What Will a Clinton "Victory" Feel Like? by John Eskow

What Will A Clinton "Victory" Feel Like? Posted May 2, 2008 | 06:55 PM (EST)

John Eskow

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Whoopee, kids! George Bush and Hillary Clinton have called for a Gas-Tax Holiday! Let's celebrate in style! Whaddaya say we all kick our Magic Tax Rebates into one big kitty, car-pool out to the desert, and throw an End-of-the-World Celebration--a Woodstock of the Apocalypse!

What endless and unlimited contempt they continue to show for our intelligence.

Wandering the aisles of roadside curio shops in the '90s, seeing all the balsawood plaques and coffee-mugs with anti-Hillary slogans, I used to wonder how millions of blue-collar Americans could perceive the First Lady as Satan in a badly-cut pants-suit. And while I still can't see her--yet--as Evil Incarnate, I am sick to death of hearing that a vote for John McCain is a vote for four more years of George Bush, when more and more a vote for Hillary seems to be exactly the same thing. I didn't start out as an Obama supporter--in my eyes, all the candidates have been way too timid on Issue #1, which is ending the occupation of Iraq--but John Edwards felt like the one most committed to it, and as a child of Rust-Belt America I liked his anti-NAFTA passion. As time went on, though, I began to realize that Obama was offering a radical change in tone, mode and template--someone who finally spoke to America as if he wasn't addressing a roomful of severely retarded eight-year-olds. That alone seemed to offer enough "hope" to merit support for him.

So, as the campaign tension ratchets up, in a week where Obama gives us more honest and adult conversation about the Reverend Wright "issue," what do we get from Hillary Clinton? An offhand threat to commit genocide in Iran, more purse-lipped and prissy insistence that Wright "wouldn't have been my pastor," and the supremely cynical act of pimping for votes by supporting this ludicrous "gas-tax holiday." And when an Indiana superdelegate and Bill Clinton-appointee at the DNC switches camps and endorses Obama, what do we get from the perfectly named Howard Wolfson and his squad of gutter-rats? "He doesn't really come from Indiana."

The hits just keep on comin'. And the scary part is: they're workin'.

So one begins to wonder just what a Clinton "victory"--which now actually seems possible--would really feel like.

Would it not--even for diehard Clinton-backers--come with a taste of ashes and bile? Don't even the most passionate supporters of Hillary recoil at the idea of Four More Years of James Carville--that hideous fusion of a female praying-mantis and a human male cadaver? Can even the most nostalgic "Friend of Bill" really stomach the spectacle of the ex-President stumbling around like the once-great Willie Mays tripping over his own feet in the outfield, wagging that scolding finger at us again, while obviously wet-dreaming that America still loves him? And--worst of all--who among us really wants to perpetuate that whole tired carnival of feigned outrage, transparent pandering, and shot-and-a-beer photo-ops?

If Clinton wins the nomination after promising--and delivering--a "kitchen-sink" campaign that appealed, from beginning to end, to the lowest and darkest of our human instincts, can that "victory" be anything but a crushing defeat for the America my kids will inherit?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-eskow/w...to_b_99880.html