Hillary's Out. Now What?
Mon May 12, 2008 at 08:50:24 AM PDT
Lately just for kicks I've been heading over to HillaryClinton.com to check out what folks are saying on her blog. This morning I went over and found that blog comments are down. Way down. The top two entries had two comments each. Older entries hovered around 200-300 comments. It seems that Team Hillary is slowly but surely losing steam.
Last week, in the wake of the May 6 primary results, we saw many Kossacks writing diaries calling for reconciliation between Obama and Hillary supporters.
Less than a week later, those calls are starting to seem moot. Kicking Hillary's campaign when it is down but still trying to land body blows on the Obama campaign is one thing. Now it's starting to feel like kicking sand in the face of a 98-pound weakling. Which leads to a real dilemma: what am I going to do with myself now that Hillary-bashing is about as lame as roller-disco?
The sad fact is, McCain bashing just doesn't have the same thrill. With his hunched shoulders and his beady, desperate eyes that have witnessed things no human should ever have to see, attacking McCain feels like dissing my once-angry grandpa who gradually mellowed with age and spent his seventies whistling under his breath while crafting shell animals in a retirement community in Florida. Yeah, I know McCain still has plenty of pee and vinegar in him, but every time I look at him I can't help but wonder how he looks at night when his dentures come out.
My dad is the same age as McCain, and if you stood them side by side you might mistake McCain for my father's dad, or at least his older brother. In fact, my dad's real 86-year-old older brother, who recently died of Altzheimer's disease, looked more like McCain's contemporary than my dad did. Lots of people enjoy making jokes about how old McCain is, but I just find the whole enterprise rather sordid and pretty sad.
SO what am I going to do to pass my time? I guess I could start doing my laundry again, instead of spending hours on the computer dissecting the campaign and blogging my little fingers to the bone. I could start registering voters and making phone calls. And even if I don't enjoy eviscerating McCain's foibles, soon 527 groups and other McCain surrogates will no doubt enter the fray and cry out for satire.
Still, I must admit that I will miss Hillary and her top campaign flaks--Ickes, Wolfson, and especially Mark Penn, who could always be counted on to spin any fact counterclockwise to within an inch of its life as a sign that the tide was turning in Hillary's favor. As hard is it is to believe, I think I'll miss him most of all. I haven't had such fun trashing political figures since Bush and Co. burst upon the scene eight years ago.
There is one stubborn fact interfering with my moving on with my life, however--I can't start missing Hillary until she actually goes away....
Update: Well, lots of interesting comments on this one. I guess people have not gotten the key point that it has been kind of fun to point out the foibles and contradictions of Hillary's campaign (esp. some statements by Hillary and her supporters) because she hasn't been winning. Maybe I shouldn't have laughed but I did.
I am a veteran of several presidential campaigns starting with Reagan v. Mondale and found them ferocious but not terribly fun. Yeah, we made jokes, but it was generally just gallows humor to keep our spirits up. My experience around general elections has been mostly depressing. The one exception to this? 1996. The reason? Bob Dole: war hero and super-lame opponent. This was shaping up to be another '96 election until SOMEONE in the Democratic party (not saying who) decided it was okay to divide the party in order to mount a last-ditch effort to win the primary. I'm frustrated because I shouldn't have to attack McCain. He does such a fine job of it himself.
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