PA post mortem

In a previous post, I said that Ohio is a dying state with disaffected white voters, and that Pennsylvania was, or could be different. I was wrong. We're just like Ohio: pathetically behind the times. Pennsylvania handed Clinton another solid 10 point victory, and the long march towards a tarnished nomination will drag on.

It's not my town's fault. I'm pleased to report West Chester voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Most precincts were at 70% for Obama or higher. A shame so much of the rest of the state didn't come close to that. It was a primary campaign worthy of Thomas Hobbes: nasty and brutish, albeit not short enough. The morning after, we sat in traffic collectively wondering, what the f*ck did we do last night? Did we just prolong the agony for everyone else? We don't remember. There was this old lady shooting boilermakers, and next thing, it's 3 A.M. and our underpants are flung across the room, clinging to the lampshade, and the hotel room was spinning, spinning. Make it stop! So I think we charged the tab to Citibank and Nash McCabe who was wearing a jacket covered in American flag lapel pins said let Indiana and North Carolina sort it out.

Obama should be credited for mitigating the damage of a month-long barrage of shatteringly negative press: Rev. Wright, bad bowling, bittergate, flag lapel pins -- you know all the essential issues that commonwealth voters truly care about. Obama survived the smears with his campaign intact (no small feat), but he's been tarred, and the feathers will surely stick to him from this point on. The mainstream media has collaborated in the takedown of the best Democratic presidential hopeful since JFK. Charlie "bespectacled" Gibson and George "wonder boy" Stephenopolous should be receiving their gift baskets from Camp Clinton right about now, one supposes. In a land where the media has no ethics, where the press doesn't even remember it had a job to do let alone do it well, I do not see a hopeful outcome to this race anymore. Hopeful in the sense of a sea change in our political culture. To win, Obama will have to claw his way to the nomination now, and either candidate will come away seriously damaged goods. The politics of personal destruction will be just fine, thanks for asking. None of it means anything, which is why it's so important.

I also had this to say after the Ohio race, and the words ring even truer after Pennsylvania:

Maybe our political system is too crass, too bought and sold to be reformed or inspired. We're not large enough as a people. We are not people of character. We're a nation of small minded, greedy bastards, feckless and afraid. And the country will yet again receive the kind of disastrous leadership it deserves.

There comes a point in the epic struggle of a nation vying to overcome its baser nature, when one must seek higher ground, the better to watch Rome burn.

Guilty Boston Terrier

Watch it all the way to the end...!