Posted on 02/03/2016 1:01:12 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
It was getting on toward 2 o'clock on Tuesday morning after the bewildering Iowa caucuses, so I can't be too sure about anything. As the TV coverage wound down into nothingness, Chris Matthews of MSNBC became increasingly disgruntled about the lack of clear winners and losers in the Hawkeye State, at least in the Democratic photo finish between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Getting to hear the losers make concession speeches is what makes our democracy exciting, he insisted. Iowa in 2016, according to the Matthews worldview, was not exciting. "This was just vague," he muttered.
He may actually have said, "Democracy is vague." I hope he did. But Matthews looked even more than usual as if he had been sitting on a venomous sea creature for three hours and the toxin was slowly paralyzing his brain. He was pretty difficult to understand and quite likely I am projecting that marvelous observation, which would easily be the most profound thing he has ever said. Brian Williams leapt in with one of those one-word questions that make him the most puckish news anchor ever (in his mind): "Unsatisfying?" And then Rachel Maddow flooded the zone with super-engaged freshman seminar personality: Gosh, she thought it was very exciting that Clinton and Sanders had finished in such a dead heat that people were arguing over whether coin flips and untended precincts had affected the outcome. (Probably not. But also: What outcome?)
But the moment was one of those tiny "tells" where you see something that ought to be obvious. (When we observe the observable, in Joan Didion's famous phrase.) Democracy is indeed vague, more so than Chris Matthews consciously observes. Its vagueness is not random or without purpose. One might describe democracy, as practiced in the United States at present, as a deliberately vague process meant to obfuscate the machineries of politics and power. When the third-place finisher in an arcane electoral procedure held in 99 Corn Belt counties is the night's big winner on one side, while the big winner on the other side is the overwhelming favorite who squeaked out a statistically insignificant victory over a left-wing insurgent, it begins to look as if winning and losing are questions of theological exegesis, rather than matters of fact.
It goes without saying that someone like Matthews is only in it for the blood sport, the hurly-burly, the endless pseudo-analytical debate about tactics and strategy and who's up and who's down. He barely pretends to care about outcomes or policy. But for him to admit that what he really likes is watching someone lose, seeing those rare moments of honesty and vulnerability (as he put it) in which the manufactured personalities of electoral politics have to go onstage and eat crow - or eat something with the same number of letters as "crow" - was revealing and oddly affecting.
I'm picking on Chris Matthews here because he's such a glorious manifestation of what's wrong with political journalism, and in the Tuesday small hours he came off more than a little like a high school football coach in 1986, explaining that soccer will never catch on in America because there are so many ties. (Yes, footy fans, I know the term is actually "draws.") But that doesn't mean he's alone on this, or even wrong. I remember Mitt Romney's brief and agonized concession speech from 2012, in which it became clear that he had actually drunk the "unskewed polls" Kool-Aid, and believed he was going to win, far better than I remember whatever Obama said. John McCain's 2008 speech, against the slightly surreal context of some palm-frond plaza in suburban Phoenix, was one of his best moments as a public speaker. (Of course I remember the spectacle of Obama in Grant Park, but not the words that came out of his mouth.)
Hell, I can remember standing there in awestruck teenage horror when Jimmy Carter delivered his concession speech from the White House while it was still daylight outside in suburban California. I remember my dad's behemoth color TV from Montgomery Ward, whose picture dissolved into indecipherable lines and blotches if you got within 18 inches of the screen. I remember the backyard pool (heated to 76 degrees year round) dappled in November afternoon light while I tried to reckon with the inconceivable fact that the retired movie actor loathed and mocked by my parents and all their friends has been overwhelmingly elected president. Actually, no - most of that is imagination. I'm not sure where I was that afternoon, but I remember the frozen expression on Carter's face and my own emotions of terror and despair as if it all happened yesterday.
So, yeah - we are storytelling animals who crave moments of hubris, catharsis and crisis. (There's a reason those words stretch back to antiquity.) Politics is packaged and delivered as unscripted or semi-scripted human drama, and we delight in seeing the mighty brought low, whether that means Don Juan dragged down to hell, Superman enfeebled by Kryptonite or Mitt Romney weepily telling us that his wife would have made "a great first lady." (Go back and look at it! Throwing shade on Michelle Obama while losing was the consummate Romney douche move, up there with that dog on the roof of the car.) In what may be the masterstroke of English literature, Milton begins "Paradise Lost" with the greatest concession speech of all time, in which Satan faces the scale of his downfall from the "happy Realms of Light" into endless torture and "darkness visible" ("If thou beest he; but O how fall'n! how chang'd") and vows to keep on fighting a war he can never win.
Matthews is right that Donald Trump's relatively gracious Iowa speech on Tuesday night, after losing a caucus he expected to win (but had previously expected to lose), made the billionaire populist appear more human than at any time in recent memory. If that was a gratifying moment in dramatic terms, it was also a dangerous crack in the Trumpian facade, a glitch in the software package driving his idiot-Nietzschean persona.
Those of us who sit behind computers and write about this stuff have said over and over again that something was the beginning of the end of Donald Trump, and so far we have been wrong. But losing and playing humble about it - in effect, playing by the Chris Matthews rules of politics as theater - is a major blow to the notion that Trump is special and different and unstoppable. If I were advising Trump on strategy and branding, I would tell him to steer the hell away from "more human" and go full Miltonic Satan, although admittedly I might not put it that way. Trump's supporters don't want him to say nice things about Ted Cruz and put a happy spin on a disappointing second-place finish. They want "the inconquerable Will,/ And study of revenge, immortal hate,/ And courage never to submit or yield."
Trump's true nemesis is the irritatingly angelic visage of Marco Rubio looming up behind him, not the alien entity who actually won in Iowa. Ted Cruz has variously been described as the villain of a movie whose hero is a dog and as a third-grader whose mom bought his clothes out of the Sears catalog. In either case the people who don't love him hate him worse than plague rats or Hillary Clinton or socialism, and this week's glorious victory is likely to be the high point of his political career.
As for the diminutive College Republican twerp who just gave the most exuberant third-place victory speech in political history, that sound you heard was the "mainstream conservative" movement coalescing around Marco Rubio with a soft wet thunk, like a bag of dog crap hitting the weird old rich guy's front door. If Rubio can win in New Hampshire or manage a close second - and Granite State voters are known for such switchbacks - it will suddenly be as if the Trump moment had never happened and the Koch brothers' Sun King-like reign over the Republican Party had never been threatened.
As for the lack of clarity when it comes to winning and losing on the Democratic side - well, it's all a matter of perspective, am I right? For leftists and liberals, the choice between Clinton and Sanders comes down to what you make of America's broken system in the 21st century and whether you think it needs minor repair or an engine overhaul. Who you believe won Iowa reflects a similar division.
If I were explaining European soccer to Coach Matthews in 1986, I would tell him that draws are almost never neutral outcomes. For an underdog playing on the road, they can be inspirational breakthroughs, not to mention unexpected points in the standings. If you are Manchester United or Real Madrid playing at home - which pretty well describes Hillary Clinton's situation in Iowa - a draw falls somewhere between disappointment and disaster.
Clinton has now been declared the victor in Iowa, albeit by an inconsequential margin. (Not that that is likely to stop the tides and eddies of social-media disputation.) In objective terms, that hardly matters. Indeed, it hardly counts as a fact. But it immediately becomes a central plot element in the Chris Matthews media narrative, evidence that Clinton goes into New Hampshire with "momentum" or, to put it another way, that Man U did not actually draw at home against an obscure provincial opponent. If I were really feeling cynical about this whole spectacle - heaven forfend! - I would say that the pseudo-fact of Clinton's Iowa victory was not just politically helpful but ideologically necessary. It serves both to bolster and conceal another observable but widely ignored fact, which is that the Democratic Party's nominating process has little to do with democracy.
Why bother to analyze their rhetoric and find their weaknesses?
Wilful ignorance of what the left is up to only got us 8 years of Barack Obama.
Are you for real?
It’s a joke that comedians use on bus tour groups - when someone doesn’t get their joke. My mother-in-law told it to me and is seems so appropriate from time to time.
What nerve did this article hit?
I see.
It was a joke.
You should seek employment on one of those tour buses.
Check this out:
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/13/455812702/clinton-has-45-to-1-superdelegate-advantage-over-sanders
You’re funnier than a barrel full of monkeys.
Que: racist joke.
Thanks for bumping the thread.
You’re welcome.
George Neumayr - 2-3-16 "...............I found the wet-blanket editorials in Republican media organs on Tuesday morning amusing in their delusion. They at once avoided praising or backing Cruz, chortled over Trump's loss, and treated Rubio's bronze like a gold medal. Never mind that Rubio won that meager award by running as a fervent Christian and an opponent of the amnesty he once supported. In other words, the top three finishers all ran as Tea Party, Christian-friendly conservatives. Clogging the establishment lane to nowhere were Republicans from Jeb Bush to John Kasich to Chris Christie who long ago embraced the supposedly winning formula of "progressive," PC-friendly politics.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, whom the Yacht Club Republicans claim is so impressive and unbeatable (unless we conservatives, they counsel, accept a "reasonable type" as the nominee), found herself, as the pathetic headlines on Tuesday morning blared, in a "virtual tie" with a Marxist eccentric from Vermont. Her only hope at this point is that Republicans sabotage Trump and Cruz and give the nomination to Rubio, who would prove an underwhelming candidate. He has his good points but he still seems like an inexperienced and philosophically shallow fortysomething who can't pay his credit card bills. He is the kind of plastic "conservative" who thinks absurdly, as he put it in one of the early debates, that America needs fewer "philosophers" and more "plumbers." I am pro-plumbers. In fact, I would be thrilled if more underperforming high school students entered that worthy profession rather than waste government money on four years of "higher learning" that just ends up warping their minds with PC propaganda. But no serious conservative would badmouth philosophy. At the core of America's founding documents is serious theistic philosophy, from which we grasp our freedoms under God.
Cruz's success on Monday night stemmed in large part from his willingness to stand up for those perennial principles in the forgotten counties of Iowa while "moderate" Republicans like Christie campaigned on MSNBC's Morning Joe and other idiotic chattering-class shows before holding their sad fundraisers on yachts and at country clubs. In the end, conservative substance wins. Is Trump listening?"
Nice smear.
Another joke?
: )
I don’t work for anyone; I am not paid by anyone.
Of course I can’t prove it.
That’s the beauty of your smear.
If you had to settle a vote with a coin toss, you cannot claim ‘the will of the people’ to getting the nomination.
If you needed SIX coin tosses all going your way to claim victory then you didn’t have any sort of a popular vote.
Al Gore Junior was a professional asshat as well. He and his supporters claimed he won because he had the popular vote in 2000. His margin was 0.51% (half a percent). There was no “mandate” for Al Gore. It was well within any margin of error and we would still be recounting the votes in counties from coast to coast. It was as close to a coin toss landing on neither heads or tails (the edge) that you can get.
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