The Village is heavily invested in a McCain-Clinton match-up this fall and will do anything to obtain it, but this week’s Eleanor Clift article in Newsweek is the most damning proof yet that the fix is in among the Village elite.
The article is breathtaking in both its raw chutzpah and its level of mind-numbing silliness, comparing the Clintons to that seminal fictional Mafia family, The Godfather‘s Corleone family.
I’m beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks–including a huge chunk of the media–will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in “The Godfather,” where the watchword is, “It’s business, not personal.”
Hillary Clinton will pull this off? How? How can she possibly been seen as the legitimate nominee at this juncture? The only people who seem to think she can pull this off without any damage to the Democratic Party are the Clintons themselves and the Village. Even the Hillary supporters in the party admit that her greatest challenge is her lack of perceived credibility as the nominee. The unassailable mountain before her would be the challenge of uniting the party behind her when millions of young voters and established African-American voters would view her as having stolen the nomination. Putting aside the wishful thinking of her most vocal proponents, Hillary cannot legitimately win the nomination at this point.
So the question begs to be asked: why is the Village pretending it can still happen?
Not that anyone will be sleeping with the fishes with Hillary in the White House, but with the Clintons it’s business and it’s personal. Just think of all the scores to settle, the grievances to indulge. Bill Clinton provided a preview this week, blaming the Obama campaign for playing the race card against him. Tricky maneuver, but perhaps the only way the former president can come to grips with his loss of standing in the African-American community, once his strongest constituency. (South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, an undeclared superdelegate who is African-American, told the New York Times this week that the black community had supported Clinton during his impeachment and that “I think black folks feel strongly that this is a strange way [for him] to show his appreciation.”)
Again, this is ludicrous. Hillary’s greatest challenge is her lack of perceived credibility right now, especially with African-American voters whom she would need to unite behind her, and instead Clift is loudly proclaiming that Hill and the Big Dog are going to exact revenge upon folks like Jim Clyburn and other African-American leaders for somehow interfering with her ascendancy!
Is that a threat to Clyburn and African-American voters that they need to drop Obama and back Hillary now, lest they risk her wrath as the nominee? How should Clyburn interpret this? How should Obama backers in general interpret this? It certainly reads like a threat, that the reality is Hillary is going to be the nominee, so you’d better start backing her again if you know what’s good for you.
There’s never been any love lost between the Clintons and official Washington. The Georgetown dinner parties they rarely attended during the Bill years might as well be in Outer Mongolia for all President Hillary will care. Notables who abandoned her for Obama will get the Big Chill. “He’s dead to us,” a Clinton aide was quoted saying of John Kerry, who along with Ted Kennedy was turned off by the perception of race baiting that led up to the South Carolina primary. A major donor, conflicted between the two candidates and apologetic over his backing of Obama, found Hillary less than sympathetic. “Too bad for you, because I’m going to win,” she snapped.
Again, how is Hillary expected to be viewed as legitimate AND have the votes to beat McCain if Clift is warning us that her first act is to freeze out Obama backers and specifically alienate the people she’ll need to unite behind her nomination? Are the rest of the Dems supposed to magically forget Obama ever existed, as if Clinton was the nominee the entire time without any actual challenge? What kind of lunacy is this?
During the 1992 campaign the pundits wrote off Bill Clinton, certain he couldn’t survive allegations of infidelity and draft dodging. Aides strung together (with a background of Frank Sinatra singing “They All Laughed”) declarations by many of the biggest names in journalism that Clinton was toast and would never be elected president. Hillary’s people could do a miniseries on this campaign documenting her multiple comebacks and the egg on the media’s face. When the polls closed in Pennsylvania and the race was for a short while too close to call, you could see the barely restrained glee among the commentators that perhaps the moment had finally arrived: Hillary might be gone!
And now we note the same warning is being hand-delivered to the rest of the media as well. Those who have “egg” on their faces for supporting Obama will be subject to the same reckoning from Hillary’s wrath. Those in the media who agree with the very legitimate facts behind Obama’s nomination instead of the wishful thinking that should magically put Hillary as the nominee will rue the day. Rue the day!
Considering its the media itself that is creating the “Hillary will win the nomination somehow” narrative out of whole cloth, you can see how vital it is that those in the media still believing in Obama will need to get on the “Hillary is legitimate because Obama is unelectable” bandwagon. Hence, the warnings of “Since Hillary will win anyway, you’d better get behind the winner” and all.
Breathtaking.
Hillary lost the media a long time ago through a combination of arrogance and entitlement, but she has won grudging respect in some unlikely quarters. Conservative commentators Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough are openly rooting for her, and Tony Blankley, who first gained notoriety as Newt Gingrich’s spokesman, confessed somewhat sheepishly, “She’s almost beginning to appeal to me.” This is a stunning development given Blankley’s long and storied history as a Hillary hater. He was recognized in the Washington Post Style section in the early 1990s as the first to call Hillary “Evita,” after Argentina’s Eva Peron, an ambitious, strong-willed woman who used her husband’s position to gain power. The turning point for Blankley was that moment in Pennsylvania when Hillary downed a shot of Crown Royal whiskey “like she’d done it before,” says Blankley. “The way she threw it down, she didn’t sip it. I know something about that. I’ve done it myself,” he chuckles.
The debonair, British-born Blankley comes from the elbows-out school of politics popularized by Gingrich when the Republicans took over the House of Representatives just two years into the Clinton presidency. He admires the way Hillary has grown as a political commodity, convinced she has changed for the better, no longer a snooty Wellesley grad who’s all into policy. Now she’s like an old pol, mixing it up and enjoying the blood sport, laughing while she rips into Obama. She’ll never get Blankley’s vote, but she’s won his admiration for her tenacity and the way she relishes the fight, unlike Obama, who dances away from confrontation, not wanting to damage his brand as the great healer. “Too much Fred Astaire,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews huffed the other night.
Oh yes, the right wing media machine wants to see Hillary run too, and you know they’ll do anything to create reality from the narrative, so back Hillary now! You see, they admire her “tenacity and the way she relishes the fight, unlike Obama, who dances away from confrontation, not wanting to damage his brand as the great healer.”
Obama’s a pussy on top of everything else. The Village doesn’t want to cover Obama. They want to cover the knock-down drag-out fight between Grandpa Angrypants and The Comeback Lady. That’s how Washington works, you see. Obama’s mucking up the works with his “change” crap. The Village wants their damn catfight and they will use the power of wishful thinking to make it happen.
So we see Clift giving warnings of Hillary’s inevitable win (after all, you can’t beat the Village) and the not-so-subtle warnings that people should begin to line up to kiss her ring, or wake up to the horse head in the bed.
After all should Obama win, it would prove that the Village isn’t in control of the narrative anymore, and the Village can’t have that.
Now the burden is on Obama to win the next round of primaries on May 6. He has said publicly that Indiana could be the tiebreaker, a prediction he could come to regret. If Clinton can win Indiana, hold Obama to single digits in North Carolina, and then run up a big margin in Kentucky on May 20, where she’s leading in the polls, she could overtake Obama in the popular vote. “We have to win big and lose small,” says an aide. Obama may yet discover his inner Rocky and recast himself now that the media is turning on him. It’s hard to be the next new thing for 15 months, which is how long he’s been running. And it’s time enough for Hillary to win ugly, if that’s what winning takes.
The final paragraph of course is a complete lie. The burden is not on Obama. Hillary cannot win the popular vote by any legitimate means, as BooMan has pointed out on a couple different occasions. Obama is not the one who needs to prove himself here.
And yet the warning is crystal clear: Hillary’s going to win anyway. She’ll win dirty if she has to. Obama can’t stop her. The time to get on her good side is now.
The Village has spoken. You’d better get behind Hillary and push…or you’ll get in front of Hillary and get mowed down. Your choice, Democrats!
Again, the entire premise is ludicrous. Only the collective power of the Village narrative is even keeping Hillary’s campaign going right now. The right wing noise machine is doing everything it can to try to create a civil war scenario between the Obama and Hillary camps. It’s a scorched earth maneuver, and it’s time to call it what it is, an effort to throw the election and try again in 2012.
The Right will take the win in 2008. They figure another 4 years of McSame as Bush will get them the war with Iran they want and allow them to pass “laws” that outlaw thoughtcrimes anyway, thus reducing the need for actual messy elections. They want to demoralize the Democrats so badly that they don’t try to oppose Overlord Angrypants in 2012.
Meanwhile, the trench peons continue to get screwed. The signs are that we’re in the beginning of a major recession and 4 years of McSame will turn that into a depression guaranteed, especially when the attacks on Iran come. The Village doesn’t care. They’re above those petty concerns of food and shelter. They recognize a fix when they see it, and 2008 is starting to look more and more like a fix.
Hillary is aiding and abetting this fix for her own benefit in 2012. She knows she can’t win in 2008…but she has a hell of a plan to win in 2012 and do so over the broken corpses of those in the party who backed Obama.
Only by shutting down the Village Idiocy machine can we get our country back. Obama is a flawed candidate, but he’s preferable to Hillary and light years ahead of McCain.
But who in the media is going to call Eleanor Clift out on this ludicrous story?
Not the Village.