A Pilgrim’s Digression

There have been quite a few colorful comparisons used to describe Hillary Clinton over the course of her presidential bid. Curiously, it always seems like the women pundits who come up with the most spiteful comparisons. Maureen Dowd once compared her to the axe murderer in the horror films who keeps coming back, even when you think he has been dispatched.

I’ll offer a comparison of my own. She’s like the woman on the dead cart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“I’m not dead,” says The Body that Claims it Isn’t.

“Well you will be soon,” says The Dead Collector.

“I’m getting better,” says The Body that Claims it Isn’t.

“No you aren’t, you’ll be stone dead in a moment,” says The Dead Collector.

“I feel happy; I feel happy!” says The Body that Claims it Isn’t.

Clinton is trying to put get up and walk to prove she’s alive, taking an unscheduled stop today in West Virginia for a rally, but the media has pronounced her dead despite her protestations.

My how quickly things change. It’s even hard to understand why. She was projected to lose North Carolina by double digits–and she lost by 14 points. She was projected to win Indiana–and she won.

Yet the morning’s headlines all proclaimed her, in the one word backhand slap of the New York Post, “Toast.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think she is toast. But nothing really changed between last night and today, really. It makes you wonder if the media didn’t artificially pump up Clinton’s chances to win the nomination, merely to see the fight drag on awhile longer.

Watching Tim Russert pompously proclaim Obama the nominee, as if he were Walter Cronkite declaring that the Vietnam War was lost, was amusing, but also a bit disconcerting.

I mean, who is in charge of choosing our nominee, anyway? The media?

The mind boggles at how quickly the media shifts gears. I hate to say it, but I feel some sympathy for Clinton today. I’ve felt some growing sympathy for her in recent weeks anyway, but today I really felt bad for her. She must feel like the media pulled the wool over her eyes, too, giving her such positive press this past week.

I found this line from a Clinton spokesperson funny and tragic at the same time.

“It’s another beautiful day in downtown Arlington,” began Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the morning after political pundits declared her presidential bid all but dead.

One can almost hear Clinton from the dead cart, croaking, “But I’m not dead.”

She’s like some piece of foul rubbish Tim Russert just dumped on his compost heap. Now he’s off to score another interview with Golden Boy Obama.

I’m exaggerating the extent of my sympathy for her, but not by much. I think it’s good to reflect on the good she has done in this campaign. yes, I am feeling optimistic today, as opposed to my usual pessimistic self.

I think Clinton’s run for the White House has helped Obama in the following ways:

1. She has toughened him, like a mother who throws her naive son into the deep end to teach him how to swim. Feminists won’t appreciate the motherly metaphor–must strong women always be relegated to either mother or whore status?
2. Her bid for the White House has focused media attention almost exclusively on the Democratic campaign for five months now. Who is John McCain? Many voters are going to be finding themselves asking that question. My seven year-old thinks Clinton and Obama are the only nominees. When I told him John McCain was also running, he had no clue.
3. She has contributed to the airing of some of Obama’s dirty laundry, such as the Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers flaps.

Limbaugh believes that the extended Democratic primary has “bloodied” Obama for the fall, but I think what it has done is exhausted the public on his scandals.  I said it once before, Limbaugh and Hannity blew their wad early on the Rev. Wright thing. Call it a case of “premature immolation.” The mainstream media isn’t going to raise the issue again between now and the election, and although conservatives can harp on it until they are blue in the face, people who aren’t already opposed to Obama are going to be sick of it.

It will be like the Clinton’s and Whitewater, or the Clinton’s and adultery. Republicans were frustrated in the nineties because they couldn’t get any scandals to “stick.” Well, it’s because they drive every scandal into the ground. After awhile, moral indignation wears as thin as the seat of Rush Limbaugh’s “Big and Tall” men’s store pants.

I suspect they are going to face the same issue with Obama. You conservatives think the media fawned all over the Clintons in the nineties, covering up their deceit and crimes? You ain’t seen nothing yet. The hagiography of Barack Obama has yet to begin. Just wait for the Kennedy-esque Vanity Fair piece about the Obama family’s home life…or the endless comparisons to the Kennedy’s generally…the admiration of women anchors for Michelle’s taste in clothing…the cuteness of the Obama kids…Obama’s strength, faith, coolness under fire…oh, just you wait.

I honestly feel really good about Obama’s chances in November. Matched up against an old white guy, who gets older by the day, Obama is going to look like the next incarnation of Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., combined.

You don’t believe me? Vanity Fair is already on the case. just take a look at this article, “It’s the adultery, Stupid,” which makes the case that one reason for Obama’s success is that one can actually imagine his wife and him getting it on in the bedroom. He probably doesn’t have to sneak around for furtive sex with lobbyists, the way John McCain was recently accused of doing.

It’s going to be the most historic election year of my life so far, I suspect. And I can’t wait for it to really begin.