Posted May 15, 2008
I think I speak for a sizable portion of the American public, of all political stripes, on this one: I wish James Carville hadn't forced me to consider the issue of Hillary Clinton's balls.
It's a ticklish subject, of course, but Hillary's supporters won't leave it alone. Maybe if Carville's bizarre suggestion that Barack Obama has some kind of Testicle Gap -- "
if Hillary gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have a pair" -- had just been some freaky one-shot-deal, we might've figured that The Human Praying Mantis was having an especially bad day, and blown the whole thing off. Because when a black man with an Arab-sounding name goes up against an ex-occupant of the White House with the whole Democratic Party machine behind her -- and
beats" her -- you've got to admit he's got a decent pair of stones, if nothing else. But then, when a
second" Clinton hack shouted to the world how excited he was about the ex-First Lady's "testicular fortitude," it became clear that her campaign, for some weird reason, had made Testicle-Gate into a talking-point.
Don't get me wrong. I have tremendous respect for balls. Though my days of barfighting and high-contact sports are behind me, I wake up every day with two ripped-up knees, a broken nose, and a wrecked back to show for years of gloriously mis-spent testosterone. And, God willing, balls will always play a major -- and mostly pleasant -- role in my life. So when Carville and Co. decided to make "Cojones-Gate" a major campaign issue, I started to wonder: why this
particular" snarky tactic? Could it be that maybe they protesteth too much? What might all this compulsive balls-talk be compensating for?
I didn't want to play The Nerd Card. I really didn't. It's all James Carville's fault. He forced me to take a good hard look at All the Hillary's Men.
Think about 'em: Terry McAuliffe, grinning inanely into TV cameras, forever the sixth-grader running home to tell Mom that Teacher said he's a good boy for tattling on his classmates. Howard Wolfson, smug for no reason, dutifully spreading his Reverend Wright crap. Carville himself, growing visibly more bitter by the millisecond, until he threatens to consume his own flesh, live, on national TV. The porcine Mark Penn, curiously unkempt, too busy shovelling blood-stained Blackwater cash into his pockets. To say nothing of Bill, staggering around those second-tier campaign-stops, still wagging that effete index-finger in our faces.
moreWith Bill, Carville, McAuliffe, Penn and Wolfson speaking on Hillary's behalf, blaming sexism for her loss is laugable.
Speaking of Mark "Blackwater" Penn, let's talk about lobbyists and draw the Hillary-McCain connection:
Sun Feb 24, 9:10 PM
Update, April 6, 2008]: The Clinton campaign today announced that Mark Penn would take a less visible role within the campaign. Also, last week Charlie Black resigned from Penn's firm to go work for McCain full-time.<...>
Hillary Clinton's chief strategist is Mark Penn, and Charlie Black, John McCain's top adviser, is
chairman of
BKSH, the DC-based lobbying subsidiary of
Burson-Marsteller-- of which Mark Penn is
CEO.
Yes, this is the same lobbyist Barack Obama was referring to when he
criticized John McCain for allowing lobbyists to
conduct their business on board his bus.
BKSH is a bipartisan lobbying firm. Black, the chairman is the top Republican. The top Democrat is
R. Scott Pastrick, who like Penn, supports Hillary Clinton.
Mark Penn's personal interests would clearly be best served by a Hillary Clinton victory.
A McCain presidency wouldn't be a bad consolation prize, however. It would be far better to have the head of his lobbying be tight with the president than to have a president like Obama who sought to impose new restrictions on his lobbyist operation.
Enough about lobbyists, back to the sexism argument. Hillary sees herself as a victim.
By: John Cole May 20, 2008 at 10:20 am
Ben Smith brings us this
quote from Hillary:
“It’s been deeply offensive to millions of women,” Clinton said. “I believe this campaign has been a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. But it certainly has been challenging given some of the attitudes in the press, and I regret that, because I think it’s been really not worthy of the seriousness of the campaign and the historical nature of the two candidacies we have here.”
Later, when asked if she thinks this campaign has been racist, she says she does not. And she circles back to the sexism. “The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head,” she said. “It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists.” ‘
Look, there is no doubt Hillary has been
subjected to sexism during this campaign, but if you want to know why Hillary really lost, you have to look no farther than this quote from her. Her entire campaign has been one gigantic attempt to redefine reality to how she wants to see it, ignoring the things that upset her and that don’t fit the new new narrative of the day as passed on by Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn. Hillary did not lose because she is a woman- she lost because they ran a crappy campaign. From the
comments last night:
Hillary came in to this contest with a bunch of cash, the lead in super delegates, and the polls saying that she was going to steamroll the competition without problem. She had the Clinton name, donors with deep wallets, and a husband who was a popular former President who could also advise her and give her the inside scoop on campaigning.
She had it all, and she squandered it all away. Her and her campaign thought she had it sewed up, and they spent their campaign cash like there was no tomorrow. Huge salaries, huge parking bills, nice hotels for everyone and all the trimmings. After all, after sweeping up on Super Tuesday, the cash would be rolling in hand over fist. So why worry when her win was inevitable? She came in to the primary season as a powerhouse, she was going to clear the table and sweep up the winnings.
One problem. One candidate was deadly serious about winning, and he put together a team of people who he could count on to do the best they can for him. People who believe in what they are doing, and who know that if they want to win then they have to have a plan to get out there and earn it. So while Hillary was making the press rounds and drinking up all of the attention, Obama and his team rolled up their sleeves, planned and got to work.
This race is like the story about the tortoise and the hare. The hare knew the race was as sure as won, but the tortoise ignored the hare and quietly plodded along, keeping the goal line in sight the whole time. The hare got lost along the way, and now the tortoise is almost across the finish line.
How many versions of Hillary have there been this campaign? Right now we are on the gun-toting/whiskey-drinking model, but there have been numerous other incarnations of the candidate this election. You can’t blame that kind of message incompetence, that kind of demographic slicing and dicing, that transparent phoniness on sexism. You just don’t.
And more to the point- is there ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE, who thinks that we would have even ever seen this populist version of Hillary, trouncing around Appalachia in pick-up trucks, getting to her roots with the white man, swilling whiskey and munching on pizza, if she had not lost on Super Tuesday and if she had sealed up the election in February? Is there ANYONE who thinks Hillary would give a shit about the Florida and Michigan delegates if she had the nomination sealed up?
Of course not, and you all know it. No one reading this can honestly state that the Annie Oakley revival tour we are watching right now would have happened, because we all know it would not have.
Terry McAuliffe himself stated they had a “27 state plan,” and all these other states would just have been after-thoughts had Clinton not blown it in February. Her campaign would be back in DC, plotting out there 50+1 plan for the fall, doing oppo research on McCain, all while having catered food brought to their luxury hotel rooms and with Mark Penn drawing a couple more million a month while still logging billable hours for Burston-Marsteller.
It is this kind of nonsense, this kind of willful suspension of reality, that has been the trademark of the Clinton campaign since Day One. Yes, Sen. Clinton, there has been sexism in this race. But it isn’t why you lost, and it wasn’t the only “ism” on display.
*** Update ***
BTW- I can’t be the only one who thinks this Richard Cohen piece is a
dazzling display of beltway incoherence, as well as
being factually inaccurate.
The word from Hillary's women is "
betrayal."
I like Obama's word: Change
edited typo
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