The Kentucky Primary

Photo Dr.'d by The_Wizrd 2008

The vagabond who's rapping at your door/

Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.

Strike another match, go start anew/

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

You were probably wondering when I was going to detail the appearance of Mrs. Corporate Deathburger in my neighborhood...

"No So Fast", they (they, of course are WomenCount PAC, a Hillary Clinton front group-a 527, if your like)say:

"'We are the women of this nation …' and says that there should not be pressure for Clinton to concede already. 'As this indefatigable woman campaigns, she speaks with our voice,' the ad claims.

I had wondered what the last expression of the kitchen sink strategy would be, and, as it turns out, its the first expression of kitchen sink strategy: I'm a girl, and you are all chauvinists:

"In Kentucky, women voters, one after another are saying, why are people pushing her? Why are they saying sit down and shut up? And there's a lot of resentment about that. A lot of those women had the same thing happen to them."

Would this have anything to do with her warmongering, her constant lying, her pandering to racists, her appropriation of everybody else's message, her cozying up to the right wing, and, most egregiously, her claim that dumbass George Bush fooled her, the smartest woman in the world, on Iraq.

You see, for those of us of a certain age group, male or female, regardless of ethnic background, we don't have the benefit of a strictly ideological world view-that's the game for your generation.

That's right, folks, my report from the front is this: Maifest Saturday was chock full of Baby Boomers, smugly self satisfied in their champion, convinced that , goddammit, they are entitled to this, a woman president, regardless of the cost to anyone else, regardless of the will of the people, regardless of whether it will get McCain elected, regardless of this woman's qualifications or her character. One last temper tantrum for the folk who pulled the ladder up on the American Dream. I want it, IT'S MINE, NOW.

You see, it's like that bumpersticker "Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History" because its the ostensible posing as the historical,or rather, history making. This election is a priori historic because to the fucking criminals we've had running this country into the ground with their gangster politics and poisonous rhetoric. Thus, it is ridiculous and egotistical to view this election as needing to be superhistorical; instead, it is necessary to repair this damage, and bridge this divide. Who can do this?

Certainly, the numbers are conclusively in favor of Barack Obama, and yet, this isn't enough for these women (who, I would ask, if, say Libby Dole were running as the Republican nominee, would they support her based on their desire to have a woman elected? Did they support Margaret Thatcher?) that the democratic process has played out and revealed that: Democrats nationwide support Obama and, by extension, Hillary Clinton has run a shitty campaign. Yet we are supposed to give these Boomers another chance to fuck things up?

Interesting, as well, that these women who are, by their statement, "women of this nation", are certainly willing to tell their daughters, who also do not have the luxury of ideological living, to sit down and shut up:

"Young people don't understand how far we've come and how hard we've worked to get here. They can't see what it took for us to ensure that Clinton would have a chance at the White House."

Or Barack Obama, for that matter, because a feminisms are concerned with many things, not just genitals of people. At least, in other corners of the world, and in other corners of this country. However, what we have here is a brand of feminism peculiar to this country, and only to people of a certain age group.

If you will notice, nothing is said of the relative qualifications of the candidates. No issues are addressed. Nope, it is essentialist to the core: "Feelings are everywhere, and mine are certainly more important than your safety, the constitution, or your children".

Witness:

"If Hillary Clinton is not the nominee, we will not support the nominee," [Cynthia Rucci] said.

Nice. Burn down the party because your candidate ran a shitty campaign appealing to basest instincts of the electorate. Burn down the future because you didn't get your vicarious moment in the sun.

Indeed, if "polite women seldom make history", in this case, they evidentally don't read it either, because then they would know that the history to be made is bigger than their ideological agenda; it is for the idea that allows that possibility to grow and flourish, and for these women demand, on pain of another four years of McSame, to tell the millions who believe "Yes We Can", including their sisters and daughters (and sons and fathers) to go fuck themselves are damning the rest to a future very different than the creed this country was founded on.

Kentucky, unfortunately, is maybe a foregone conclusion here, and these women may have their day to make their history. The consequence of their collective and vicarious moment in the sun, however, may be summed up in the words...

President McCain.

Let's be clear about this(revised after the bordeaux wore off and the headache wore on): As my cousin, Brad Thacker, Comedian, has pointed out, Kentucky is retarded. By retarded, he means stupid and racist.

In the course of my work with NKY for Obama, I have found, in a few cases, the latter to be correct. The former, as evidenced by the result tonight, the rally at Maifest, seems to be the more plausible explanantion.

Let's be real about this: Hillary's angry voters, as represented by Cynthia Rucci,are led by a PAC funded by the Clinton campaign. In other words: It is the Clinton Campaign advancing its own agenda. Yet, here they are, these deluded souls, advancing the ideological agenda in a time that is desperately craving real world descriptions and not ideogical constructions.

The tragedy here is, for the coalition that landslided Hillary last night, Clintons do not give a good goddamn about any of them.

The working class, decimated in the wake of NAFTA, are just constituency to sell paranoia and fear to. There is no intention of doing anything about your failing schools, or your health care. You are beneath her contempt, yet, the yet the Union Organizer from a broken home...he's the elitist? He doesn't understand the working class and its needs?

And these women, with their real stories, and real concerns, and a real grievances against the WASP patriarchy, or any patriarchy, that has resigned all minorities to the "less than..." ghetto, the fight that they have waged their whole lives, are being crooked by a female candidate who's values are squarely on money and power. In other words, while they fought the patriarchy, she has fought to become the patriarchy, and this, friends, is not feminism. It's opportunistic and cynical

This is the classic yuppie modus operandi: If you can't or won't fight the injustice, just make sure you are on the side perpetuating it, so you don't get any on ya. This is something some of her more yuppified supporters know all too well. It's not that they want to shatter the glass ceiling for their daughters; no, they just want to make sure they are pompously staring down at the rest of us. Her victory is vicarious. It is not a victory for all; it is a victory for her.

In a year in which "historic" seems a bit lightweight for the work that lies ahead of us, work that is the result of the pitched ideological battles of the last nearly forty (forty!) years, it seems that some of these ideological warriors will not go gently into that goodnight, while those who really need help are slipping further into the abyss. The irony is that in the coalition that is Hillary Clinton's base in Kentucky, the former of these actually salts, and not salves, the wounds of the latter, because it needs the politics to stay the same, as does John McCain, in order to survive.

The "devil you know", the Clinton brand, will always keep it temporary, will always keep it right now to distract from a future that renders them obsolete. They cannot conceive of another way to do things; We can, and, in this way, perhaps the lesson of Pennsylvania West Virginia Ohio and Kentucky isn't about women, or the working class, but about the ideological construct itself. The "devil you know" is always yourself, and the simpatico here may be the ideological construction of these citizens who can't conceive of it being any different, a future that may differ materially but mentally the same-just like now, only with different TV shows, a generational ideological tyranny, if you like.

Maybe a Hillary Clinton bumper sticker should read:

"I'm spending my kids inheritance".