Super Tuesday: The Dems

Clinton vs. Obama vs. McCain vs. Romney vs. Huckabee vs. My Near-Complete Lack of Interest

So it's Super Tuesday, or Monster Tuesday, or whatever term the cable news people will come up with next. Can you feel the excitement?

Wow.

Gradually the primary process has done its job, acting as a perverse gatekeeper to drain all the time, money and enthusiasm, along with qualified ideologically motivated candidates, or alternately, genuine whackos, out of the race, leaving us with bland, lowest common denominator gruel on the Democratic side, and sort of middle of the road crazy Republicans, instead of the truly inventive crazy Republicans.

It's an exciting time to be alive!

On the Republican side, you've lost your open race-baiters like Tancredo, who actually ran an ad saying that Mexicans were going to team up with Al-Queda to put nuclear bombs in your local mall. You lost Ghouliani, whose campaign was brilliantly summed up by otherwise useless tool Joe Biden as 'a noun, a verb, and 9/11'. You lost Fred Thompson, the first man to ever try to sleepwalk his way into the White House.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Bill Richardson, who was stupid enough to say that being gay is a 'choice' at a GLBT debate, fell on his sword. Chris Dodd, who's fought the good fight for many long, hard months to protect us from warrantless mass-searches and wiretaps, along with immunity for corporate lawbreakers, bowed out, as did John Edwards, a man who's spent his entire career fighting for the poor, the victimized, the blood that greases our mighty economic engine's cogs.

So, what are we left with?

Not counting Ron Paul (hahahaha.... loser), you have McCain, a man most of his own party hates, Romney, a man most of his own party claims to love, but secretly hate (because he's a Mormon, or because he only claims to believe what they want him to believe to get votes... take your pick), Huckabee, a corrupt Southern caricature, Clinton and Obama.

Gah. Our collective wrists are ready to be laid bare if this is the best we can do.

But the worst of it, the very worst thing, is the inability of most people to ACKNOWLEDGE how lousy our choices are, that we're stuck with the lesser of the lesser of several evils now. Instead you get foaming at the mouth partisans raving about how, if you don't vote for THEIR candidate, you're some kind of anti-American whacko.

Case in point: two Washington Post op-eds by an Obama supporter, and a Clinton supporter, that could leave you tearing your hair out in frustration.

First up, Michael Chabon, author, about how if you don't vote for Obama you're against hope and puppies:

There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama's candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.

It's nice that Chabon was given the gift of omniscience. Could he please tell me where I put my keys?

Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up -- with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit's show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism -- their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty -- not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.

Oh, how he suffers for our sins. Like Jesus on a cross, he reads the newspapers and turns on his teevee, every day.

Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

Yes, that's precisely what those of us who are critical of Obama want to do. We want to take nails that are not made of gold and use them to board up a nonsensical metaphor, thus destroying America.

But now, with everything seeming to come down, at last, to the first Tuesday in February, and in the wake of an all-out, months-long push by the cynicism industry to cook up an entire line of bad reasons ready to heat and serve, I admit that I'm getting tired of listening to rationales from people who know that Obama is a remarkable, even an extraordinary politician, the kind who comes along, in this era of snakes and empty smiles, no more than once a generation.

Ok, see, you can't use four metaphors in two paragraphs and still call yourself an author. You are now officially a hack.

Oh, sure, most of these people tell me they would like to see Obama become president. No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quick-witted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble.

I'm honestly surprised you could type all that out with Obama's cock in your mouth. I guess Chabon has a wireless keyboard.

Things are so bad we just can't afford to waste our votes, people tell me, on some fantasy super-president with magical powers. We need someone electable, someone, as I have been told repeatedly in the past year, who can win.

Well, I for one AM against Superman being President. It's dubiously Constitutional, and he's a dick. I'll admit that. On the other hand: how could he not win? Is Batman running?

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Yes, Bush, and his minions (do they have wings and little organ grinder costumes like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz?), the big lobbies, the media, etc, they're all blameless. It's OUR fault. Michael Chabon gives out indulgences now, too!

Since I started talking and writing about Obama I have come to see that this ruling fear, and nothing else, lies at the back of every objection or reservation people raise or harbor regarding the man and his candidacy.

Really? Huh. Here I thought I disliked a crass political opportunist who changes his positions to suit whatever wind is blowing, a man with ties to corrupt developers and criminals, a man with an empty, silly, outright stupid message of 'bipartisanship' that is sure to lead to more gridlock and less progress for Americans. But silly me. I'm a coward! Thank you Michael Chabon for showing me the error of my ways!

But the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul.

Dude, no matter how many times you repeat it in one article, 'phobocracy' is not a word. It's just too stupid to tolerate.

Also, he's radiant? His every step is divine? For the last time, OBAMA IS NOT JESUS

Meanwhile, they run another op-ed by a Clinton supporter in much the same vein.

"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," said Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday, one of the many "news" outlets to expose Kristol's reliable sexism. "The Democratic establishment would be crazy to follow an establishment that led it to defeat year after year," Kristol continued in his woolly, repetitive style. "White women are a problem, you know. We all live with that."

Bill Kristol has been much criticized for his war mongering, arrogance, poor writing and lack of fact checking. But at least the guy is honest. He considers women a problem -- especially white women. And he feels confident enough as an alpha male to be open about it. "I shouldn't have said that," he demurred. But he can say anything he likes and still fall eternally upward. He's a white man, lord of all he surveys -- including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I'm lord of all I survey? SWEET. I can survey a LOT!

I'm hardly the only woman who sees my life mirrored in hers. She's always worked twice as hard to get half as far as the men around her. She endured a demanding Republican father she could seldom please and a brilliant, straying husband who played around with bimbos. She was clearly his intellectual soul mate, but the women he chased were dumb and dumber.

Ahh, this is that feminist 'solidarity' I hear so much about. Charming! Could we get a criticism of their fashion sense next?

Nothing she did was ever enough to stop her detractors. Supporting a politician husband by being a successful lawyer, raising a terrific daughter, saving her marriage when the love of her life publicly humiliated her -- these are things that would be considered enormously admirable in most politicians and public figures. But because she's a white woman, she's been pilloried for them.

She's had to endure nutcrackers made in her image, insults about the shape of her ankles and nasty cracks from mediocrities in the media like Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews and Kristol.

Oh no, a nutcracker made in her image! SHE MUST IN FACT BE JESUS!

Nor are poisonous women pundits any more kind. Maureen Dowd regularly gives her a drubbing. And "progressives" from Susan Brownmiller to Oprah Winfrey sport Obama buttons.

If you're a woman and you don't support a woman, you're a sex-traitor. Apparently.

I, too, was a bluestocking from a woman's college, straight-A student, Phi Beta Kappa, who found my voice as a writer while exiled to the boonies with a husband who cheated. With every book I published, I saw more clearly how uneven was the playing field for women. We were let into the literary world on sufferance. Unless we wrote unreadable academic tracts that nobody bought, or mysteries or romances or something called "chick lit" (whatever that is), or biographies of Great Men, we were booed off the stage.

I'm so glad this election is about YOU.

She cannot have enjoyed her husband's playing around. She certainly never condoned it. But he was clever enough for her, he supported her dreams, and they both loved their smart and beautiful daughter.

Besides, what does anyone know about anyone else's marriage?

Well, apparently you know about how she feels about Bill, his adultery, and their daughter, so, some people know quite a lot...DID YOU NOT READ WHAT YOU JUST WROTE?

As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American. She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.

Good of her to win over the 'rednecks', and good of her to show her bold leadership by caving left and right. Is that what you're saying?

You will point to Hillary's complicity. You will quote crazy-like-a-fox Ann Coulter, who claims to be voting for her.

You will also quote left-wing bloggers who love Barack Obama, and MoveOn.org peaceniks (I am one) who see no evil in him (nor do I). But I see little experience either. Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he'll be president someday.

Yes, I quote Ann Coulter, a lot. I base my views almost entirely on what she says.

Also, I'm glad you find Obama 'attactive'.

He was lucky enough not to be in the Senate when the Iraq war resolution was floated after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell lied about WMDs. That was the true tragedy of race: a black man lying for a corrupt white administration that was using him as a token, much as they use Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now.

Obama is also a token -- of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.

Alternately, the true tragedy of race could be when a national newspaper runs an op-ed calling a credible black candidate for President a 'token'. Either/or.

I understand my hopeful friends who think an Obama button will change America. But I'm sticking with Hillary. I trust her because all her life, her pro bono work has been for mothers and children. And mothers and children -- of all colors -- are the most oppressed group in our country. I trust her to speak for our children and grandchildren -- and for us. She always has.

Her for profit work was for Wal-Mart, amongst others, but when she wasn't busy cashing Sam Walton's checks, or triangulating to protect her image, why, she spoke for our... well, your... children and grandchildren.

This is why reading the paper can drive you to drink.

Sources: WaPo on Obama (Literal Title: Obama vs. the Phobocracy)

WaPo on Clinton (Literal Title: Clinton vs. the Patriarchy) You cannot make these titles up. They're like episodes of The Tick.