Appeasement, POP Style

The Party of Pusillanimity, the POP, arrived at a solomonic solution to the Florida and Michigan Questions, according Hillary Clinton a (largely symbolic) net gain of twenty-four delegates, while maintaining some pretense of abiding by the rules that the Clinton campaign endorsed along with all the others, back when the Clintons thought they were sure winners without Florida and Michigan. Hillary and her fans would have ended up worse off had the party followed its rules. But the Democratic National Committee’s Committee on Rules and By-laws, with the Obama campaign’s support, decided on appeasement. They did it, they say, for unity’s sake; in other words, to try to undo some of the damage the Clintons have done to the POP’s chances for victory in November. Maybe they’re right; but if they had a backbone, they would have handed the Clintons their due. Of course, to say “backbone” and “Democrat” together is to utter a cruel oxymoron. In the coming struggle against Clintonism,it will therefore be up to the people who will vote for Obama, not Obama himself and not his wretched party, to expel that dreadful duo from our political life.

That time is coming! The more obstinate Hillary becomes, the fewer friends she has left. Already there’s blood in the water. Bill’s blood too. Let the saga continue and the Clintons will fall hard. Howard Ickes, speaking for the campaign, “reserved the right” to take the Florida and Michigan Questions to the full convention’s Credentials Committee in Denver this summer, and even to fight it out on the floor of the convention itself. As the Bush boy would say, “bring it on”! The POP will never give the Clintons their just deserts; they’re too cowardly even to impeach Cheney and Bush. But it is looking more and more like there will be some justice meted out nonetheless.

Meanwhile, what about those ardent and stubborn Hillary fans? It’s hard to believe there could be all that many of them (maybe the ones in DC yesterday were all there are). But, in a country that lionizes Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan and that elected George W. Bush twice, anything is possible. W.C. Fields got it right: there’s one born every minute.


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Meanwhile also yesterday, because yet another man of the cloth, a white priest no less, uttered some “inconvenient truths” from the pulpit of Obama’s church, Obama quit said church. The priest, Father Pfleger, mocked the Clintons from the pulpit. Obama, it seems, had a problem with that – as if it doesn’t make infinitely more sense to make fun of the Clintons than to praise the Lord. But since no American politician has the “audacity” to point that out in this Benighted Age, we should rejoice in what we can get – and hope that Obama stays churchless for a while. His resignation from Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ bodes well. It shows he can be made to do the right thing, even if for the wrong reason.