I Can Wait Until 2008

I've waxed eloquent from time to time on one of Bill Clinton's legit legacies, that of the 24/7/365 political campaign. Time was (and the Bush family has never learned any different) when there really was a "campaign season" beginning three or so months before each election day, even in presidential years. That's when the actual hardcore politicking took place, and the rest of the time politicians actually governed, sometimes even for the public good.

Not anymore, nor ever again. Not that most Americans are any more aware of it, much less pay attention to it, than the Bush family. I think this stubborn mass refusal to get with the times could very well be due to eye-rolling "stories" like the following.

***McCain Falters In Former Stronghold

The weekend before Arizona Senator John McCain makes his official presidential announcement in South Carolina, polls show he's not popular with local Republican voters.

The Republican parties in Greenville, Spartanburg and Richland counties held conventions Saturday, where the candidates had the chance to speak and voters participated in polls. McCain did not attend and opted to send former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating to appear in his place. Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltram blamed McCain's absence for his poor showing.

"I thought that McCain missing these South Carolina conventions was a major error in his strategy," Beltram said. "I don't understand what [McCain's strategists] were thinking. McCain is coming here next week to announce that he's running for president, and the newspapers have stuff about him doing so poorly in the straw polls. It is beyond me what their strategy was."

First of all, since when is South Carolina a "McCain stronghold"? Didn't he lose the South Carolina primary to George W. Bush in 2000? And after being touted as the favorite that time as well, if memory serves.

Second, could it not be that the reason McCain tanked in the straw poll is that he couldn't get elected GOP dogcatcher anyplace in the freaking country? C'mon, peeps, whether or not he was personally at this political mock draft is irrelevant, and a really lame excuse for the reality that few, if any, Republicans really trust the man who has gone out of his way to piss in the face of the party's base supporters ever since he was denied what he considers to be his inalienable destiny eight years ago.

***Hillary Pandering To The Pimp Culture

I'm endlessly amused by how so many even on the center-right think that Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy is actually going to be a liability for her inevitable coronational procession. Here's the latest example of both.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton finally dropped by Rutgers to meet with the school's women's basketball coach - but the players themselves skipped the half-hour meeting, citing their studies and Imus fatigue.

Clinton had been scheduled to meet with Scarlet Knight coach C. Vivian Stringer and an assistant, and possibly some of the players, Monday to talk with them about Don Imus's "nappy-headed ho" comments.

But that sit-down was postponed due to weather and because the story seemed far less significant after the Virginia Tech killings.

I will acknowledge that her husband would never have received such a snub. Indeed, the entire Rutgers squad would not only have done the photo op with bells on, but may have been eager to render some, um, "Imusian" services to the prez after the cameras were off, if you know what I mean.

But the last sentence pretty much sums up this turn of events. The VT atrocity snapped the public at large back into something approximating proper perspective. Hillary simply didn't strike while the PR iron was still hot enough to sizzle.

That slow-on-the-uptake-ness probably also explains why she absorbed this broadside in, of all places, the ordinarily friendly pages of the Washington Post:

Put me in the camp of those who implore Senator Hillary Clinton to give it back - "it" being the reported $800,000 that's sitting in her presidential campaign coffers thanks to a fundraiser hosted in her honor March 31 in the Pinecrest, FL, home of a huge Clinton fan who refers to himself as Timbaland....

Mrs. Clinton, you may recall, took umbrage at Imus's remarks, branding them "small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism." His words, she said in an e-mail to supporters, "showed a disregard for basic decency and were disrespectful and degrading to African Americans and women everywhere."

Good for her, I say, except it must be asked why she was down in Florida making nice to - and pocketing big bucks from - a rapper whose obscenity-laced lyrics praise violence, perpetuate racist stereotypes and demean black women.

Sure it's hypocritical. What did Colbert King expect? She's Hillary CLINTON. Anybody with that surname has special dispensation to wallow in two-facedness and flagrant contradiction and not only not be challenged on it, but be celebrated for it. "Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can, but you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" Sheesh, it's only been six years and change - have so many Americans, even pundits, really forgotten? And do they think this little foible will matter a hill of beans, heck, even be remembered even a week from now? Or do the vast gaggle of my countrymen really have to be taught that lesson the hard way clear through 2016?

Never mind, if you're not a virgin to this site, you know what my answer is.

***More Front-Loaded Than John Holmes In His Prime

The Nevada GOP has moved its caucus date up to Saturday, January 19, putting it five days after the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 14, and three days before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, January 22. The calender is getting crowded.

The Michigan GOP seems committed to February 5 - or earlier. South Carolina holds its primary on February 2.

Florida remains uncertain, but it could see its vote move up to January 29, which would make it the make-or-break primary of 2008 (and the Sunshine state's radio
and television stations very happy indeed).

So, which state decides to lose all or some of its delegates but make hundreds of millions for its economy and refocus the presidential campaign on its unique issues by moving its vote - to December, 2007, or even one year prior to the presidential vote?

You know, that's Hugh Hewitt's biggest problem - he doesn't think BIG enough. Forget a year prior to the actually presidential election - we should already have held the 2008 election in 2004. We should be hip deep in the 2012 primaries by now. That way Hillary would already be running for re-election before she'd even taken (sorry, re-taken) office. Kind of making official what is already de facto the case.

I will freely admit that I'm probably not nearly as smart as I come across here, or as my tens and tens of fans think I am, but I really don't get why every state is so hell-bent on moving back their primary or caucus to be first or close to it. Maybe it looks good on state commemorative plates or something, I guess. In the mean time it completely pre-empts virtually the entire year by lengthening the general campaign to inhuman interminablity without telling us a blessed thing about the challenger (Hillary is the effective incumbent this cycle). The old six-month primary season gave voters a chance to thoroughly vet candidates before the conventions arrived. The eventual nominee had been through the fires, probably made a few mistakes and survived them, and was much better prepared for the showdown to come that fall.

Seriously, would we get stiffs like Bob Dole or John Kerry or Al Gore under the old primary format? Okay, yeah, we probably would, but would it be nearly that often? And wouldn't people be more likely to follow a process that didn't make them actively (as opposed to passively) nauseous? Isn't that what everbody claims to want to see? How's that facilitated by fifty states re-enacting the political equivalent of Roller Derby?

How ironic is it that Fat Albert is biding his time:

Friends of Al Gore....

Wait a minute - Fat Albert has friends? Since when?

....have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.

Is there such a thing as a fresh left-over? Would that make a Gore-2008 campaign the political equivalent of an underpowered microwave oven?

Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again.

Kinda says something that they aren't working for anybody else in the Donk field, doesn't it? Or perhaps they haven't because they're his [heh] "friends".

Mr. Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case made in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won him an Oscar this year [rimshot].

But, aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, former strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching former campaign staff, including political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr. Gore, 59, but have not been asked to stop.

His denials of interest in the presidency have been couched in terms of "no plans" or "no intention" - politically ambiguous language that does not rule out a run.

One of his former campaign team said: "I was asked whether I would be available towards the end of the year if I am needed. They know he has not ruled out running and if he decides to jump in, he will have to move very fast.

Fat Albert, move fast? Won't that guarantee that he won't be able to stop?

Alright, fat jokes aren't exactly rapier political analysis, but you can't expect me to take any of this seriously. You can't expect me to take Al Gore seriously. If not for the advent of John f-ing Kerry the Tennessee 2x4 would be the singularly most god-awful presidential candidate in the nation's history. A man who, seven years ago, was the incumbent vice president, heir to a popular two-term presidency with the perception (heh) of "peace and prosperity," had every intangible on his side, the wind at his back, and a last minute dirty trick dropped on his opponent as the cherry atop the proverbial sundae, and still couldn't win. What reason is there to believe that The Once and Future Loser would get within a country parsec of the '08 Donk nomination?

Yet voices on this side of the political divide think he can win:

A Gore entry will probably prove fatal to the ambitions of Barack Obama and John Edwards. Both have run on Gore's turf so far, and neither will outshine him with party donors desperate to find a credible alternative to Hillary Clinton. Gore has a great deal more substance than both candidates put together and will almost immediately be the chief challenger on Hillary's left, once he formally enters the race.

Given that Hillary's negatives keep going higher, Gore could easily convince the Democrats that he has more electability than his ex-boss' wife.

Maybe if he "accidentally" sat on her. Or Obama or Opie, for that matter. The only "substantive" difference between Gore and Obama or Edwards is that the former veep has had more practice shoveling BS on the national stage. The only "substance" advantage he has over those two is the size of his waistline.

As for any alleged "electability" advantage over Hillary, there are two tiny obstacles to that assertion: (1) Gore's 2000 defeat and (2) her married surname. Fat Albert couldn't win a rigged election; Clintons never lose them. Dem primary voters won't forget that.

Unlike still other conservative voices, who consider Gore the uncrowned frontrunner:

It has been my view since, oh, January 20th, 2001 that Gore is going to run for President in 2008. He's following the Nixon script:

First, stay out of the limelight for a short while.

Second, start doing the legwork and making the statements which will lock down support from the base of your Party.

Third, while everyone else is eagerly jumping in early, stay back and wait for an opportune moment to jump in for the maximum excitement.

I figure Gore's announcement will come in December...it might come earlier and it might even wait until New Years Day; but it will come, mark my words.

While Obama is causing a bit of a stir, the same cannot be said of any other Democrat out there, especially among the leftwing base of the Democratic Party - think what you will of this not-too-bright Democratic hack, the left thinks of him in messianic terms. When Gore jumps in, the far left will flock to him and it will be this far left which will make Gore an instant frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

To restate the prediction I've been making here on GOP Bloggers since 2005 - Gore will run, Gore will get the nomination and Gore will be crushed in the largest landslide in American history.

"Messianic terms"? Sorry, Mark, you'd have trouble peddling that snake oil even at DNC HQ. Remember, the Donk nominating electorate that chose John Kerry in 2004 did so because Howard "YEEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!" Dean was the alternative. Al Gore is a helluva lot closer to Dean than Kerry (and, if you'll recall, Gore supported Dean back then), and Mrs. Clinton is a helluva lot better national candidate than the Boston Balker could ever be. Besides, do you really think that a party subsumed in the insanity of Bushophobia for the better part of a decade will miss the chance to inflict Hillary Clinton on "Jesusland"?

It makes perfect sense that Gore would try to impersonate Nixon (circa 1968). The man forgot who he was (if he ever did have his own identity) a long, long time ago - which makes it hilariously ironic that he's aping a man so tempermentally like himself. But Nixon was the exception that proved the rule that presidential election losers don't get encores. And it's only the perpetuity of campaign season ubiquity that gives rise to such noodleheaded speculations, and avalanches of keystrokes devoted to "stories" that do...not...matter.

I can save you all a lot of time. In November of 2008 it will be Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama versus Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney. And you know who the winner will be.

Unless you're a virgin to this site. Feel free to pop your membrane on the archival links. It's time more usefully spent than anything Darth Queeg or Fat Albert will be doing over the next year and a half.