It seems almost impossible, but I’m starting to think that the Dems could actually figure out how to perform real magic, and blow this Presidential election. How do you turn lemons into shit? I think by eating about a billion lemons.
Heartburn is virtually a guarantee.
In any case, there is the racist vote, the old lady vote, the women vote in general, and the absolute freak-show horror that is identity politics, best exhibited on the left by the A-C list blogosphere of Larry Johnson, Talk Left, Taylor Marsh, and the good folks at Corrente.
Most of them say, shorter, “Obama can’t win the general.”
You know, I think this is true. My read of this country is that there are so many brainwashed morons populating this place, the ones who voted for Bush the second time, that it wouldn’t matter who was at the top of the Dem ticket, optics like “wrong-right track” included. The idiot constituency is HUGE, if you define “idiot” as the inability to convert national politics into future personal and national prosperity.
The problem is that we have fallen into self-fulfilling prophecy-land. Yeah, there’s a good chance Obama can’t win the general, but the odds of that happening get one helluva a lot better if Hillary supporters don’t climb on board.
So, you know, sure, maybe you’re right. But are you sane? Can you handle four more years of GOP rule?
I just don’t understand how you can be this intramurally partisan. It’s fucking stupid. It is selfish and weird. Yes, Hillary, in our own personal versions of fantasy politics COULD be the greatest President ever, but you just never know, do you? Hell, McCain, being Mr. Mavericky moderate straight-talk, could actually turn out to be a great POTUS given the fact that that he likely won’t care about a second term, is at least a partially decent human being, has a lot of scores to settle with all the Republicans who’ve fucked him, and that this shit is just impossible to predict.
Obama has a chance to be quite transformative himself. IMHO, his chances of transforming things are geometrically better than either Hillary’s (not because of her policies, but because of her Media persona) or McCain’s, whose world-view is shaped by war, and all the “honor” war entails.
So it gets down to probability. If anyone is able to predict the future, I hereby declare you my investment manager. The higher probability is that McCain will continue our war in Iraq in perpetuity, since he’s said as much, that he’ll nominate reactionary misogynist authoritarians to the Supreme Court, since he’s said so; that Hillary will be vilified by the press, since history has shown this to be true, fairly or not, that Hillary is objectively a little bit “flexible” when it comes to stuff like rules she’s formerly (and formally) agreed on, or stuff she’s invented to compare herself to fucking Gandhi, and with all her largely undeserved but at least partially deserved baggage, the “change” the country objectively wants, if the polls can be believed, just ain’t comin’ if we elect either one of them.
I carry no fantasies whatsoever about Obama being any sort of savior. He’s a human being, I’m pretty sure. But he sure has spoken to me like a fucking adult more than I’m used to from a national politician, and he’s come across to me, at least, as a pretty thoughtful, reasonable guy who is capable of understanding an opposing point of view. The horror!
My biggest problem with Obama is that he thinks he can talk sense with an opposition party that has completely slipped the rails of sanity. It sincerely worries me.
Anyway, as a fiercely independent semi-libertarian anarchist-ultralite, it is pretty fascinating to watch the fratricide inside the Democratic party. Ending it is almost completely in Hillary’s control. It will be a test of her character, and my evaluation of her character which has been largely positive but fading fast, to see how she handles it.
As a personal aside, as much as I think it doesn’t matter if it is Hillary or Obama, there is my love of country and my love of our Founding Fathers and their brilliant Constitution, “a goddamn piece of paper” to quote our current WH occupant, that return me from the ephemeral amazement I find in the whole race back to the reality that would be a McCain Presidency.
My last consoling principle: Sometimes things have to get really bad for things to get better. Personally I think we’re already there. But that doesn’t mean I’m in the majority of electoral math, particularly given the obviously superior skill the Republicans have at the politics of getting the idiot vote.
Vote Republican! We’ll represent your patriarchal (Sorry, that’s no good; the Republican base doesn’t know what the word means or supports the concept if they understand the word)…OK, starting over. We’ll represent your control of your woman’s uterus, we’ll support Corporations, we’ll be white, and we’ll hate homos!
A proud party, indeed. Without the idiot constituency, the GOP would be known as “Whigs,” or the “Dixiecrat” party. Dead and buried.
Update: I really like all the bloggers, LJ, TM, et al, whom I’ve criticized. I’ve linked all of them several times in very positive terms.
I just don’t understand. Politics isn’t about Kings or Queens, it is about power and control and inspiration of the little people. At least in a decent society. I hate all others’ power and control over my person, but I don’t have any choice but to choose between the lesser of two evils.
Just for the record, though, this is patent bullshit.
Reading this column by Tumulty today, it reminds me of the health care forum in Las Vegas where Hillary Clinton cleaned the other candidates’ clocks. I wasn’t a Hillary supporter back then, but simply giving credit where it was due“
Emphasis mine.
And not because Taylor is lying, but because she couldn’t see that her own biases were pouring out of her writing like the flop-sweat on Albert Brooks in Broadcast News.
We’re all guilty of this. Some more than others. I still think Taylor is terrific and brilliant and smart and lovely for now, but if she and her Hillarybots (?) continue their jihad against Obama I will consider them morons.
Cutting one’s nose off to spite the face is the operative analogy here.
