It is Memorial Day 2008 and the nation remembers the sacrifice of those who gave "the last full measure of devotion".

As a Democratic voter, I am witnessing what I feel is the most divisive primary campaign since 1980, when Ted Kennedy challenged then President Jimmy Carter in the primaries. Carter pledged to "kick his ass" and did, although Kennedy helped Carter quite a bit. The turning point came when a reporter asked Kennedy why he wanted to be president, and Kennedy sputtered out a fairly incoherent and certainly unconvincing rationale. After Carter gave his acceptance speech at the DNC in 1980, Kennedy turned his back on Carter and refused to shake his hand. The signal was clear to Kennedy supporters. And Carter went down to Ronald Reagan in a humiliating defeat.

Now, we has two firsts going at it. Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and now Senator from New York, is the first serious female contender for any major party's presidential nomination. There have been other females who declared their intention to run for the nomination: Shirley Chisholm and Elizabeth Dole come to mind. But Hillary entered the race as the front runner, although certainly not the favored when it came to the press and what would come to be known as The Movement.

The other candidate is the first serious African American contender for a presidential nomination, Barack Obama, a first term Senator from Illinois. Barry, as I call him, took advantage of the Internet not only as a tool to raise money but as a networking tool that enabled his campaign to set up effective ground games in most of the states in contention. He was most effective in caucus states and in states where the African American population was a significant part of the population.

Now, Barry has what appears to have an insurmountable pledged delegate lead, while Hillary Clinton is fast approaching overtaking him in the overall popular vote. In the end, the nominee will be decided by so-called super delegates who come from Congress, Democratic leadership positions around the country, and, for some reason a couple of very young college students, who have done God knows what for the Democratic party.

So there is a great divide between the two camps. Barry lays claim to African Americans (90%+ vote), the affluent and college educated, including a substantial youth movement.
Hillary has the core constituency of the Democratic party, minus the African American vote, and an edge among white female voters of all stripe.

The rancor has come, in the final analysis, as a result of calls for Hillary Clinton to end her campaign, and of a persistent pattern of distortion and false accusations in the media and by the Obama campaign. On the blogs. Barry's Kids have fallen victim to Clinton Derangement Syndrom (CDS, the Democratic variation of Bush Derangement Syndrome), calling Hillary everything from a "fucking whore" to a psychopath who is hoping Barry will be assassinated so that she can get the nomination.

We are in a situation where many of Hillary Clinton's supporters, including I, have reached a tipping point as a result of the aforementioned "assassination scenario" that was pulled kicking and screaming from an innocuous statement Hillary made regarding previous primary campaigns that have been active in June, including RFK's primary, which ended with his assassination in June of 1968 after winning the California primary. To read legitimate newspapers, let alone CDS bloggers, distort Hillary's words as referencing the possibility of Barry's death by assassin is, to use one of the accuser's own words, beyond the pale. That accuser would be Rep. James Clyburn, an African American Democratic representative from South Carolina, who has previously disapproved of Hillary's historical statement that it took a president to get the civil rights legislation which for MLK Jr had marched. That was considered by Clyburn and other blacks to be a diminishing of King's preeminent role in the fight for civil rights for African Americans. And when Bill Clinton referenced Jesse Jackson's two primary wins in SC as a way putting the thumping Hillary took into an historical perspective, of course the worst possible inference was taken.

So, the Clintons - and by extension all of their supporters - are race-baiters, if not out and out racists. And Hillary is Lady Macbeth, except that in the CDS world, she is looking to get blood on her hands rather than wash it off. Again, we, her supporters, take the accusation personally, as we support Hillary with the same degree of passion that Barry's throngs manifest in their gargantuan rallies.

There is much talk on the boards about voting for John McCain, the Republican nominee, or voting for a third party or not voting at all if Barry gets the nomination. The pundits think the party will unite around Barry is he is the nominee and the Obamanistas feel that they can get their Golden Boy into the White House without Hillary's supporters. Although I am one who is inclined to leave the presidential selection untouched in November, I suspect a lot of Hillary supporters will consider that even Barry is better than John McCain. How that will all shake out in November is anyone's guess, as McCain and Obama are in a statistical tie at this point. That, of course, does not augur well for Democrats in a year when the Republican incumbent registers about 25% approval rating among the American public. Hillary runs better against McCain and in some swing states she beats him at this point.

But 6 months is a couple of lifetimes in politics, so a Democratic win with Barry heading the ticket is a possibility, even without my vote. A while back, after the 2000 fiasco, I read an article by a statistician who argued that those who say "my vote doesn't matter" are correct. It's statistics and I resisted the notion at the time, but I can accept it now, even if I can't articulate his argument.