The International Writers Magazine: Election 2008 - Changing Fortunes of Political War

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The Fun Part • Dean Borok "Now comes the fun part." – Hillary Clinton at the initiation of her campaign to "define" Barack Obama Say goodbye to Chicago’s version of Mother Teresa, that unifier of all mankind and purveyor of Hope and Change, Barack Obama. In a year’s time he’ll be back to being Barack Who? But in the meantime he had his 15 minutes of fame, during which time he wreaked havoc on the Democratic Party and almost singlehandedly delivered the election into the hands of the Republicans.

The Black Elmer Gantry, I call him, preaching virtue and salvation to the boobs, all the time with one eye on the clock like Cinderella, aware that his window of opportunity was diminishing with each passing second. Because he was under a constraint of time to lock up the nomination before the start of the Chicago trial of his erstwhile business associate Tony Rezko. Even if Obama is never mentioned during the course of the trial, he will be judged by association as Rezko’s business practices are highlighted on a daily basis in court and in the papers. That Obama and Rezko were close associates for many years has already been established, and the flood of evidence and testimony that will ooze from the Rezko trial will have a corrosive effect on Obama’s campaign going into the Pennsylvania primary, which Clinton is already favored to win by a wide margin, as well as the nominating convention in Denver. By the time of the convention there will not be enough left of Obama to wipe the wax off your car with.

Hey, he took his chances and he came up short. He probably calculated that the objective conditions in the country would be so terrible by Novembre that whoever was left standing on the Democratic side would be a shoe-in in the general election. He figured, why should I play second fiddle? Go for the biggie!

People like to pile on Hillary Clinton, whom the Republicans long ago defined, along with her future ex-husband, Whatsisname, as a bastard and an abomination. That’s one bandwagon that the nation’s reactionary press corps has been only too happy to pile on. When they saw the chance to destroy her they went to work overtime, conveniently forgetting that it was Obama who initiated all the digs about her age and "refighting the battles of the nineties," which is a line right out of the Republican playbook, incidentally, when one considers that all the turmoil of that epoch was initiated by the Republicans in their incessant and unremitting campaign to obliterate the Clintons using whatever means were at hand, right up to the bogus impeachment.

Obama’s parroting of the Republican line didn’t end there. He made snide references to the sixties culture as well. What exactly did he have in mind with that, other than an insulting, gratuitous attempt to provoke a generational battle to his own advantage? This criticism of the sixties generation, which was not exactly a generation of oppression (rather the opposite). What we seem to have in this instance, shades of "Absolutely Fabulous," is a generation of neurotic, conformist pricks seeking to consign the freethinking generation that preceded them to the ashcan of history. Lots of luck! only serves to underscore the mindless conformism that has produced such stellar personalities as Heather Mills and Kevin Federline, to pick two out of an unending constellation of useless, neurotic twits. It must be said though, that Obama artfully shaped this clay of mediocracy to construct an electorate in his own image, one of See, Hear, Speak No Evil that not even the dimmest modicum of reflection would be able to penetrate.

The Republicans, thrilled to have a Trojan Horse within the Democratic Party, supported Obama with massive infusions of cash, even going so far as to cross party lines to vote for him in Democratic primaries, so livid is their horror at the prospect of having to face the indestructible Mother of All Evil, who, like the Satanic planet in the movie "Fifth Element" just grows bigger every time they try to bomb her. Maybe an injection of poison into the internal apparatus of the Democratic body politic would serve where so many psychic stink bombs had failed.

They launched this soft soap campaign that Obama was the Democrat of the future. You had reeking, execrable byproducts of decayed offal wastes like Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan and the editorial writers of The New York Post trying to sell Obama to knuckleheaded Gen Y voters as the antipolitician just like a brand of flavored douche. And they bought it in massive amounts, swallowing the campaign hook, line and stinker.

What developed was one of the weirdest coalitions in history, the black electorate, the reactionary right wing and the Daily Kos policy dorks, mutually focused on the narrow objective of destroying Hillary Clinton! What reason anybody on the left side of the spectrum could have for hating her is beyond me. She is a very decent woman.

The whole campaign to derail Hillary Clinton brings to mind the hatemongering New York sports press’ campaign to get Giants quarterback Eli Manning thrown off the team, even as he was piloting a winning season that eventually climaxed in a Super Bowl victory. They threw everything at him but the kitchen sink. Now they are standing in line to sniff his jockstrap. But no matter how successful Hillary Clinton might eventually turn out to be, she will always be the butt for loathsome, jealous underachievers who see in her the reflection of their own inadequacies.

Like the Patriots coach Bill Belichick who ran off the field in incontinent disarray when his whole house of cards collapsed in the last minute of the season, Barack Obama is giving off the rotten stink of defeat after his Ohio and Texas defeats. He knows he can’t win blue collar Pennsylvania, and he knows that the Rezko trial in Chicago is going to bleed him on a daily basis for months leading up to the convention as the business habits of his erstwhile benefactor are exposed like the corrupt flesh of Nosferatu to the withering light of day.

Astonishingly, the person who has the most to fear from this process may be Republican candidate John McCain. Even as objective economic conditions in this country steadily worsen, with an Incredible Shrinking Dollar, home foreclosures and $4-5 gasoline, Hillary Clinton is being daily galvanized in a withering blast furnace ordeal of trial by fire, from which she is likely to emerge with an indestructible hard shell which will withstand any pathetic elements of ignominy that are left for the Republicans to pitch at her. The contest between herself and McCain, who is not a particularly tough person and is certainly not overly intelligent, may shape up to be one of the most unequal in modern electoral history.
© Dean Borok March 7th 2008
deanyorkave@yahoo.com

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