"Fuck Bernie": [GOP] Death Throes and the Middle of the Road

The low hanging fruit that is the wit and wisdom of Chris Matthews, the corpus of which is solemn moaning  “Tip O’Neil” while waving hands on the corrupted skull of St. Reagan of the Ranch, invoking Daniel Patrick Moynihan or “Puddy-Catting” at top volume over anyone in the room, or anyone watching the room via the ever creeping irrelevance of MSNBC and the clattering death rattle of its “liberal” bonafides .

Truth is, MSNBC was never liberal; it only appeared liberal when compared to FAUX News, and only really during the Bush years did it climb out of Lake Ersatz, and by it, I mean Keith Olbermann tainting the rest of Scarborough country with something appearing to be centrist.

And let’s be clear on the what “centrism” is; in the wake of St. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush pulling the country right, the center is mediated as Linc Chafee—Liberal Republican —which makes sense, since the media is a commercial enterprise.    A positive, Up With People type front,  Don Draper’s AmWay utopia of peace, love and carbonated beverages.

About a month ago, Tweety  absurdly suggested that Hillary Clinton, the anointed one who’s coronation was eight years delayed by the Kenyan Muslim usurper Barack Obama, who made her Secretary of State (where she performed admirably while pulling some completely avoidable Clintonian bullshit that is currently haunting her candidacy.  It’s always something with the Clintons) select John Kasich as her running mate.  As asinine as this suggestion is, it speaks to the kind of bi-partisan, centrist (right wing) bullshit that had sent media hearts aflutter for a proposed McCain-Lieberman ticket.  True to his craven heart, McCain backed off of that idea with disastrous consequences for his candidacy in the short term,  his party in the long term, and for everybody but Yukon Barbie and the rest of her clan, who were only in it for the money anyway.

When a Sunday Morning fits the paradigm of a hangover song of regret, or more pertinently, you find a can of reliably GOP beer your best friend in lieu of the ringing church bells of Christ’s promotion to glory, a few things become clear while you listen to John Coltrane—and aside from the Velvet Underground sounding better than ever— you begin to ascertain certain paranoid, ignoble truths, if you will, about reality of two party system as it is constituted now; more specifically, Team Blue:

The first second ignoble truth:  the party establishment seem hellbent on reminding you of the first ignoble truth until you sit down, shut the fuck up, and love Hillary Clinton.  

The second ignoble truth is the sneaking suspicion that your politics, which you had understood as All-American, communitarian, New Deal-y, are ostensibly, radically, and irreconcilably at odds with the will of the Democratic Party establishment.   

The third ignoble truth:  corporate media demands dramatic narrative, and will force a narrative superstructure to gin up ratings.  Both parties will reliably, but idiosyncratically, oblige, either with a Coke commercial or Folger's Commerical (or the Rubio cover).

The fourth ignoble truth: to quote Mario Savio, sorta, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".  Or something like that.

The triangulating Clinton machine has long waited for its perfect moment, the culmination of a lifetime of scheming, deal making, prevari—and—equivi-cation, pandering and a nearly constant fog of unforced, almost pathological errors, the appearance of inpropriety and general bullshit that exhausts.  Even recalling the Clinton years makes me exhausted, as does a nostalgia for the 90's, which aside from three years at the beginning of the decade, which may have just been an extension of the late eighties, the nineties are more Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth than Nirvana:  "Hey now, you're a fly now, we party with tattoos now. Drink Coke."

Yet, as I have previously written, the other party is in a pitched battle for its very soul, between the, craven,  rugged cross platitudes of Glenn Quagmire flesh avatar Ted Cruz promise of a New America that looks and feels like town from Footloose, and Donald Trumps (not so) crypto-Fascist view of government as business, Trump branded border wall and general "blame the _____" nativism. Assuming this act of self-immolation, inevitable since the Southern Strategy courted the racist Dixiecrats and Christianists, reaches its horrifying climax in Cleveland, the Republican Party as a big tent, as we understand it, will be over.

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Hillary Clinton's campaign playlist is revealing , as was the syrupy shit sounds from 2008; its the kind of middle of the road shit calculated to appeal to the kids, as opposed to something that connects with the soul she presumably had at some point, and as politic, and rhetoric, it's custom built hollow optimism, no doubt knicked from an intern's iPhone, or assembled by a PR firm.  Maybe I'm being just being pissy here, but I have a hard time imaging Hillary--or even Chelsea--listening to Katy Perry unless they thought they could get something out of it...

Naw, I'd imagine Hillary to be more Thirtysomething in her taste, perhaps the pensive poetry of Bruce Hornsby, or the reflective middle (of the aged and road) majesty of Mike + The Mechanics as being the newest editions to her collection; if my druthers had any bearing (and not that they would--ever), I would have recommended the dulcet tones of the Climax Blues Band, because I'd bet a Tall Boy she owns this on 45:

"Time was drifting, this rock had got to roll

So, I hit the road and made my getaway

Restless feeling, really got a hold

I started searching for a better way

And I kept on looking for a sign in the middle of the night [road]

But, I couldn't see the light, no, I couldn't see the light

I kept on looking for a way to take me through the night

Couldn't get it right, couldn't get it right..."

Maybe Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us (We'll Call You).

The New York Primary is in the books, and the saavy, metropolitan, international progressives of the Empire State  Big Apple (and, to be fair, the equally sexy metropoli of Buffalo, Rochester and, et tu? Syracuse?) resoundingly and thunderously spoke:  We Loved the Nineties. 

Let's be clear:  so far, Hillary, though coat tailing riding the no doubt consequential and historic presidency of liberal-ish centrist Barack Obama (who is only a "socialist", if you are the sort of dittoheaded shit for brains that would vote for the Fascist Trump or the Tedocratic Cruz) who is only "liberal" because of how far right the line has been dragged, has proposed little that is different than her failed to-the-right 08 campaign:  more of that "middle of the road" neo-liberal horseshit that fast tracked us into the Reaganomics meltdown and Great Recession.  No Money Down on another Cow Colored Box of Voodoo Economics!

 "Fuck Bernie" is the new "Sit down and shut up, Hippie" Or:  I didn't sell out; I bought in.

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Well, that escalated quickly.   Bring it on...

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A quotation often and questionably attributed to Winston Churchill (whose missing bust has London mayor and The Donald coif biter Boris Johnson in a tizzy) is instructive because Hillary Clinton, like Bill Clinton, is a quintessential political animal of the E Pluribus Unum variety (though certainly more "ME" rather than "We"):  Americans will do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities.  And, if polling is to be trusted Clinton will likely reach an insummountable delegate lead, and be able to victory lap her way to the coronation long denied to her.  And it will be a historic moment--both when she accepts the nomination, and when she wins in November.   I suppose if somebody wants to be the first at something, and is as tireless in the pursuit of that goal, then it is little surprise when they achieve it.  Congratulations.

But over the course of this campaign, I have come to realize something that the Junior Senator from Vermont has been telling us, and will likely remind us again:  it was never about him, because there is no singular hero to ride into town and set things to right, no political messiah to fix this fucking shitmire of graft, grift and the sort of brain laziness usually reserved for the board rooms of General Motors....

It was always about THE IDEA.

The idea that "general welfare" in the Constitution means "ALL OF US",  that we are better when we are ALL better, that the corruption of moneyed interests poisons our society, and that we can do better if we want to.

And the Sander's campaign has shown that.  A New New Deal is possible, if we DEMAND IT.

That's the thing to hold on to, folks;  the disappointment and the butthurt pure ideological proclamations must give way to this realization:  we already won.  This is our party now, and the vestiges of the old order must reconcile themselves to the new reality.  Secretary Clinton will, if she wants to win, have to contend with a new, robust left, who are loud, proud, and unafraid and she, craven as ever, will, ironically, govern left rather than paying lip service. She may not be ideal, but if she form a coalition that will keep the Fascists and the Theocrats out of Executive Power, the vacuum from the GOP's self immolation will create space unimagined since Roosevelt for a truly Left Progressive agenda.