The End of the Beginning

I suppose that after the length of the Democratic primary contest and its coverage here occasionally and on TV so much that I had to turn it off, I would be remiss if I didn't make a comment or seventeen about the endgame now being played out between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton after Mr. Obama garnered the 2118 delegates necessary to capture the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States. He has been talking past Mrs. Clinton for several weeks now, directly at John McCain when it became self-evident that there was no way that she could not mathmatically catch and overtake Mr. Obama's lead in delegates. Tuesday's activity was just in some sense, anticlimactic, with the notable exception of Mrs. Clinton who last night gave a speech that made it appear as if she was trying to play Don Corleone -- "Barack Obama, you need my 18 million votes" -- an offer he supposedly couldn't refuse. But the fact is that her 18 million votes was, since they were won, were, like a new car driven off the dealer's lot, devalued significantly. We do not need to go through the litany of trash that she threw at Mr. Obama during the period after February 5 -super-Tuesday, which, sadly for Mrs. Clinton's strategy, such as it was, decided nothing. The race-baiting, the dragging up of distractions like Jeremiah Wright when it was clear that Mr. Obama did not share the thoughts of his occasionally wacko Reverend. The Bosnia affair that she turned into the first twenty minutes of "Saving Private Ryan"; the "who do you want answering the phone at 3:00 a.m." bit, and the rest of the kitchen sink strategy she pulled out when it became clear that Obama had the coal and money to power his train to victory.

So here we are. This morning, Mr. Obama gave a very good speech to AIPAC, the feared and oft-derided (by anti-Semites and Semites alike) heavy hitter of "the Israel Lobby" whose annual Washington conference was fortuitously scheduled during the end of these historic 2008 Democratic primaries. In a way, I have to admit some jealousy at not being in the audience for that speech, as it was, in effect, Mr. Obama's first major foriegn policy address as the Democratic nominee. He said all the right things in the right tones and made McCain's foriegn policy look like something from the Attila the Hun playbook. He sounded reasonable. Thoughtful. He sounded like the person I have admired and supported since Joe Biden got out of the race. (Secretary of State Biden?) No thoughtful Jew who has Israel's best interests at heart as well as those of their own country -- yours and mine -- the United States of America, has any business voting for McCain. There is simply no excuse for such a wasted vote unless you happen to be a lover of white sheets and fiery crosses. Or the people to whom Mrs. Clinton pandered to: white men who earn less than $50,000 per year and who have not graduated college. I would submit that these people need to realize that race is not a basis upon which to deny Mr. Obama the presidency if you happen to fall within that demographic even if you do like white sheets with holes and wood-working with kerosene. The basis for the vote is WHO HAS THE MONEY AND POWER in this country, and the answer to that question transcends all races and makes it irrelevant to all but the most wicked of bigots or the illogical and unreasonable of which, sadly, there are too many in this country.

Indeed, it is that demographic that should be most fervently in favor of the change that Mr. Obama presents precisely because they have been sold down the proverbial river for the past 14 years since the "Republican Revolution" started by Newt Gingrich and his ilk following the 1994 midterm Congressional elections. Enough with the divisive distractions that have driven this country into the toilet. Enough. Let us move to a serious discussion of the serious issues that face this country with a man, Obama, who is a serious and thoughtful man who also happens to be a spectacularly brilliant political organizer. For it was, in the end, his masterful organzational and technical skills that denied Mrs. Clinton her perceived birthright as a Clinton.

Which leads me to the end of the Clinton era in this country. Good riddance, finally. Let us not forget that it was Bill Clinton's record that made the 2000 election so close as to throw it to the Supreme Court and thence to George Bush, under whose misleadership the United States and the world, has suffered for the past seven years. If it was true that Bill Clinton was the great politician and leader that, 16 years after the 1992 elections he is portrayed as (not the pedodontia sufferer he was on behalf of his wife - pedodontia: a chronic condition commonly used by me to refer to "foot-in-mouth" disease)then do we attribute the 2000 loss to monkeyshines in Florida? Hanging Chads? Al Gore's inability to move an audience?

What we got was a guy who people liked and wouldn't have minded having a beer with. Well, several truckloads of Shiner Bock (disclosure statement: I am not a member of the ownership of Spoetzl Brewery, the brewers of Shiner Bock, which is, coincidentally located in Shiner, Texas, a town that my late grandfather Mandel Shiner (zt'l) founded in the late 1800s after running out on the Czar's Army, mistaking it for the West Side of Chicago, where he eventually did settle some years later, deciding that the junk business was more profitable more quickly than the beer business) later, we are all hung over from all the beer (and Shiner Bock is quite good) that we have swallowed, some might say waterboarded with, for the past seven years. Indeed, as someone who really should not even drink beer, I am sick with delight that I might not even want to sit down with Barack Obama to have a beer. Frankly, he seems like the sort that would appreciate a good 2000 Bordeaux. But that is another story involving different tastes, bodily orifices and functions.

Last night, Mrs. Clinton in a speech at Baruch College in New York City, which she won quite handily - congratulations -- struck a decidedly combative, some would say obstreporous tone, even as Mr. Obama went over the 2118 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. It was unbelievable that she had actually finished the Kool Aid that Terry McAuliffe, her erstwhile spinmeister, had been mixing and serving for the past month to make it seem like there was actually a chance of her winning. Mr. McAuliffe, whose floral shirt he wore for the Puerto Rico primary should tell you that he really needs a vacation - not even he could not actually believe some of the garbage and lies that had been spewing out of his mouth -- was still in there, shoveling the remains of his and Mrs. Clinton's fantasy at the 24/7 news cycle. It ended up to be a nice vacation to San Juan for the whole Clinton team, even as she "won" there quite handily -- mazal tov again.

Today, as her 18 million voter fantasy was losing air faster than the German zeppelin Hindenberg burned up in New Jersey in 1937, it is widely reported that her own staffers called Congressman Charlie Rangel to arrange what I can only describe as an "intervention" by 23 other Congressmen with Mrs. Clinton to tell her to "get with the program", as the longer she waited to do so, the worse off her position and power (and power is about perception in large measure, let us not forget) would be in the Senate. Yes, her own colleagues had to finally give her the slap in the face that so many of us have wished for her to receive for so long. And almost as instantaneously as it was received, news broke just a little while ago that a meeting has been scheduled for Friday in which she is supposed to announce the "suspension of her campaign" and her "support for Senator Obama".

While those things sound like she's giving up and endorsing Mr. Obama, they do not sound like the words of someone who has albeit fading - faded -- hopes of being Mr. Obama's running mate. They sound like the words of someone who cannot accept reality, either due to her own arrogance, the Kool Aid, the PTSD from her trip to Bosnia in 1996, exhaustion from the long campaign or some combination of all of the foregoing. Whatever the cause, it appears that at least some of her advisors understand the present, and not alternate, reality that Mrs. and Mr. Clinton have been living in for the past six weeks or so and especially the notion that whatever "clout" (a word coined by the unique Mike Royko) she had was as of last night, fleeting, as was her potential to be an effective Senator, nevermind a national candidate.

Where are we now? Mr.McCain delivered a speech last night which was characterized by Amy Holmes, a writer for the uberconservative National Review Online as

creaky, ungracious, and unnecessary. I never understand why politicians don't take the opportunity, when so easily presented, to simply be gracious and hold their fire. Watching McCain, I couldn't help but think of the astonishing contrast Barack's triumphant speech to a massive and adoring crowd will be. It was not a comparison McCain should have invited.

And then, in a stroke of genius worthy of Rube Goldberg, Mr. McCain invited Mr. Obama to a series of "town hall style debates". Now, at first blush, given Mr. McCain's creakiness, this would appear to be inviting the fox (the young, polished and unflappable Mr. Obama) into the chicken coop that is full of old hens and roosters. (again, Mr. McCain, sorry) and that Mr. Obama would have Mr. McCain for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And a midnight snack. And a little water at 3:00 a.m.

Not so fast. In such a setting, while Mr. Obama could run rings around Mr. McCain in a rhetorical and policymaking sense, Mr. Obama must absolutely be careful not to make Mr. McCain look bad, or even creaky. Mr. McCain is only there because he, by himself, could not possibly fathom the notion of 17,000 people turning out just to watch him by himself. That is because it would not ever happen. He will be relying on Mr. Obama's star power, not his own. Mr. McCain will be hoping that Mr. Obama says something that makes him, Mr. Obama, look like a smartass, disrespectful or somehow unappreciative of the large amount of support that thinks Mr. McCain is a better choice for President than is Mr. Obama, as difficult as that is for me to contemplate even being possible. But that is the reality, alternate or not. Mr. Obama has everything to gain and everything to lose. Mr. McCain, already judged by his peers as creaky and ungracious, has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Let us not forget the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960, the year I spent mostly as a fetus. Though Mr. Nixon was, with his five o'clock shadow, not meant for television, he almost won that election were it not for some monkeyshines by my own political mentor, Mayor Richard J. Daley, the father of the present King of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, who made sure that he delivered Illinois for Mr. Kennedy. As it is said, those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and if Richard Nixon could almost beat John F.Kennedy (he of PT 109 fame in WWII, and the legendary Kennedy clan), then one is forced to the conclusion that the possibility exists that Mr. McCain could do equally as well. All I can say is that I am glad that Mr. Obama learned his political chops in Chicago. He is going to need them.

Now the news will turn to the punditocracy which will begin to chew over who each candidate will pick to be Vice President. The notion of 24/7 speculation - all day and all night -- is enough to make me appreciate that Heroditus wrote his Histories and that Mr. Obama is a fan of Philip Roth. No worries here. I'll sleep better tonight as Mrs. Clinton realizes that Mr. Obama is no human stain. He is the real deal. And he will, at long last, have a chance to show us what someone who thinks about the future can do by learning from, instead of being imprisoned, by the past.

By the way, that bit about my grandfather founding Shiner, Texas was a figment of my fertile imagination. The rest is true.

Randy Shiner