Do Not Want Lieberhawke!

In the long-ago land of the 1990s, when the Clintons were slugging back against the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy that was seeking to smash the government, delegitimize Bill Clinton’s presidency, and drive him from office by any means necessary, I was an apologist for the Clintons.

After all, when that truly despicable Axis of Asshats composed of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, Matt Drudge, Ken Starr, Rupert Murdoch's massive Ministry of Truth, the circle jerk legions of Hate Radio echo boxes from coast to coast, and a cast of millions stand against you and make it clear that there is no depth to which they will not stoop to overthrow the government, then you fight back and you fight hard.

Because when a thousand rabid howler monkeys bite your arms and legs and drag you into the mud…then like it or not, you fight in the mud.

But when you supply the mud yourself?

When, as Senator Clinton has done in the last week, you send a fleet of rental trucks back to the 90s to load up on the worst kind of guttersludge?

Then dig a pit…yourself?

Then shovel that acrid offal into that pit…yourself?

Then jump into the pit you dug all by yourself -- full of the sludge you trowled into it with your own hands – and start hurling gobbets of shitchili at arguably the most energizing and exciting member of your own Party?

When you show your ass to the world?

When you confirm everyone’s worst fears that after 20 years swimming in the political honey bucket you literally have no clue how to win any other way but dirty?

That you are above the Party and that after 40 years as a Clinton, an overweening sense of personal entitlement to that Big Chair in the Oval Office has been so burned into your political DNA that the thought of missing your moment entitles you to dive face first into the “Winning by any means necessary” barrel?

So, in the last week, the Senator from New York and her staff have begun ginning up a series of, oh, let's say “Brother Soulja Moments".

A series of opportunities for her to savage her own Party for fun, profit and personal advancement.

So following the Holy Joe Lieberman/Karl Rove Theory of Politics, the Senator from New York has…

…not just lied about the Senator from Illinois’ relationship with Canada and NAFTA in order to scare working-class Democrats to the polls, but has inverted the facts 180 degree. All of that shit her campaign accused the Senator from Illinois of doing? Turns out maybe it was her campaign that did it.

…retroactively delegitimized her own husband’s presidency in ways that the GOP never could. After all, based on the 3:00 A.M. theory of Presidential Readiness, wasn’t George H. W. Bush (who spent the 80s in the White House trying to teach The Gipper how to pronounce “Mujahideen”) vastly more qualified to be Preznit that The Clenis (who apparently spent the 80s fielding 3:00 A.M. phone calls from Gennifer Flowers?)

Or, as Bob Herbert put it in the NYT (emphasis mine):

"...
In other words, if a choice on national security had to be made today between Senators Obama and McCain, voters — according to Mrs. Clinton’s logic — should choose Senator McCain.

That is a low thing for a Democratic presidential candidate to do to a rival in a party primary. Can you imagine John McCain saying that Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or even the guitar-strumming Mike Huckabee might be less qualified than Hillary Clinton to be commander in chief? It couldn’t happen.

But Senator Clinton never gave a second thought to opening the trap door beneath her fellow Democrat."

…never explained who exactly is on the other end of that 3:00 A.M. phone call? Have the Dirty Reds launched a preemptive nuclear strike over the North Pole? Or swarmed over the 38th parallel into South Korea? Has anyone explained to the Senator from New York that Russia doesn’t want to nuke us anymore? And that the only thing swarming out of Red China these days are lead-frosted kiddy toys, tins of poison cat food and loans from Chinese bankers to prop up the Bush Administration?

…equated requests for the disclosure of the Clinton’s tax returns with suffering for years at the hands of partisan hack and serial witch-burner, Ken Starr.

...allowed as how breaking a few election rules are perfectly OK, so long as they break in the direction of the Senator from New York. (And how delightful it is that Florida [State Motto: “The Electoral Guest Bathroom Into Which America Staggers And Projectile Vomits During Democracy’s Quadrennial Frat Party!”] is once again at the clusterfucking center of a pivotal election.)

And in the process has also handed the GOP page after page after page of free ad copy to use against your own Party in the Fall.

From election rigging to slander, the Senator from New York is right now on the trembling verge of deliberately indulging in every outrage the Democrats suffered at the hands of Wingnut True Believers. Every outrage against which we have inveighed -- usually on behalf of the Clintons and their dramas -- for the last 20 years.

But we are all supposed to ignore the fact that she is morphing into a GOP-lite cartoon before our eyes...because, uh, because...Sisterhood Is Powerful!

Or something.

And whose fault is it?

It’s our fault.

Because pretty them up in pageantry and bunting though we may, elections really are capitalism at its rawest and most bracing.

Because they’re markets.

Meat markets, to be precise, and as driven by the sweaty, relentless imperatives and incentives of the marketplace as any futures trading pit or no-limit, three-day power marathon.

We are all in it if we choose to be. We all have a penny. And whoever can beg, barter, bribe or bullyrag the most coin into their pot (allocated, admittedly by arcane and biased rule) wins.

However, by virtue of it being a market, we can make up whatever incentives we want, and change them as we see fit.

Paint your face blue, and I’ll give you my penny.

Suck my dick and hey, you get my penny.

Give me health care? Protect my Constitution? Make being an American something to be proud of?

Penny for you.

Or you can try to scare it out of me, because more often than we like, fear and bigotry and slander really do work.

But it’s our market. Even now, with the score sorta tied at the top of the seventh, we can impose as harsh or as loose a set of conditions on the game as we choose.

Now so far it has been a contest between the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from New York to see who could knock out the other without grossing out the crowd.

But what if the remaining voters and superdelegates made it a different kind of contest?

Resolved to reward a different kind of behavior?

So...it’s around eleven o’clock on a lively Friday night at the Barking Spider Ale and Caucus House. The balls are clicking along on the pool tables like over-caffinated maracas, the drinks are honest, full pours, the conversation fast and the music lush.

It is all just a trifle overheated, and over on her corner seat -- which juts like a jetty from the home-base of the bar to the action of the floor -- the Democratic Voter sits in the strategically flattering pool of illumination tossed down by a recessed pin-light and quietly owns the room.

(Photo is actually of Susie Bright -- "Sex Consultant to the Stars" -- from her star-turn in "Bound")

She knows she’s leaving with somebody tonight – she knew that coming in -- but she’s not ready to make up her mind.

Not for awhile.

After all, its early yet, and she's still contentedly at the "Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground" stage:


She looks damn fine and she knows it -- her hair, jingle and shoes all still fresh and out there doing the job – and her prospects are looking extremely good. She had been flattered and fawned over by everyone from a smooth, smart lawyer who was half Atticus Finch and half Dirk Benedict, to Pat O’Brien packing a solid package of foreign policy goodness in his pants.

Now its down to two; a charismatic, “handsome" older woman who has hinted that she would just love to take Democratic Voter up to the White House and play naughty-patient-and-stern-Universal-health-care-provider with her (except her husband, who is hovering over everything and is clearly a bit of a perv, has let it be known that he may want to watch), and a certain tall drink of iced tea from Chicago with a million-kilowatt smile who has promised to whisk her away into the night and Hope her until she can’t see straight.

Hope her all night long and twice before breakfast.

Hope the shit out of her.

All in all a nice choice to have, and way better than what she’s had to choose from on many a previous Friday night.

But now things are getting a little out of hand, especially with the lady suitor; she’s sticking hat-pins in her rival's eye one minute, and going all vicitimized and “He started it!” the next.

Trying with all her might to goad him into taking a swing at her.

For his part, Mister Hope is trying manfully not to rabbit punch Lady Hatpin into next week, because once that punch gets thrown, half his resume evaporates.

The whole thing is getting a little tense and ugly, and the only one who can settle things down is object of their affection; Ms. Democratic Voter.

She needs to take them aside and say this:

“OK you two, I don’t how this nonsense s got started this because I’m finishing it. You each wanna leave here with my fine, young ass right?’

Eager nods.

“Well here’s how that’s going to work. See those thugs over there by the door?

Points to the crowd of Hells Wingnuts guarding the exit.

“Well to get me into your bed, first you have to get us past those guys.

"Or did you forget that?

Sheepish looks.

“So I’m going to make this easy. Whichever of you can go over there right now and best show me you can flog the living shit outta those guys gets to leave with me tonight.

“Period.

“And with me on your arm, you get it all; the big house, the pages in the history books, the Presidential Library and a brass band playing “Hail to the Chief” every time you go to Wendy’s.

“But if you just can’t help yourself?

“If you just have to gutterfight right here and now before you even get near the door?

“Then you get nothing.

“Then my fine ass sashays out of here with your opponent and you get to spend the next four years jerking off to back issues of 'Executive Privilege Quarterly' and thinking about what might have been.”

Mark my words, the minute the Party leadership, the rank-and-file and the superdelegates threaten to unload 50 megatons of Electoral Lysistrata on the next candidate who wades into the sewer to put personal ambition ahead of the good of the Party...

...is the minute all this nonsense stops.