It's been almost two months since the Primary Wars ended - or at least called a ceasefire. As a long time poster here and MYDD (I joined both in 2004 but my old user name Brit is frozen at the latter) I've been asked by the British publication Prospect Magazine to write a personal account of the Flame Wars, mainly concentrating on DKos and MYDD.

This should be a fun and informative feature, focused around incidents and arguments, and being fair to both supporters and their candidates. So I'm calling veterans from all sides and none for their favorite moments, their best loved quips, the recollection of angst in a time  of tranquility.

What do you remember of the Flame Wars?

Jimmy Carter is in the UK attending Hay Literary festival. Both Al Gore and Bill Clinton have been there too. Friends of mine met them in the lovely English/Welsh town of Hay which is home to hundreds of second hand bookshops, and one of the most stimulating, and literally intoxicating, literary festivals in the UK.

He had an important statement to make about Hillary's campaign on a UK TV station.

OK. So now I know. This diary was erased from MYDD after two minutes, and three complimentary comments. Let it speak for itself.

Have I broken the site guidelines by writing this diary?

Before anyone tries to get this banned as a I hate MYDD diary, hold back on that reaction. It would be stupid and patently contradictory, I've been coming here for four years. Nor am I asking for more Pro-Obama diaries, or any kind of fix for the obvious pro Hillary bias of the diaries here. That's fine. She's got a large proportion of democratic voters. But I am sorely confused

I thought the principle of netroots and progressive blogosphere was that it largely regulated itself. In fact I'm told as much in trusted user guidelines. Rec'ing, rating, were all means by which the community patrolled itself. Dissent, debate, argument, reason - these were the core tenets of it's break from the MSM and would lead to a rejuvenation of freedom of speech.

Rec this diary if - notwithstanding your candidate or none - you want to find out if that's still true

This will be brief, a mental health break, a return to hope and poetry - if only for an instant - after the hard knuckle negative politics of the last month. Yesterday I reread the opening of TS Eliot's The Wasteland.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding    
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing    
Memory and desire, stirring    
Dull roots with spring rain..."

A lot of people knew April would be cruel. You may have though it was cruel to Obama supporters, but actually it was much crueler to his opponents. Forgive the grim analogy, bu the last weekend felt, in my opinion, like the preternatural moment of reprieve for a terminally ill patient before the onset of the end. That terminal patient was not Hillary of course, but her sick and dysfunctional campaign.

Yes, I know I must be a masochist or something, but I find myself posting and visiting MYDD more often these days. Partially it's virtual rubber necking. The site is like a car crash. But there's also two other reasons

1. The Unity Bounce

2. Preparing to take on the freepers in four months time.

Today the site has moved even more to the right a diary celebrating the Scaife's endorsement of Hillary moving to top of the rec list, and another with no other authority than  Tucker Carlson as a reliable sole source. But before Kossacks give up on that 'other blog', I think there are really good reasons to engage with Hillary supporters there. It sounds perverse, but since Hillary supporters still constitute a really significant minority of Democratic voters.

Read on...

Much has been made about other candidates foreign policy credentials, but those in the know keep on backing Obama. Former senators Sam Nunn and David Boren have just joined the list

Link to TPM

I'm British with deep American roots and connections. I swung over to Obama last year when I heard him talk about foreign policy, and I always admired his brave out of step stance on Iraq in 2002.

It seems plenty of other people are waking up to him

Apologies if this diary doesn't have any links or quotes. It's just something I have to get off my chest. The subject matter should be obvious from the title - the ABC debate last night. This was the first Democratic presidential debate I've missed all year, and I've only seen some snippets of it. But there's a good reason why I avoided it.

I knew it would be a hit job this time.

Why?

I've worked in British media for many years, my former spouse is a very senior exec in TV journalism, and though not a journalist myself (I write drama, occasional non-fiction and some political speeches) I've come to understand how the media works. Apart from the more obvious shock jocks and partisan pundits, their prejudices are not determined by party or ideological allegiance. It doesn't matter whether their voting preferences are Democratic, Republican, Labour, Conservative, centrist, extremist.

No it's simpler than that.

I've been a member of MYDD and DailyKos for four years now. Despite a storm of troll ratings and antagonism, I keep posting and commenting on MYDD even in the last few months because it seems important to hear opposing arguments, and my arithmetical understanding  that the bulk of Hillary supporters are going to have to be cajoled and charmed if Obama wants a healthy 'Unity Bounce'

Things were beginning to look up there. Universal was ousted along with some other crazies. Some notable Hillary supporters started making consessionary noises. And  I prematurely wrote a diaryWhat happened to the MYDD Cesspool of Hate celebrating the fact that democratic principles had triumphed over candidate partisanship. After all, we're constantly told that on policies there's not much to separate the candidates. Noted Hillary and Obama supporters were suddenly being nice to each other.

Mea culpa. My bad.

This is now the third diary I have posted about this, a highly personal issue, and I hope it will be the last. I will be brief.

The diary I wrote last night, though it went high up on the rec list, was slightly tarnished by the fact that one of my sources was Christopher Hitchens. But he posted his Slate article yesterday, which merely prompted me to go back and search my recollections of the times. I now have a killer quotation from Bill Clinton himself confirming that Hillary was against intervention.

I hope this will settle the matter. Hillary's sin was not just lying, but also covering up a truth - her involvement in prolonging the Bosnian war. To quote myself (how narcissistic is that?):

That she should use this genocidal war, it's hundreds of thousands dead, to enhance her credentials, is really shameless. That she actually was one of the voices that prolonged the genocide is completely shameful.

I posted a diary about this last week, but now I realise why, as a European actively involved in campaigning against Serb ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide, I felt so strongly about Hillary's lie about Tuzla, and all the further lies she told to disentangle herself.

But it's not just the coverup, or the lying that has really taken this to a new dimension: it's the original sin that's now at stake.

This isn't a hit diary. This is important to me personally and politically. Bosnia was for man Europeans of my generation as important as Vietnam was for Americans of a previous era. That she should use this genocidal war, it's hundreds of thousands dead, to enhance her credentials, is really shameless. That she actually was one of the voices that prolonged the genocide is completely shameful.

Money quotes from Sally Bedell Smith, Roger Cohen and Bill Clinton himself below the fold.

Bosnia is now coming back to haunt the Clintons, and so it should. Though both America, and the Clintons, are loved in Bosnia for finally forcing intervention after the Srebrenica massacre of 2005, the whole Tuzla Tale media outrage has made me revisit my feelings about the Clintons and American foreign policy in the 1990s

To myself and many Europeans of a similar age (40s), Bosnia defined our generation much like Vietnam did the generation before. I written about this Bosnia generation elsewhere, but my personal perspective is that the day Srebrenica fell in July 2005 was probably the darkest day of my life. This self declared UN safe haven was abandoned by the British, Dutch, and French, and in a few days 8000 men and boys were massacred - the biggest atrocity in Europe since world war II

I'm sorry folks. I've been watching on the sideline as the primary season has unfolded, and while I have dithered between various candidates,  listened to all their speeches ("just words") trying to keep an open mind, the last few weeks have confirmed it for me. I have no choice:

I WILL SUPPORT HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON FOR THE NOMINATION

Some of you (very few if any actually) will wonder after posting various comments on this site why I have decided this. It was not easy. I know I will incur the wrath of various bloggers, be trolled, lose friends and recs, and possibly even descend into a vat of oblivion. But it's now time to tell the truth as I see it. Not the urgency of now. The EMERGENCY OF NOW.

Hillary's campaign started it. Not just the kitchen sink and the whole caboodle, but when she sided with McCain and his experience versus Obama's 'outsider' qualities.

These outsider qualities are just what is needed to go negative before Pennsylvania - to HIT HARD BACK WITH HOPE, keep Barack's coalition together, and not get sullied with the "Pig wrestling Paradox"

You know what I'm talking about - if you wrestle with a pig you both get dirty, AND the pig enjoys it.

I've been reading more and more analysis about the rise of 'conservatism' in the US, and have some suggestion for lines of attack.

But if the British experience is anything to go by, Democrats will also have to think long and hard about what they stand for and, while keeping hold of their core values, find new ways of putting them into practice.

One way of doing this is to look at how conservatives have captured the 'pro business' vote. Democrats can't let them get away with this. Conservative may be pr-corporation, pro-Enron, pro-Halliburton, but they are clearly bad news for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

I think this can be part of your strategy for defeating the Republicans, while being true to values of social justice and equity.

... we need you over there. You may think that Britain or France and Germany are outposts of decency, free education and healthcare, tolerance for different faiths... and you'd be right!

But wait a minute. Don't look to Europe for racial tolerance... There are more covert bigots and racists in rural France, Italy and Germany than in the deep south. And forget individual freedom. In many of the class bound societies of Europe there is still no meritocracy. Most Americans believe that, with enough talent and hard work, their children could - at a pinch - become successful, even become President. Few Europeans believe this.

Just a word of hope from the UK, in what must seem like dark times for many of you.
Thanks for all you've done: you've been an inspiration to many progressives over here.  Thanks to your activism, Democrats almost matched the vast Republican war chests. Thanks to your activism, many more democrats than normal voted. Yes, proportionally they were outmatched by the evangelical vote targetted by Rove. But things would have been a lot worse if they hadn't been energised. Bush can claim the highest number of votes ever for any president. I haven't checked the figures, but it turns out Kerry got more votes than any presidential candidate ever (except Bush), and this for a New England liberal and friend of Teddy Kennedy!