The International Writers Magazine: US Election 2008

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The Emperor's New Factory Girl Smoke, Mirrors & The Madam Shoo-In Shuck Jive Express "I'm just getting warmed up."- Hillary Rodham Clinton 2/27/08 • James Campion There is only one book ever written worth a damn on the subject of politics, The Shining. It is a gritty tale detailing the illusion of controlling one's environment and trading on addiction to make the malleable concept of reality your bitch. It is also a deep study in survival at any cost and a grim warning that whatever beautiful temptress emerges from the bathtub of Room 237, it will always turn into a wretched hag oozing with boils.

It is a book every wide-eyed young voter and late-arriving cheerleader for change must read before studying what will now be a brutal dismantling of their fragile sense of hope in the meat-grinding cesspool of real American democracy. It is a book The Clintons know well. It has defined their celebrity, put them in the game, and help them turn mere elections into Stephen King's drunken metaphoric contradiction; Jack Torrence stumbling down the hallway wielding a mallet and screaming about love.

    The jig is up, kids. No more Apple Pie for the stupid and naïve. The gremlins are in charge of your precious CHANGE mantra now. How do you like your groundswell, grass roots good times replaced by the fumes of recidivist device, shady accusation, and a cadre of lawyers poised to challenge everything you claim to hold dear after two months of falling head over heals for The Process.

Don't ask Howard Dean, chairman of the now tattered and reeking Democratic National Committee, who harbored silly dreams of nailing down a meteoric candidate filled with glitter and purpose, speeding like a silver bullet into the heart of a Republican stranglehold on national presidential politics.

Dean had two shots; this summer with the ceremonious crowning of Queen Hillary and one lousy week ago when Barack Obama appeared as unstoppable a young and brash candidate as any of us has ever seen. But now he sports the look of a San Francisco cabbie coming to grips with the horror of faulty brakes. And he is in no mood to tell you about it. Believe me, I tried more than once. He ain't talking, and neither are the rest of the poor suckers rooting to cash in on the choking fumes of George W. Bush.

Remember the original Captain Shoo-In? Sure you do. He's still in charge thanks to the Ohio Voter, who ushered him back into office despite four years of painfully obvious damage. The Ohio Voter can make things happen. "As goes Ohio, so goes..." The Ohio Voter historically regurgitates every festering gargoyle to hold the highest office. The Ohio Voter has spoken: Madam Shoo-In lives to fight, and fight she will, to the ultimate detriment of every possible equation her constituency strives for; unseating the Republicans from the White House and restructuring what has been for half a century a corrupt and ill-run Democratic Party.

That is all over now; trampled under the boot of laughably myopic television ads depicting a comforting mother hen keeping your children from certain death, cherry-picked mudslinging from Canadian interoffice memos, and cleverly disguised discussions on the horrors of Islam. It is all over because whatever pie-in-the-sky notion the Democrats were scheming to sell as a Movement or an Independent Force will be on trial for three agonizing months of P.T. Barnum's Parade of Oddities.

This Democratic Party nomination process, whatever comes of it, is no longer about choosing a candidate that can achieve victory in the national campaign. It is about entitlement and anger and chaos and creating a vacuum of delusion to allow a flawed retread candidate to gain the high ground. It is Karl Rove's wet dream. Change the dialogue, ignore reason, and circle the wagons. It is also his puppet-boy, Baby Bush's fanatical idea of warfare illustrated with imbecilic glory in The Surge; claim victory in the face of a rudderless strategy ad infinitum.

Two weeks ago there was some discussion, much of it in this space, that Hillary Clinton had two ways to go: A) Succumb to the immutable truth of math and realize she could never achieve the allotted pledged delegates needed to overtake Obama, and recede into the humbled statesman her deranged husband could never be, uniting the party and forging a bright political future as the most powerful legislator in the American landscape. B) Abandon all decorum to rip and shred her opponent, raising doubt and remolding the way-of-the waves to her own cirque-due-soleil in the feint hope she could circumvent the system and forcibly abduct her prize.

She chose B. Overwhelmingly so. And, apparently by some queer force of mind-bending fortune, to the tune of a two-to-one late arriving undecided vote in both Ohio and Texas, which after 20 debates and as many months of campaigning is so off-the-charts asinine it bears study.

Mostly, she chose Fear, Dirt, Guilt, and Doubt, the core instincts of the American Vote manifested in the heart of the Ohio Voter and now spread like wild fire all over what can now officially be described as the final bell for the collective scam of Momentum and Inevitability.

That ship has sailed for the Democrats. This is going all the way to Pennsylvania, seven more tormented weeks of nasty backbiting, lower blows and bellowing headlines of hidden tax records, questionable liaisons, voter fraud, stump cheating, and the dangerous weakening of both doomed hopefuls. To April 22 and beyond, all the way to the convention in late August; pecking and spitting and kicking and whining, and, dread of all dreads; pathetic court battles or an inevitable costly re-vote in Michigan and Florida; vital national election swing states utilized as political torture chambers.

How this helps either Clinton or Obama is anyone's guess. Some say it strengthens the candidates. Some also say the earth is flat and Oswald acted alone. Some people are still looking for hairy bipedal humanoid creatures inhabiting the greater northwest, but they are dumb and in need of care or chemistry. Three months of this spastic horseshit will help only one candidate; John Sidney McCain III. He sits pretty, running the first unopposed national campaign; unquestioned, undeterred, and earning money -- not spending it wildly across the Pocono Mountains grinding mincemeat out of whatever unlucky sap might survive it.

So now that we have video of Madam Shoo-In saying only she and the Republican nominee can lead the free world, the earth has returned to its familiar axis. We can all get down to picking another Democratic runner-up in the grand tradition of McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. This is the raw, ugly, and violent world of politics I've come to know, and in some sick twist of ignominious fate, love. Not all this goofy appeal to the masses about generational progress and the evolution of thought. It is cheap body blows lobbed from smiling harpies on late-night variety shows changing masks on the fly: Queen Of Inevitability, Weeping Damsel, Sleeve-Rolling Actuary, Wounded Media Victim, Lunch-Pail Factory Girl.

The now infamous Billary "Kitchen Sink" policy of dragging the lofty, spit-shine Master Barack Show into the quagmire of old-time political theater is in full swing. Get on board or get the fuck out.

Know this, you people who cherish the flimsy ideals of The Vote; The Clinton Machine didn't just muddy the waters in Ohio and Texas, but commandeered the delicately structured Peace Train that might have written a far different manifesto against a rubber-stamp war fiend like John McCain and drove it into a ditch.
Let's all say it together; "Here's Johnny!"
© James Campion March 8th 2008
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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