Debra Bartoshevich: John McCain's Chanel Suit

by folkbum

I watch way too much TV. Hence, when I see Wisconsin's Debra Bartoshevich in the news AGAIN as The Hillary Democrat Voting For McCain, I cannot help but think of "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield," a classic episode of "The Simpsons." In that episode, Marge Simpson finds a Chanel suit at an outlet store for an incredible steal of a price. Wearing it, she gets noticed by the crusty uppers of Springfield society women, who normally would not have given Marge a second glance in her usual green tube of a dress. Problem is, there is only the one Chanel suit, so Marge wears it too often, and then starts altering the pieces, and finally she can't pretend anymore and rushes back to the outlet store for another Chanel.

But there is no other Chanel, no matter how many racks she paws through.

Quick: Name another "Clinton Democrat" who supports McCain. Can't do it? That's because a Bartoshevich is hard to find. (The crazies at No Quarter are still at it, and, no doubt, cheering the ad Bartoshevich is appearing in for McCain.) It seems to me that if the Clinton-Democrat-voting-McCain phenomenon is real and widespread, there would be more than one Debra Bartoshevich in the outlet store.

Additionally: Eve Fairbanks has a better analogy:

It is, in fact, the political equivalent of a prank legendarily pulled at my high school in which students procured well fewer than 20 live chickens, numbered them 1 through 20 with magic markers (leaving some numbers out), set them loose, and then sat back and gleefully watched as hapless school officials ran around the school searching for the remaining missing chickens that had never actually existed. Nobody knows how much truly dangerous anti-Obama sentiment exists among former Hillary supporters or how many Hillary delegates will vote for John McCain in November (this past June, McCain said that the woman in today's ad, Wisconsin nurse Debra Bartoshevich, was the only Hillary delegate they knew of who was committed to pull the lever for McCain). But I guarantee some of us in the press will spend today haplessly running around looking for more of them out here, to fill out our stories about this ad and the angry-Hillary-brigades-hit-Denver storyline.

(Mental note: Buy chickens and a map to St. Paul for next week.)

Steve Benen also points out that Bartoshevich apparently doesn't read my blog. When I first posted about her here, I couldn't believe that she would support someone as anti-woman and anti-choice as John McCain. And indeed, at today's press conference, Bartoshevich revealed that she has no idea what McCain's position is on choice:

Bartoschevich, who claims to be a pro-choice Democrat, was asked about her concerns about reproductive rights under another pro-life Republican president. "Going back to 1999, John McCain did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle saying that overturning Roe v. Wade would not make any sense, because then women would have to have illegal abortions," Bartoschevich said.

Has anyone at the McCain camp bothered to tell Bartoshevich that McCain's position in 1999 was just a temporary dip into the pro-choice pool, and now he's accepting without challenge a Republican Party platform that would prohibit abortions even in the case of rape or incest--something McCain fought against back in 2000?

Now, I know that people enjoy attention, and Bartoshevich has certainly gotten her (and a few other people's) fifteen minutes of fame. But she is being used, badly, by a party and a candidate that stands against everything her preferred candidate--Hillary Clinton--stands proudly for. She needs to get out. Now.