Clinton = Lieberman

Scratch a Clintonite or, worse, a Clinton and what do you find beneath the surface – Joe Lieberman! Not necessarily Lieberman the sanctimonious twit; but Lieberman the soul mate of John McCain. How else to explain the contents of “the kitchen sink” that the Clinton campaign have hurled at Barack Obama in recent days? According to Hillary, she and John are ready to handle 3 a.m. phone calls that threaten the safety and security of tucked in bed three year olds. Obama is not ready yet; all he knows how to do is give speeches. According to Hillary, McCain is a Mensch; Obama still has a way to go.

It has dawned on many pundits that this is self-defeating behavior, should she somehow lean on enough superdelegates to become the nominee. She’s boosting, not knocking, her opponent. It has also dawned on them that, should Obama prevail, as he almost certainly will, she will have given John McCain ammunition to use against him. What the punditocracy has yet to note is how adept the Clintons have long been at helping Republicans defeat Democrats. Perhaps Bill Clinton’s gravest political offense as President was helping to turn Congress over to the Republicans only two years after he took office. For the remainder of Clinton’s tenure, he gave the Newt and his minions periodic boosts. Then, when he was no longer in a position to be helpful, the Cheney-Bush fear machine took up the cause for the Newt’s descendants. Six years later, the manifest incompetence of the Cheney/Bush crew brought the Democrats back. But the Democratic leadership was, by then, so thoroughly Clintonized that they’ve continued to aid and abet the criminals they earlier enabled.

For the time being, Obama has remained on the high road, while the Clintons not only go low and dirty but bafflingly incoherent. They’ve become so desperate that their double standards have been noted even in the corporate media. For the Clintons, it is OK to liken Barack Obama to Kenneth Starr, their former prosecutor-persecutor, but not OK to call Hillary a “monster” who’d do anything to win an election. Since when did truth stop being a defense?

It is ironic that Samantha Power was out of the Obama campaign within hours of her “monster” remark being reported. In academic legal and philosophical circles, Power has become notorious lately as the other woman’s other woman. But her claim to more than fifteen minutes of fame rests on her apologetics for “humanitarian interventions” and, especially, for Bill Clinton’s role in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the ethnic cleansing of its constituent parts. Hers is one of the more spirited defenses of this monstrous turn in American diplomacy. One would think that the Clintons would be grateful. Apparently that is a sentiment monsters cannot feel.

Meanwhile, Hillary continues to present herself as like McCain only better. In fact, if it comes down to who is more of a hawk, a“national security” war monger, she’s just McCain Lite. Her co-thinker Lieberman should explain this to her.

I would venture that, whoever wins the Democratic nomination, Lieberman will spend next fall continuing the McCain boosting that Clinton began. He’s a “natural” for the Republican VP slot. Foolish independents like him well enough; Connecticut proved that in 2006. And the part of the Republican base that hates McCain the most will be assuaged because they’ll love Lieberman’s piety and his from-the-heart support for Israel, as they await the apocalypse, the conversion of the Jews (Lieberman included) and the rapture of the Final Judgment, as everyone else is cast into eternal torment.

Them Republicans are pretty weird, but their sentiments are sounder than the liberals’ in at least one respect: they think that monsters should rot in hell.