The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check

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The Hilary Machine • James Campion Madam Shoo-In On The March The Democratic Party is officially scared. From the chessboard scheduling of the hackneyed winter primaries to the spastic rumblings over at moveon.org to the sudden awakening of the flaccid Barrack Obama campaign, the widespread panic is palpable. The consensus is in: Hillary Rodham Clinton is unstoppable and a growing number of Democrats are not sure they like it.

There is little arguing Madam Shoo-In is a mighty force now. Unless there is a major leftist revolt in the Democratic Party, as there surely will be a right-wing uprising in the Republican Party soon, Hillary Rodham Clinton is looking more and more like the anointed one.

She sure sounds anointed; populist to hardliner, dove to hawk, upstart to entrenched, the political map is covered. There is nothing Clinton will not and has not claimed as her own, a sure sign of someone not fucking around. There is a clear difference between what Senator Rodham is doing and what the other Democratic candidates are attempting to do. The field is making their case for nomination. Ms. Hillary is making a case for president.

Before a vote is cast, a bribe is offered, or the flavor of the month goes sour, it appears the Democrats are more than likely going to send another liberal northeastern senator to the slaughter, and this one is a woman AND a Clinton.

Hence...The Fear.

Inexorable political machines some sixty-plus days from the first primary (whenever the hell that will be, check back with us) can be gangbusters for Republicans, but an impending grindhouse for Democrats. Resolute marches produced victories for Nixon in '68 and'72 and Reagan in '80 and '84, but Democrats have seen this disaster movie too many times. Such monumental national flops as McGovern and Dukakis had the early mojo only to be eviscerated in both the press and eventually at the polls.

The Democratic powerbrokers know the score. The last time the party had a streaking wildcard candidate this unflinching those in charge convened to sink Howard Dean so fast nobody in my position could properly explain it. The Dean people you talk to today still harbor trenchant grudges for being bamboozled by what they claim was "a fixed game".

Ironically, Dean now presides over a party which misled the public into believing a vote for them would end the Iraq occupation. He stands somewhere between survival and severe political backslide unless our dumbbell commander-in-chief listens to the vice president's age-ravaged blood-clout reasoning again and starts bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Of course even that kind of doom-struck behavior might as easily queer Hillary's deal as seal it, seeing how she was among a majority of senators to rubber stamp Iran as a terrorist threat, thus handing the mad bomber boy president another blank war pass.

High-ranking officers at the Hillary For President committee are well aware of all these blindsiding factors. This is why over the past two months Senator Rodham has gone from silent primary front-runner to vociferous national candidate, ignoring silly speed bumps like Iowa straw polls and wild upset stories from New Hampshire. They have all-but told the anti-war crowd to shove it, taking a page from the 110th Congress, and set their agenda to such national election fodder as health care, foreign policy shifts and balancing the federal budget.

And don't think anyone at Democrat Headquarters think it anything less than defiance that on the issue of federal cash hemorrhaging, the candidate has repeatedly referred to her husband's stellar economic record over the past few weeks.

Ignoring party power brokers is either suicide (Dean) or genius (Bill Clinton), and since the last name of the frontrunner happens to share the latter's the plan is to plow ahead ignoring key platforms, special interest lobbies, and the usual party crutches that might slow down The Machine.

The Clintons have never been the darlings of the Democratic Party, just as, ironically, neither have the Bushes. Yet to hear most over-hyped pundits call it we may have a double-dynasty on our hands: A minimum 24 years of Bush/Clinton White Houses, two family names running purportedly the freest nation on the planet. So how is it a second Clinton is poised to take the Democratic nomination?

T iming.

Big Bill's accent in the Democratic Party from early 1991 to November '92 was an odyssey of good timing and better luck. George Bush's approval ratings were so high in '91 nobody with half the brains or a third of the will to capture the presidency dared challenge him. In that vacuum appeared a little-known governor of Arkansas with a rap sheet of bad press so long he resembled the perfect sacrificial lamb. And Clinton would have been toast too if not for the blind hubris underlying Bush's reelection non-strategy and a human monkey wrench named Ross Perot. The brash stupidity of the Republican Revolution of 1994 and a laughably inept Bob Dole put him back in.

George Bush sr. could have sleepwalked through the 1988 campaign, and many claim he did. In '92 this damaged method of campaigning earned him a permanent vacation. But his son learned a thing or two about staying on your toes, and when the Republican Party pulled a Howard Dean ambush on the remains of the loose-cannon John McCain 2000 run, realizing it best to pitch a ventriloquist dummy against an unlikable dink like Al Gore, the rest is history.

Oh, and fear of gays and Arabs doomed John Kerry, who was so incapable of defending himself, his record or his indecipherable agenda, Junior only needed to not appear guilty to regain power.

Make no mistake, timing is everything in 2008: No incumbent and an incredibly liberal line of front-runners in the Republican Party mean daylight for Democrats. This works for Madam Shoo-In since running as a liberal New York Senator who happens to sport a vagina is a dead-end risk. It also works against her. The party is not going to allow this kind of smooth opening to be pissed away on the haughty dreams of a silver-spoon candidate whose been under the impression for over two decades that eating her husband's heaping shovels of horseshit means she gets to be president.

Of course there will be plenty who argue that just because George sr's condom busted we're at war with the entire Middle East.

And I might be one of them.

© James Campion November 1st 2007
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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