Hillary Clinton’s second inevitable triumphal march to the Democratic nomination is even more depressing than her first one. At least eight years ago there was an ascendant star, a rare political phenom, with a smooth manner and glitzy style. Once Obama got traction there really was no way to stop him. To paraphrase one of his own gnomic gems: he was the one everyone was waiting for.
This time it is so different. This time Hillary may finally get the nomination — after a life in politics, cashing in on a generation or two of IOUs, deploying her army of gender warriors, leaning on her cohorts in the liberal press, dusting off Bill and sending him out to rouse or agitate the dwindling number of true believers. She has every possible means of campaign support, from the fear she inspires among her allies, to the Clinton hold on much of the party, to some of the most wicked campaign doctors in the business, all fused and fired by her own ardent, fever-ridden ambition and preternatural sense of pure entitlement. Remember: IT IS HER TURN.
But with all that, and with the lock on the numbers she strong-boxed from the outset — those mummified super delegates — she is barely crawling her way to the convention, being bested in primary after primary, by one of the most unlikely, ungainly, unhip and unscripted candidates in a presidential election ever: the awesome socialist septuagenarian Bernie Sanders.
Grandpa Walcott is out-campaigning her in almost every way that should count. The young flock to him, likely not realizing Bernie’s style and message is so greatly a throwback to days and themes long abandoned. He’s the Antiques Roadshow of American politics. Sanders could have tuned Pete Seeger’s guitar, he has the walk and talk of an era long past in America, the drab, cheerless days of the post-Depression U.S. He is almost madly “out of joint” with the times and yet here he is, the Pied Piper of the iPhone millennial, revving them up by the thousands while Hillary can barely cart in a few hundred to her dreary, flat, contrived events.
In her dreams he’s The Monster from the Lagoon. However many times she outmanoeuvres him — losing a state but winning more delegates — he emerges wet and dazzled, yet more energized than before, pledging he’s in it for the win. And every time she mumbles his obituary, he stretches forth his arm, rouses his legions with another It’s all Rigged I Tell You stem-winder. He just won Indiana and West Virginia. He’s heading to a win in Oregon. Unthinkably, it is said he may win California. None of this was supposed to be.
He racks up majorities — she issues another alibi for why she lost. He stirs their hearts — she runs through another of her static, bloodless “look at the math” updates that wearies even that few who really want her to win.
All the fire, all the belief, all the enthusiasm, all — curiously — the novelty and freshness is with white-haired Bernie. So if Hillary does win, if after a string of state losses, after a blundering, scandal-plagued, email-tormented, Benghazi-haunted campaign she limps, staggeringly and breathlessly, across the finish line ahead, where, really, is she? Where her party?
The Democrats are playing against the laws of cause and effect. Hillary’s campaign is dead, and she’s winning. Bernie’s is alive, and he’s losing. How can such things be? Should she actually win the nomination, as all the journalists and pundits keep telling us she will and must, the Democratic party will have said “No!” to enthusiasm, inspiration and excitement. They will have said no to Bernie’s peoples’ campaign, and re-embraced the cynical, entitled, passionless politics of the Clinton machine.
This would be a curious strategy even in normal times. Up against Trump the Implacable it is wildly out of tune. Sanders has played fair. He has treated Hillary with respect, even deference. He threw out an assault on her outstanding weakness — the secret server and all its classified emails. He took, insofar as one can in this era, the high road. If she is still just barely winning, what hope can she really have when He Who Knows No Boundaries Whatsoever steps us to work his inexplicable magic?
The finest poet of the century just past has phrased the question more pointedly: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches towards (Washington) to be born?
National Post