2008-06-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

There's a certain argument out there that goes something like this:

"I was for Hillary Clinton, but now that she's out of the race I'll have to vote for John McCain, because he just has more experience than Barack Obama."

I think this is one of those arguments that makes a kind of intuitive sense but disintegrates almost immediately when you think about it for even a couple of minutes.

What is the point of experience, after all? In the case of the presidency, it's improved judgment. Are any Hillary supporters prepared to argue that the judgment McCain has exhibited in recent years, and continues to exhibit today, is superior to Obama's?

McCain supported, and continues to support, the Iraq war. Obama not only opposed it, but in opposing it, predicted basically everything that's gone wrong with it.

One might fairly ask how valuable it actually is to have years of experience being wrong, making mistakes from which you don't learn anything. The presidency isn't a longevity prize, and Obama's judgment on matters of war is plainly superior.

Ah, but isn't the point of "experience" also accumulated knowledge? Having been involved in national politics for decades, isn't John McCain more knowledgeable than a first-term senator like Obama could possibly be?

No.

McCain seems to commit large factual errors almost every day. He claimed we'd drawn troop levels down to pre-surge levels, and when Obama pointed out that we haven't (there are currently 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, 20,000 more than there were in January 2007 before the "surge" started), instead of correcting himself and moving on, McCain dug in his heels and accused the Obama camp of being pedantic and quibbling over "verb tenses." (Seriously, verb tenses? Then what is he claiming he was trying to say? That at some future date we will have drawn down to pre-surge levels? That we were at pre-surge levels in the past, prior to the surge?)

He claimed he'd supported every investigation into the government's failures after Hurricane Katrina, but he'd voted against two of them. He's repeatedly claimed al Qaeda, a sunni organization, is being supported by Shi'ite Iran, and seems not to understand the distinction even after being corrected.

He said he didn't know much about economics, then denied he'd said it, apparently unaware that, you know, stuff gets recorded.

Obama quite simply does not have any kind of similar gaffe habit. When he discusses an issue, he generally demonstrates a clear and consistent knowledge of it. What's more, his policy positions are extremely close to Hillary Clinton's. You'll like what a President Obama will do. You'll hate what a President McCain will do.

And isn't that what democracy is about? Voting for people who will enact policies you'll like? It's not a good citizenship prize or a longevity prize or a personality prize (and anyway, I think McCain could win one of those three at best).

For those who think Obama, out of inexperience, might do something dangerous, I have only this to ask: more dangerous than refusing to engage diplomatically with countries we don't like, instead threatening and bombing them? More dangerous than digging in our heels and continuing to pour money and lives into the pit that is Iraq? More dangerous than continuing George Bush's bankrupting tax cuts and appointing more far-right judges who will roll back the civil rights gains of the last sixty years?

What that Barack Obama could possibly do even in a worst-case scenario would be as bad as John McCain's openly stated policies?

Experience by itself is meaningless. What matters is what, if anything, you actually know.

I Drew This

2008-06-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

Obama's got it

2008-06-03T15:45:00.001-07:00

And I couldn't be happier. Even though official tallies still have him at 11-12 short, Montana's and South Dakota's appropriations will put him over when their polls close.

Once Hillary Clinton makes the concession (and even if it's not tonight, I predict it will happen within a week) I expect Obama will work overtime to make overtures to her supporters. I don't think Clinton will get the Vice Presidential nod, but I think we can expect her to at least be offered an important spot in his cabinet.

One thing that's made me unusually optimistic: a normally apolitical friend of mine just started gushing about Obama last week. Even though the media's for McCain through and through, by championing personalities over issues, the media has been hoisted on its own petard.

I look forward to the Obama/McCain debates. Imagine the contrast.

Still sucking.

2008-05-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

It was five years ago today that Thomas Friedman said, I kid you not, that the Iraq war was necessary in order to tell the Arabs "suck. On. This."

It pains me to say it, but I get the strong impression that America's leading foreign affairs columnist is a complete tool with the mentality of a seven-year-old in a peeing-for-distance contest.

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-05-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

I Drew This

2008-05-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Expect these on Tuesdays.

Lumpy and Barack

2008-05-26T11:53:00.001-07:00

Seagull asks, "do you think it's insensitive to call McCain 'Lumpy?' He had cancer.

I told him, yes, but I'm going to say it anyway. If he doesn't want people to make fun of how he looks he shouldn't have run for president.

Teh st00pid

2008-05-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

I went to a Jesuit high school, and in the religion classes I had to take there, I was often the token doubter, and thus the center of many a debate. On one occasion, I was asking why, if the world was created and overseen by a loving God, the world was so cruel, arbitrary, and, ultimately, profoundly flawed. This flustered a girl in the class to the point where she blurted out "YOU'RE not perfect, so you can't expect God to be, either!"

I mean this girl no disrespect; actually, at my tenth high school reunion a couple of years ago, I had a 45-minute conversation with her and enjoyed her company immensely. She is not an idiot. But, forgive me, that was one of the most humorously stupid arguments ever.

Another time, a guy explained to me why he was voting for George W. Bush in 2004 this way: "He's been so successful because he surrounds himself with advisers and he's smart enough to listen to them."

Apparently, in this person's mind, a president having advisers is some sort of great innovation, and not, say, something every president in the history of presidents has done automatically. It's like saying someone is a great baseball manager because he "surrounds himself with players and he's smart enough to put them on the field."

I bring this up because there is a monumentally stupid argument I sometimes hear from people who e-mail me, and I've actually been subjected to it twice in recent weeks, and I want to take a minute to make fun of it.

It's this: "You can't criticize the job Bush is doing as president because YOU couldn't do any better."

I have no idea why this argument, in some people's minds, applies to the presidency and to pretty much nothing else. I would suck at being a major league baseball player, but I reserve the right to say that a pitcher who beans 35 consecutive batters is doing a crappy job. I would suck at being a plumber, but if I hire one and my sink begins shooting sludge, I reserve the right to say he didn't do his job very well. I would suck at being a truck driver, but if one drives his truck into the side of a children's cancer ward while drunk, I feel entitled to criticize his performance. I would suck at being a heart surgeon, but if one puts someone's heart in upside down and then leaves a sponge in her chest cavity, I don't think I have to be a world-class heart surgeon myself to evaluate that performance negatively.

I would suck at being the president of the United States. I'm lazy, disorganized, forgetful, flighty, cranky, and self-absorbed. If I were suddenly president, we'd all be in trouble.

But if someone becomes president and then gets us into a ruinous, expensive, and intractable war by lying about weapons of mass destruction; ignores a pending environmental collapse that just about every other civilized country on earth wants to address; pushes and funds sex education programs that every study shows are totally ineffective at best; appoints his incompetent, unqualified cronies to important federal agencies, thereby leaving the country unequipped to deal with unforeseen disasters like hurricanes; and shreds the constitution's separations of powers, triggering a constitutional crisis almost weekly...

In that case, I definitely reserve the right to say he really really sucks at his job.

Also, since I believe I can make well-reasoned arguments, I definitely feel qualified to say that anyone who makes any of the above arguments needs to go take arguing lessons immediately.

Where's the Internet's corrections column?

2008-05-23T15:22:00.001-07:00

This election season seems particularly rife with people holding strong misconceptions about candidates, probably because the Internet allows rumor and innuendo to spread so quickly. (How exactly do people manage to believe simultaneously that Obama is a closet Muslim, and that he's anti-patriotic because of the rhetoric of his former pastor?) One accusation I've been hearing a lot lately is that Obama blocked attempts to hold a do-over primary in Michigan. I'd like to do my part to support reality by putting that one to rest.

While it's true that Obama was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea, he's not the guilty party here. The Michigan Democratic Party officially pulled the plug on the idea on April 4, after a bill authorizing a June 3 primary died in the state legislature. The state party "concluded that it is not practical to conduct such a primary or caucus," mainly due to the lack of time to organize one.

Gender trashing

2008-05-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

There would be absolutely no point in denying that the Clinton campaign has brought out, in depressingly vivid detail, just how openly sexist many, many people in our society are still willing to be. More than that, how "respectable" sexism still is.

Sure, the Obama campaign has also brought to the fore no small amount of lingering racism. (That West Virginia idiot who said he wanted the president to be a "full-blooded American" is merely the most quotable example.)

But you don't see many "respectable" talking heads on cable spouting openly racist drivel (at least not against black people). We've managed to make that a taboo. Anyone with a brain knows not to say it on television even if they're thinking it. I'll probably get e-mail from people listing counterexamples, and I won't deny it occasionally happens, but I still think it's nothing compared to the smug, open sexism we apparently still find acceptable.

I mean, Republican hack Roger Stone still gets invited on TV even after he founded an anti-Clinton group called Citizens United Not Timid. Ha ha ha ha ha. Does anyone really think he'd keep getting invited on TV if he'd started an anti-Obama group called Nationally Interested Good Guys Entirely Republican?

But, let's step back and really look at this. Yes, Clinton, the onetime Dem frontrunner, has been getting gender-trashed to a shocking degree.

Except it's only shocking if you've forgotten recent political history. And therein lies the key point I want to make.

Hillary Clinton is not being gender-trashed because she's a woman. She's being gender-trashed because she's a Democrat.

It comes out as sexism because she's a woman and that's the most direct way to gender-trash a woman. But make no mistake, a male Hillary Clinton would not get treated any better. It would just sound somewhat different.

It would sound more like how they treated John Edwards or Al Gore or John Kerry.

Yeah, they make fun of how Hillary dresses, calling her things like "Hillary Clinton, D-Pantsuit" and feigning a fainting spell if she wears any clothes that don't hide the fact that she has breasts. Remember 2000, when Al Gore got endless shit for wearing "earth tones" and suits with too many buttons on them? And the (false) story about how he got fashion advice from Naomi Wolf grew into a story about how he "needed a woman to tell him how to be a man"?

Gender trashing.

Yeah, there are those Hillary Clinton "nutcrackers," and that's inexcusable. But more inexcusable than Ann Coulter being handed platform after platform to call John Edwards a "faggot"? Or Maureen Dowd--an alleged liberal, with a column in the New York Times--smearing Edwards as the "Breck girl"? Peggy Noonan declaring that George W. Bush should beat John Kerry because, unlike that flaccid, flip-flopping eunuch Kerry, Bush "has two of 'em"?

Gender trashing.

Ah, you will be saying. But, Eagle, why then has Barack Obama not come in for the same amount of gender-trashing? Surely that's sexism.

Actually, no, I don't think so. In 2000, Bill Bradley got a bit of a free pass because the press hated Al Gore so intensely and wanted someone to beat him, and Bradley looked like the only shot. I think Obama benefits from a bit of the same. (Do you honestly think the press hates Hillary any more than they did her husband?) But you can already see the general election narratives taking shape. Obama is a sissy girly elitist who can't bowl like a real man.

Monica Crowley, on McLaughlin: "If [Obama] is this prickly, he is way too much of a girly man to be president of the United States."

Kathleen Parker, for some reason allowed to spew this drivel in the Washington Post: "Well, at least they didn't kiss. I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama....Obama and Edwards make an attractive picture -- Ultra Brite cover boys of youth and glamour united against old men (and women) who worship the status quo. Obama -- the man who makes Chris Matthews feel a thrill up his leg..."

Maureen Dowd, who should be fired from the New York Times immediately, got out ahead of the game, and has been calling Obama things like an "anorexic starlet" and a "desperate debutante" for months now.

The pattern is clear. Big Democrats are all sissy girly women, except for big Democratic women, against whom that slur wouldn't work, so they're emasculating bitches, which is just the other side of that coin.

Is it a problem that sexism is still so shockingly acceptable in this society? Hell yes. Is it the problem in this election? No, no, it's so much bigger.

So, hey, mainstream media Kool Kids. Speaking as a genuinely gender-confused Democrat who nevertheless feels she has the same right as some macho tractor boy or some pretty rich bitch to have political opinions? Go fuck yourselves. And after that, start reporting on actual matters of policy and give up on all this Democratic gender-trashing. It's not 1% as clever as you seem to think.

Clinton's scorched-earth strategy

2008-05-22T09:35:00.001-07:00

In a speech yesterday, Hillary Clinton compared the rules fight over Michigan and Florida to the 2000 election and even to the bloody election dispute in Zimbabwe. She also declared that the primary votes in those two states should be counted "exactly as cast," which would seem to rule out any of the compromises that have been proposed so far that would have split the votes between the candidates or awarded Obama the votes of people who voted "uncommitted" in Michigan.

This strategy seems designed to drive a wedge into the party in two key swing states, Michigan and Florida. It's a troubling suggestion that Clinton is willing to damage the Democratic Party's chances in November if it can get her a slight advantage in the primary fight.

* * *

EDIT: I continue to get mail, based on these posts, accusing me of writing out of favoritism for Obama. It really isn't like that. If the roles were reversed, I'd be telling Obama he should stop campaigning. The fact is Obama has a significant delegate lead with very few contests remaining, and the math simply doesn't work for a Clinton nomination. Obama will be the nominee, so the sooner the party can start to coalesce around him the sooner we can stop fighting each other and start fighting McCain.

Care to rephrase that?

2008-05-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

This passage in the Seattle P-I caught my eye today:

Cynthia Ruccia, 55, a sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics in Columbus, Ohio, is organizing a group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, of mostly women in swing states who plan to campaign against Obama in November.

"We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus," she said.

Because, you know, African-Americans have had all the advantages in this country. Surely no one ever would have told one of them to get to the back of the bus. Right?

* * *

All sarcasm aside, I think sexism is well down the list of things that sunk Hillary's campaign. She was running on inevitability and Washington insider experience in a year when people wanted change. She represented a sort of two-family political dynasty (Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton) that a lot of people are weary of. She chose campaign staffers for loyalty instead of skill, and they made strategic blunders early on; her chief strategist didn't even understand the rules for awarding delegates. In short, she ran a poor campaign with none of the excitement that characterized her husband's run for office.

I really hope we can get past this idea that her loss is somehow a slap in the face to women — especially since the idea that her gender should have guaranteed her the nomination is, frankly, more insulting.