The devil I'm referring to is Hillary Clinton. Stay with me, you'll see what I mean.
We
just celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Union victory at
Gettysburg. The victory was historic, but at the time it was a tad bittersweet.
At that point, Lincoln had been very patient as his generals blocked Robert E.
Lee’s attempts to invade the north, but he kept telling the generals that it
was time to get off the defensive, cross the line of scrimmage, and get down
into enemy territory and crush the confederacy once and for all. Lincoln was
stuck in an asymmetrical world, in which the enemy’s generals were willing to
cross into the north, but his own generals were reluctant or somehow incapable
of charging charge south and take Richmond. The game always seemed to be moving
only in one direction.
When
his latest general, Meade, won the Gettysburg fight, he sent a message to
Lincoln, bragging that he had driven the southerners from “our soil”. Lincoln
went ballistic: the whole point of the war was that every bit of the country, north
and south, was “our soil”. He didn’t want Meade to merely keep Pennsylvania
safe for democracy: he wanted Meade to get off his ass, get to the Potomac, and
destroy Lee for good. Meade failed, he was fired, and Grant was brought to
replace him. Grant understood that Lincoln required him to cross the line of
scrimmage into enemy territory and destroy the enemy. Which he did.
By
the same token, today our current political universe is not symmetrical. One
army is crossing the line into the other’s territory, but the other team isn’t
attacking back in the other direction.
Despite
the fact that the American people have said in poll after poll that they prefer
liberal policies to conservative policies, on everything from gay rights to
abortion to taxation, the conservatives still have an unnatural advantage.
Conservatives believe in crossing the line of scrimmage and attacking the other
team in its own territory. The liberals don’t.
Conservatives
have been hard at work trying to push their extremist policies in enemy
territory, the blue states, pushing destructively low taxes in California,
making democracy a whites-only proposition in Michigan, crushing unions in
Wisconsin, cutting abortion rights in Ohio. But liberals don’t attack in the
other direction: once those southern states, formerly bastions of the
Democratic party, were snatched away by the GOP, the liberals gave up and wrote
off most of the south. Even though there are millions of blacks and Hispanics
and women and gays and people with brains down there, who loathe the
conservative movement and its bigoted leaders. Even though they cringe when
they see Confederate flags on all those license plates. Even though a number of
those states could have been grabbed by the Democrats with a little effort.
Almost
like the Amish, the extremists want to create little enclaves all across the
country, where no liberals or liberal ideas can penetrate. In their
neighborhoods, a black or brown person is seen immediately as an intruder (if
you don’t believe me, ask Trayvon’s mother). The only news they see is Fox; the
only news they hear is Rush. They have a nice reliable high school principal
who is willing to expel, with dispatch, any silly little girl who admits to
being a lesbian or an atheist or wants to play football or wear a feather in
her hair at graduation. Recently one of these upstanding conservatives
expressed horror that, one day in front of the TV watching a harmless cooking
channel, he was a little too slow with the remote, and his daughter actually
saw two lesbian cooks with one arm around the other!
But
at the same time, conservatives want the freedom to go outside those enclaves
and peddle their own ideas to folks on the outside, who have said repeatedly
that they don’t want them. They not only want creationism and sex ed taken away
from my daughters, they actually come down the street to my house to try to
convert my girls into gay-bashing little Baptist shits like them (they failed
disastrously). Their notion of a good thing, again, is that they can cross the
line of scrimmage into liberal territory and go poaching, but any liberals who
tiptoe across the line of scrimmage into their enclaves get lynched.
It’s
exactly like the strategy Condoleeza Rice announced for Iraq: clear, hold,
build. Clear an area of terrorists, hold that area, and then build outward from
there until every area is “safe”. Conservatives look at everyone who disagrees
with them the way the Bush gang looked at Iraqi terrorists: conservatives
intend to clear their enclaves of any suspect people or ideas, and then use
those enclaves as “forward operating bases” to go out into “enemy territory”,
eliminate the enemy, and replace the bad liberal mojo with the good
conservative kind.
They
want it both ways, and we let them. Washington, same thing, asymmetrical. When
the Republicans run the Senate, 51 votes can pass a bill. When the Democrats
run the Senate, the Republicans attack with the filibuster, and it takes 60
votes for passage. And we let them get away with it.
Currently
the quarter of the country that consists of insane extremists and their
enablers is making policy for the other three quarters – because only that
crazy one quarter is willing to go on offense, to cross the line of scrimmage
and actually run a play. The rest of the country is led by people like…Harry
Reid. A walking Viagra ad.
Because of liberal spinelessness, the conservatives have
overreached egregiously, on voting rights, on gays, on abortion, on unions –
and they have made clear their intent to attack contraception next, which is a
truly amazing thing to observe in the 21st century. There will never
be a better time for the liberals to go on offense. And the first play:
throw the bomb. Attack in Texas. Thirty eight electoral votes that the liberals
ignore every four years. But not anymore.
Texas
has plenty of liberals in places like Austin and San Antonio. They elected a
lesbian mayor in Houston. They have a small army of women, blacks, Latinos,
gays, liberals, people with brains. But those people never turn out on election
day: Texas is dead last, 51st, in voter turnout. The first party that gets off their butts and registers
those voters owns the state. Let’s see to it that the liberals get there first.
The timing for an attack in Texas is perfect. Rick Perry’s
thug-like stance on the abortion bill has backfired badly: currently, Texas men
are out in the streets campaigning for the rights of Texas women, which is even
more important because it reinforces the need for all these groups who are
getting screwed over – blacks, women, gays – to unite and support each others’
causes. A majority of Texans say that they don’t like the Perry abortion bill,
they say they even support background checks on guns, which is a real shocker
for Texas, and they want the legislature to stop with this abortion nonsense
and focus on the economy: a candidate like Wendy Davis who runs on exactly that
platform can go as far as she wants.
Like Rip Van Winkle, Texas liberals are finally awakening from
their forty-year slumber. They are working to register voters, and keeping
political money at home instead of sending it to other states. They are ready
to fight.
And they have a perfect target in the mentally-underpowered Rick
Perry. As a 12-year governor, he has clearly stayed onstage too long. He knows
he’s a vulnerable lightweight: he embarrassed himself in the 2012 presidential
debates and refused to debate at all in the 2010 gubernatorial primary fight.
His performance had his poll numbers in the tank even before the abortion
fiasco. If he didn’t have future ambitions he never would have tangled with the
abortion mess -- the abortion issue shows clearly that, as unpopular as he is
at home and across the country, he is likely to run for the governor’s chair
again, and then go national in 2016, either at the top of the ticket or
possibly angling for the VP slot. The GOP has a long list of Neanderthal VP
candidates like him, Agnew and Quayle, Cheney and Palin, so he would fit right
in the list. The dream scenario is to let him run for the White House in 2016
and crush him, but an even better plan might be for Wendy Davis to spank him
right in his home state, as he richly deserves.
Wendy Davis’ jihad against the abortion bill is handy in another
sense: it completely exposed the GOP’s hypocrisy on filibusters. McConnell runs
a hundred filibusters, and it’s democracy in action. Wendy does it once, and
it’s mob rule.
And the person to lead the attack in Texas and across the south
is Hillary. Hillary is the strongest candidate the liberals have, by a mile.
Polls show she can beat Perry in Texas and beat Rubio and Jeb Bush in Florida
too. A lot of people are pushing her to run. Ruth Bader Ginsberg laughed off
attempts to persuade her to retire while Obama is still around to pick her
replacement: Ginsberg is clearly hoping for another liberal president to follow
Obama, and who better than Hillary?
A key reason Hillary should run, is that there are a lot of
pissed-off women out there. First of all, some are pissed that Hillary isn’t
president already. Meanwhile, in the last year, legislatures declared war on
women’s rights to abortion and – amazingly -- contraception, Republicans
insulted Tammy Duckworth and made stupefying comments about rape, persecuted
high school girls for being gay or wanting to play football, and made
tremendously condescending comments about female candidates: Hillary is from
the Golden Girls, Wendy Davis is the Teen Mom, McConnell’s new opponent is The
Cheerleader, and they even threw a hissy fit over Ashley Judd who never even
got in the race. The more women we have running, the more the conservatives
will act like penises. They look afraid, and they should be. But these guys have
been launching nasty negative attacks for so long, that they don’t realize that
an endless series of insults aimed at female candidates is eventually going to
ruin them.
And of course if Hillary (a) announces a presidential run, and (b) does it right in Texas, the conservatives will so completely embarrass themselves attacking her, that the blowback will kill them all.
In a nation where 1500 girls are already playing football at
school, and other high school girls are going places no American girl has gone
before, remember that in 2016 something like six million of those girls will be
old enough to vote. Start recruiting them now! Tell them NOW that the Hillary
Train is coming down the track, and that it’s time to get on board!
Along with a couple of million first-time Latino voters. Ditto!
Rope em, hogtie em, brand em with a big D!
You know who else could be rounded up? Religious people! Even among practicing Christians, only 20-30 percent are the hard-core literalists who want to drag the nation back into the middle ages: the other 70-80 percent are moderates who are quite likely embarrassed by the far-right loons, and willing to be asked, at least, to support liberals and moderates.
Because the politicians who are condemned by the far right as liberals, are really moderates, peddling policies that Republicans liked back in the old days. Time and again, today's conservatives have slammed Obama for proposing bills which originated with the old-school moderate Republicans. The religious people who are NOT insane would probably be okay with a moderate peddling that sort of platform.
You know who else could be rounded up? Religious people! Even among practicing Christians, only 20-30 percent are the hard-core literalists who want to drag the nation back into the middle ages: the other 70-80 percent are moderates who are quite likely embarrassed by the far-right loons, and willing to be asked, at least, to support liberals and moderates.
Because the politicians who are condemned by the far right as liberals, are really moderates, peddling policies that Republicans liked back in the old days. Time and again, today's conservatives have slammed Obama for proposing bills which originated with the old-school moderate Republicans. The religious people who are NOT insane would probably be okay with a moderate peddling that sort of platform.
So, that’s the strategy: Hillary in Texas, and then Georgia,
Missouri, the Carolinas, Florida. Even in Mississippi, if 6 percent of the vote
had swung from Red to Blue, Obama, a black black black candidate who never even
campaigned in the state, would have made Mississippi blue. Woah. As Lincoln
said to about half a dozen of his generals, the south is begging to be invaded
– go down there and crush the enemy! They richly deserve it! Cross the line of
scrimmage!
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