Bitter

Something definitely happened to my enthusiasm for this campaign. Happened about a month ago. It's like a switch went off. It's not that I don't believe any more, or that I have more doubts about Obama than I did. I don't. In fact, I think his speech on race, and his general behavior over the last month has been pretty solid. But I no longer believe that the American people will elect him President, and part of me is happy about that. I think the process is going to destroy his chances, I think we're seeing it already, and I think the Main Stream Media, or the Pop Cultural Elite, or the Media, or whatever we want to call it -- I don't think it is ready for Barack Obama. And it's not because of his race. It's because of his intelligence.

The fact is, this guy refuses to pander. Oh sure he goes for votes, he tells people what they want to hear - I happen not to think he does it as often as the others, but that's not my point. My point is, Obama tells people what is genuinely on his mind, he speaks the truth, and then we all get to sit back and wait for people to twist his words, deliberately misconstruing what he intended. Does anyone really think Obama thought Reagan was a better President than Clinton? For that matter, is there anyone who really thinks Clinton was in fact more transformational than Ronnie, which is all, and we all know this, that Barack meant by those remarks? And is there anyone out there who thinks people in America, small towns as well as large, are NOT bitter?

I mean, maybe I am as out of touch and as elitist as Mr. Obama, but I really think we are ALL overplaying this story -- what is the big friggin deal? I really don't get it.... Surely we all agree that many Americans are upset about the direction this country is headed in, and surely we can call those people bitter, and surely a lot of those people vote based not on economic issues but on religious ones, and things like guns and gay marriage, etc,....

This one is really pissing me off, and I don't think I'm alone.

If the media hands this nomination to Hillary Clinton on crap like this, I guarantee you, the speed with which we all go to Hell in a handbasket will only increase.

But of course that's why people like me have avoided getting too involved in politics, because as soon as someone actually speaks to the people with intelligence and a lack of condescension, he or she is portrayed as elitist and out of touch....

I know everyone seems to think the media is for Obama, but I don't see it that way. The status quo will be a lot less rocked if it's Hillary vs. McCain, and also, we'll all get to wallow in her "comeback story"... as if somehow being a Governor's wife for ten years, First Lady for eight, and Senator for seven more, not to mention earning $50 million over the last few years, makes her an underdog to someone no one had ever heard of four years ago and who basically just paid off his student loans...

I am officially disgusted, in case anyone gives a shit....

But then again, this is why I've pulled back the last few weeks, because I am afraid, very afraid, of getting my heart broken...

I post this from France, by the way -- and if it all keeps up this way, maybe I'll stay here...

Why he didn't go to Memphis

There was a terrifying video making its way around the Internets this week. It showed candidate Obama making his way through a Philadelphia street market, hopping into one store after another, doing the usual meet and greets with passersby, customers, and shopkeepers. But there was one man, persistent and just a little off, who kept pestering the Senator for a photograph.

Obama and his people seemed to think the guy was an 'Ebay guy,' there just to get a quick picture and put it on eBay to make money. Not that there's really anything wrong with that - kind of the American dream, to make a quick buck like that -- but the man's persistence was, well, it was more than persistent. Obama said, "You're wearing me down, brother," and when he finally did agree to pose for the guy, he said, "I won't be smiling, because you've been rude...."

The scariest part of the video, to me, was the man afterwards -- standing alone amid a crowd of press, telling anyone who would listen, "I just wanted a photograph, that's all I wanted..." And there was something about his whine, his insistence, his victimy determination that he'd done nothing wrong, that made it virtually impossible not to think of some other "wronged" Americans-- guys with names like Oswald and Chapman and Bremer.

The entire video was really terrifying, because at the back of Obama's campaign, always, lies the unspoken terror -- the threat -- the horrible thought that maybe we haven't come as far as we'd like to think we have. This is not a reason to vote for the guy, of course -- there are plenty of those -- and in fact it sometimes makes it a little more scary to think that he might win.

Could he really survive two full terms?

And would some of his admirers even want him to?

They are ghastly questions, and sometimes I kinda hope he doesn't get there -- and then I stop myself and remember that what makes his campaign great (when it is great -- don't get me started on the bowling) is that it's a campaign that summons forth our hopes, not our fears. He asks us, explicitly, to dream of what's best in all of us, not what's worst.

But I can't shake the nagging feeling...

And I know, as ugly and as awful as the past few months have been, that there's a very good chance we haven't even scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg yet...

A glass half empty

When this campaign began in earnest, I was so excited. I felt amazed, and stunned, that America might elect not a black man, but a smart man - a man who was capable of nuanced thought, and inspirational speeches, who saw the world in shades of gray, who was capable of disagreeing with his opponents without vilifying them... I had a feeling of such tremendous pride, and it was unknown to me as an American. (Yes, Michelle, me and you both.)

I looked at the other Democrats in the race, and I was proud to be kind of a member of the party. I liked Richardson, and Biden is smart, and Dodd looks, well, boring but capable, and Hillary was tough but smart, and Edwards was his usual slippery passionate but totally brilliant self -- and I thought, what a great field! (Sorry, Dennis.)

Then the voting started - and in Iowa, when Obama stunned everyone, I had a feeling of such elation -- could it be possible that we were actually going to do it? Is this what it feels like, I wondered, to be living through something genuinely momentous in American politics?

But now... now....

Now I see this woman's face on a video -- spewing, fighting, desperate, selfish, lying (or sorry, misspeaking), disingenous to the core if such a thing is possible...

And I don't feel optimistic about this country any more. I don't feel hopeful.

The odds of an Obama Presidency are probably no worse today than they were back in Iowa, but I'm having a hard time rooting for him anymore.

All I'm doing now, and I am not proud of it, is rooting against her.

A cornered animal is a dangerous animal

The Clintons really show their true colors when the going gets tough -- you don't even need to look to the 90s ('right wing conspiracy' when everyone and their daughter knew Bill was a hound-dog?) to see that their sense of entitlement and faux outrage will lead them to generate more and more enormous whoppers as their dream of Restoration fades.

It happened before New Hampshire ('the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen,' the narcisissistic tears), in South Carolina (the Jesse Jackson comment, among others, but really too numerous to mention), Ohio and Texas (the 3 AM ad, the 'just words' nonsense - the clang from that 'change you can xerox' line is still thudding around in cyberspace), and now, as Obama gives not just a great political speech, but a truly Presidential address, in its complexity, intelligence, and inspirational calling on all of us to be the best we can be -- how do they respond? By clumsily invoking Obama's lack of patriotism.

Was it McCarthyism? No, I don't think so. (First of all, McCarthy wasn't running for anything.) I don't think President Clinton or Senator Clinton is nearly as Machiavellian as McCarthy was - I think they just can't help themselves. And at a time when of course the Democrats should be coming together -- the math makes it all but impossible for her to win, the country is in a mood for change, the economy is tanking, the Republican nominee admits he knows nothing about the economy, the war is unpopular and a huge drain on said economy, the war-backing Republican is confused about the issues even there -- "Shia? Shiite? Let's call the whole thing off!" -- you have the Clintons desperately, reflexively, instinctively making every argument they can make against Obama, throwing the kitchen sink and every other appliance within reach at the guy.

Part of me thinks, "You know what? Obama just keeps getting stronger and stronger, this is fine, this will all work out...." But another part of me, the part I suppose who actually lived through Bill Clinton's enormously entertaining and, pathologically speaking, fascinating Presidency, wonders, "How, exactly, do we imagine Hillary Clinton conceding?" Is it possible, even in the mind's eye, to conjure a moment where she steps aside gracefully, preserving her party's chances this Fall, her own potential future as an elected official, and her own integrity? I certainly hope so...

But the polls in Pennsylvania, and that state's apparent resistance to newness in its politics (you need to run a few times before the state will elect you, apparently), make the nightmare scenario pretty darn imaginable.... She wins big there. She follows with slight wins in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, and suddenly, his May looks a lot like her February - dismal - and with this new "momentum," people start caring less and less about total delegate counts or even total popular vote counts -- and now he's the one on the defensive, and she has that cocky, appealing swagger she showed on Saturday Night Live -- she's got nothing left to lose now...

And somehow, between the end of the primaries and Denver, nearly three months later, she has recaptured, despite all the missteps of her faulty campaign, despite the nonsense and exaggeration and lies ('dodging sniper fire in Bosnia'?! really?) despite the fact that the Republicans still make no secret of the fact that they would still much rather run against her than him, despite all of it, she has recaptured the pre-voting sense of inevitability that surrounded her campaign, and so she sails into Denver like a champion, engineers a gentle, if brutal, coup, allows Barack Obama one more grand, glorious moment in the sun (he gives a Wednesday night concession speech that brings tears to the eyes, a sense of 'what might have been' that is physically painful), and then accepts the nomination - her crowning moment - whereupon she drives the Democratic Party into a grand, glorious defeat against the eminently beatable John McCain.

So watch out. These next few weeks will be ugly.

The Ides of March

Ides is only a word in the plural, first of all. Go ahead, just try playing 'ide' in Scrabulous....

We get on a plane tomorrow - what could be better, a vacation with the family? I'll tell you what -- the vacation having already started, that's what could be better. There is simply no getting around the fact that at this point in my life, I hate to fly. I can no longer pretend it's exciting, or fun, to get inside an aluminum tube and hurtle down the runway at speeds four or five times what I'd be comfortable driving, and then, through some combination of physics and faith that I have no way of understanding, somehow, miraculously, lift into the air and fly -- all under the leadership of a man I have never met, who I imagine is not unlike the Bill Daly neighbor in Bob Newhart's show -- this is the man we put our faith in? This is the man we entrust our lives to? This, this clown? This sidekick?

No sir. Not a fan at all.

I had planned to write about this epidemic of quitting in the campaign - if you say something bad, even remotely bad, my campaign will force you to quit, and vice versa... Geez. Once again I cite the words of the great Deval Patrick -- they are just words...

But the Ides have conquered me. Beware 'em.

A masterstroke

David Plouffe (which is a really great last name -- I am assuming it rhymes with doof as opposed to soufflé, though either would be just fine) pulled a really brilliant move today, as we head into six weeks of unprecedented non-electing. He basically drew the Clinton camp into a fight over the meaning of Pennsylvania. He said, being I think only marginally disingenuous, that Pennsylvania isn't that important, that there are ten contests left, that they are each important in their own way, etc... The Clinton camp took the bait and said something to the effect of, "If Barack Obama can't win Pennsylvania, how can he win in November?" The Clinton camp basically went on record as saying the winner of Pennsylvania should get the nomination. Well guess what? Obama is down about 20 points in the polls, but he has spent virtually no time in the state yet. He's got six weeks. He was down twenty in Texas, and closed the gap in about three weeks.

I think he spends the next six weeks like this: Hit Pennsylvania hard in week one. Then travel to some of the others that follow in week Two (North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon, etc...). Week Three: a trip to Europe to meet with leaders of the other countries of the world and show he knows what their names are. Weeks 4, 5, and 6 back in the USA, campaigning hard, picking up endorsements from superdelegates, and a final week endorsement from John Edwards. He wakes up on Wednesday, April 23, and we all celebrate Shakespeare's birthday, and an Obama victory in the Keystone state.

Game, set, match.

The Waiting Game

It happens every time.

My company pitches an idea to a network, the network likes the idea enough to fund what's known as a 'pitch reel,' we get the money and produce the reel (excellently, if I do say so myself, with a lot of supervision from our contact at said network), and we hand in the reel and are told by our contact that we have a good chance of 'going to series.' ('Going to series' means 'Nick and his family get to eat.')

Then - nothing. A total and utter mystery what they are doing over there. Has our contact even shown it to 'The Group'? Sometimes, we are told something like 'I'm showing it to The Group on Wednesday morning.' Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon rolls around... It's Wednesday at 5:47 PM.... No word from the contact. Did they love it? Hate it? Still arguing about it? That could be good, there's passion in the room, a good sign!

It is enough, needless to say, to drive yourself crazy.

Because nine times out of ten, you will find out, usually in a casual phone call from the contact on Friday (if you have yourself managed to avoid calling him - you don't want to look too desperate!) that, oh, The Group got bogged down in other stuff, it wasn't the right time, I'm gonna show it in two weeks...

So you try not to think about it.

That's what's happening. Right now.