Something I don't understand. Perhaps someone can explain it to me. [View All]

Inspired by a subthread in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5857494

...about how you can't judge a candidate by his supporters. By now this has become an ancient argument, but it is one that continues to puzzle me.

We all know this part by rote:

1. If you base your vote on the behavior of any candidate's supporters, you are a moron / crybaby / etc., etc.

We also know these oft-repeated Obama themes by rote:

2. Obama is a "blank screen" on which you are all supposed to project your hopes and dreams.

3. Obama is going to lead not from the top down, but from the bottom up — taking his direction from you, his followers.

Numbers 2 and 3, it has been said by many Obama supporters, are precisely what gives you "hope" after such a long period of hopelessness and cynicism: Finally, you tell the rest of us, you will have a government (and here I paraphrase, but I believe my understanding is essentially correct) that is truly "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

See, I have been listening.

This is what confounds me: How can you (Obama supporters) tell the rest of us (and do you ever tell us, every chance you get!) that Obama is all about empowering you, about building the government you want, about taking his direction from you...

...while simultaneously trying to convince us not to judge the man by his supporters?

If Obama is placing himself in your hands, and not the other way around, is that supposed to be any sort of comfort to a non-Obama supporter like me, after so many of you have told me I'm old, irrelevant, stupid, racist, a Republican, a paleofeminist, a one-issue queer with an axe to grind, and not needed (or wanted) to build this grand, new American society you envision?

Nope, I'm not being the least bit snarky. I'm trying to make you understand something: You can't tell me on one hand that Obama is making himself out to be the empty vessel you will fill, and then on the other defend your disdain for non-Obama supporters by insisting that your candidate does not reflect you.

Because, all along, you've been telling me he does reflect you.

I won't bother to give you my conclusions, because you won't want to hear them, and I don't feel like getting into a flamewar tonight.

I just want to try to make Obama supporters (at least, the two or three who don't have me on ignore) understand the contradictory message you've been sending out all along: Either Obama is the blank screen for your hopes and dreams, or he isn't. If he is, then he reflects you. If he isn't, then you're wrong about the meaning of his "from the bottom up" message. And I'm taking the meaning of "from the bottom up" from your many posts on the subject. (Yes, I can give you links until your eyes bleed — I just don't feel like wasting the rest of my evening digging them up for what I know is already an unappreciative, hostile audience.)

If Obama is the nominee (and if by some miracle he beats McCain), I hope you're dead wrong about just how much influence your "movement" is going to have on a President Obama, because, frankly, as long as he is in office, I will feel about as welcome in your America as I did in Bush's.

No, I take that back: I will feel less welcome in your America. In Bush's America, the Republicans hated me. In your America, the Republicans will still hate me, and so will half of all Democrats.


P.S. No, I don't want to get into a discussion of what I think of Candidate Obama, so don't try to get me off on that tangent. And the first person who does a "But Hillary supporters...!" deflection post immediately goes on ignore.