Super Duper Tuesday

Nothing was decided, and everybody won

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/supertues.htm
2/5/08

Back in the day, Reagan’s people were able to convince the gawdstruck that if they made kissy-face with the greedheads, the greedheads would shower them with wealth; and they convinced the greedheads that being nice to the gawdstruck would give them some moral authority. And they convinced both sides that being pro-military gave them a position where they could take cheap potshots at the Democrats.

The amazing thing about this coalition isn’t that it happened in the first place, but that it took nearly 30 years to come flying apart.

We’re seeing it in the voting this Super Tuesday. Mittens is getting the greedhead vote, which means he has only won the state where he was governor, and Utah, where he presumably got 95% of the LDS vote, and Montana. McCain is winning big in the Northeastern states and may show unexpected strength in the west, areas where the general population isn’t overly gawdstruck or greedy. Huckleberry is showing a lot of strength in the tornado states, where the praise jeezus vote is particularly strong. He may have won five states, all along the Mason-Dixon line.

None of the GOP candidates particularly like the other two, just as their respective bases have fallen apart. The self-appointed leaders of the Conservative movement in the media, mostly greedheads, have been bashing McCain, who is the main reason their boy Mittens hasn’t already wrapped up this enchilada. But what’s really odd is that they are deathly silent about Huckleberry, who is the REAL reason why Mittens is getting trounced tonight. Maybe they still believe that GOP truism that the greedheads need the religious right for cheap votes, and haven’t realized that the religious right has largely abandoned them. While McCain is winning outright in most of the states, there’s at least three where Mittens might have won, were he not splitting the anti-McCain vote with Huckleberry.

Huckleberry is a surprise. He’s won or is winning five states, and there are rumors sweeping his camp and the media that he could end up as McCain’s running mate. Certainly he would be a lot more credible in that role than Mittens, since it’s no secret that the two men detest one another, and Huckleberry brings an element of likeability to a GOP ticket that neither McCain nor Romney have.

Finally, having the conservative Huckleberry on the ticket might help McCain undo the damage right wing pundits, intent on destroying him, have done to his campaign. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have delighted liberals and been the toast of Democrats with the generous supply of ammunition they’ve meted out to the Democrats to use against McCain in the general election. Ann Coulter actually said that if McCain got the nomination, Coulter would become one of the “girls for Hillary”, prompting me to wonder if there was a sex-change operation in Coulter’s future. Ann then proceeded to humiliate herself further by trying to deny she had said it.

So: McCain didn’t wrap it up tonight, but he’s going to come out with a big lead in delegates, and he’s going to need Huckleberry if he is to have any chance at all in the general.

As far as getting the nomination goes, nothing at all was decided on the Democratic side. Neither candidate is going to end up with half the delegates they need for the nomination, and they’ll probably be less than one hundred delegates apart when all is said and done.

But the most arresting thing on the Democratic side wasn’t the inconclusive horserace. It was the two central characters.

Both gave speeches congratulating themselves, their families and supporters, and their rivals. Obama’s speech was, as you might expect, electrifying. There was one woman standing behind him, barely out of her teens, who vacillated wildly between glassy-eyed adoration, manic enthusiasm, and orgasmic joy. Finally, an older woman reached out and put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something like “You gotta stop doing that, girl; you’re getting the floor all slippery where you’re standing.” It was fascinating and terrifying to watch.

Obama has that incredible cadence and lilt. He really is a great orator in the tradition of MLK and the Kennedys.

But Hillary gave her speech, too. Hillary started this campaign sounding stiff and remote. Right wing Hillary haters liked to say she sounded shrill, and while that was just another right wing smear, she was sometimes strident.

She has grown a lot in this campaign. She has learned how to take her normal speaking voice and make it carry and compel. And she has learned how to reach an audience. She doesn’t try to be like Bill, who was a master at it. She tries to be like Hillary, and it works. She has her own brand of sincerity and conviction, and she has learned how to communicate it.

The convention is still five odd months off, and there’s a pretty good chance that it still wont be decided by then, at which point the stage will be set for genuine, compelling American political drama, the like of which this country hasn’t seen since 1964.

Even though I’m not thrilled with many of their positions, which I consider too safe and centrist to cope with the challenges America faces, there is no disputing that here are two of the best candidates the Democrats have had in years – and they will be going head to head for the next five months, possibly with a grand finale at the convention.

The party managers might blanch at the prospect. Like all political operatives, they prefer a nice, safe, well controlled kabuki instead of anything resembling an actual political battle. They don’t realize that by working so hard to accomplish that, they are largely responsible for the high degree of voter apathy in this country. Nobody gets very excited about stage-managed Democracies. By their very nature, they don’t reflect the public will.

So both parties are offering raw drama and a sharp contrast, the like of which we haven’t seen in nearly a century. Super Tuesday has decided nothing (They just called California for Clinton, but it’s unlikely she’ll end up with more than 53% of the delegates from that state) and big primaries lie ahead.

It’s an extraordinary campaign, and it’s only going to get more extraordinary.