Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Of Pitbulls and Pretty Boys

Today’s “crucial” election in Massachusetts allows me to catch up with Sunday’s sensation on a Tuesday.

The Sunday morning talk shows were all about the presidential campaign tell-all, Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.   The revelation that Barack Obama was in fact the establishment’s candidate, Hillary being encumbered with a past and a husband with a past, should be a relief to those of us who wondered why things seem to be going so wrong now that the candidate who promised Progressive change is in office.  It frees us to think about the institutional changes that are necessary for creating a new establishment.

The other nugget, was the “revelation” of just how in unqualified Sarah Palin was to be Vice-President.  Juicy bits about her not knowing 20th century history - let alone anything about the Constitution - there again, could make Progressives feel good. (As Tom Hartmann said yesterday on his radio show, broadcast on Free Speech TV, their crazies are worse than our crazies.)  But alas, alack, Sarah Palin’s admirers are the same people who will likely vote for the pretty boy Republican who apparently ran a workmanlike campaign, to fill Edward Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat today.

You just have to take one look at the candidate’s pictures to see that Rahm Emanuel (revealed in the above book as declaring that Progressives don’t matter, that they have nowhere to go) blew it.  People who shriek and swoon over Sarah  Palin, and who’ve already elected a Republican governor (Mitt Romney), are more likely to vote for a handsome fellow than a female who is the opposite of Sarah Palin.  Martha Coakley is an Attorney General, an office that seems eminently suited to her appearance - or which is perhaps reflected in her appearance. Brown also has going for him that he is a state senator, and thus more suited to elective office.

Appropriately, the current issue of The Atlantic , marking Obama’s first year in office, is devoted to soothing the American people and convincing that a) China is not going to rule the world, and b) our two hundred year old system is the best we can hope for, even if it prevents super-intelligent, charismatic leaders like Obama from ever bringing about meaningful change.

That must be why the beltway money, in the likely event of a Democratic loss in the Massachusetts race, is on Obama bullying the House into accepting as is the Senate health bill, rather than risking losing it through negotiations.

1 comment:

  1. This post has some real zingers in it. I don't want to play favorites but these are certainly quotable quotes for this day.....

    Martha Coakley is an Attorney General, an office that seems eminently suited to her appearance – or which is perhaps reflected in her appearance. Brown also has going for him that he is a state senator, and thus more suited to elective office.

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