I drink your super-delegates. I drink them up!

Just got back from the Democratic Convention in San Jose where I got an award for Volunteer Fool of the Year, but at least I got to quote Mark Twain and get in a plug for Mayor Cook (who was there with Joe Shaw, and as gorgeous as ever.) Most of the crowd hadn’t heard of her yet, but when I said “She’s the one who’s going to finally unseat the odious Dana Rohrabacher,” the place erupted into cheers.

Got to hear Bill Clinton speak too, and the Big Dog can still spin a yarn, I tell you what. He struck a nice balance between advocating for his wife’s candidacy and appealing for party unity, but when he got to one topic I know about, health care, he was certainly tap-dancing nonsensically. Fact is, neither candidate has a plan that will get us anywhere near affordable universal coverage, but I guess that’s Presidential politics at this point.

We were greeted at the door by a loud group of Hillary supporters who urged us to vote for their candidate. Scott McKown and I replied (as he had throughout the weekend) “The Primary already happened, and you won. Congratulations.” But then I realized—they (and the Barack contingent) were there to impress and sway the superdelegates, who now comprise the only path Hillary still has to the nomination.

Which brings up the cool funny Photoshop I was going to make for this post, if I only knew how to use Photoshop. During the speeches, the big screen behind the speaker showed a loop of photos of prominent Democrats from Jefferson and FDR to this year’s candidates, and the photo they chose for Hillary was curiously frog-like, in profile and looking up; and some of us were laughing thinking how funny it would be to see a long frog tongue coming out, with the caption “I drink your superdelegates. I drink them up!” (alluding to Daniel Plainview’s famed milkshake line in There Will Be Blood.) Good thing I don’t have Photoshop though, because I don’t want to piss off my few Hillary-supporting friends any more, they’re all so touchy right now. (Hi Carol, Marselle, we’re still cool, right?)

BUT. I have to say that a few Hillary supporters were very badly behaved on Sunday. At the entrance to the Convention Center an all-male chorus, metrosexual as you like, sang Mozart classics with the lyrics “cleverly” changed to attack Obama. (Sample clever lyrics: “He is just a Nazi, he is not a Democrat.”) I did my best to sabotage these professionally trained singers by standing next to the basses and singing loudly in B Major when they were in C Major, and so on. But it still sort of poisoned the atmosphere.

And worst of all, one of the Hillary supporters who greeted us blurted out that “30% of us are going to vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination, and that includes me!” I was glad to learn later that the string of expletives that flew from my mouth at that moment was not unprecedented; a bespectacled black gentleman who spoke before President Clinton apologized for cursing the day before at folks who had threatened the same thing. And now I get to my main point, which is DON’T BE A DICK! No sane American wants McCain for President. CONSIDER: (and this is directed to all voters, not just Democrats)

1. Either Barack or Hillary will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (Barack a little faster than Hillary.) And a stronger, progressive Congress with its spine strengthened by new members who have signed on to the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq will be able to push either Dem to leave quicker. Both have said they will negotiate with Iran.

McCain on the other hand is famously happy with the idea of staying in Iraq for 100 more years, and he won’t care WHAT other ideas a Democratic Congress sends him. His foreign policy, if different at all from Bush’s, is even more reckless and imperialistic, and he considers nuking Iran a perfectly reasonable (and funny) option if there is even suspicion that they’ve acquired the “KNOW-HOW” to make a nuclear weapon. He has specifically and repeatedly promised us “More wars” into the future. Unlike most military men who come to politics very cautious about using military options, McCain seems to have emerged from his Vietnam ordeal just wanting MORE, MORE, MORE of that bombing he never got to complete. (That’s my impression.)

2. Our federal courts, from the Supreme Court down, have been populated more and more with the most dangerous, young-ish, rightwing extremists, who consistently rule against individual liberties, the environment, privacy, and the little guy in general, and always in favor of unlimited executive power and the interests of large corporations. The Supreme Court is in particularly grievous shape right now with only four members who are even slightly liberal, and some of them are as old as the Cryptkeeper. McCain has promised to aggravate this situation by appointing even more judges “in the mold of Alito, Scalia and Thomas”—if that happens all you women can kiss your right to choose bye-bye! EITHER Hillary or Barack on the other hand, will certainly appoint reasonable mainstream judges who respect civil rights and liberties.

My Adult ADD is too severe to continue in this vein, but you get the idea. Just on the above two issues alone, how could any freedom-and-peace-loving American risk 4 years of John McCain? So, Democrats, independents and any other thinking folks out there, Don’t Be A Dick! Don’t even THINK about THREATENING to stay home in November or vote McCain!

(PS, my short-lived “Huntington Beach: In God We Trust” post, in case you were wondering, is in the shop for repairs; I found it contained premature assumptions.)