Hillary & the Ghost Gain NH

Ye goode folke of New Hampshire showed that they were not going to led around by the nose, not by enthusiastic young Iowans or their evangelical counterparts, not by the sexist, Clinton-hating media, not by the legions pollsters to whom they sold at least one good New England yarn (Barack Obama up by 9 points). Actually, the working-class and elderly female voters of the Granite State demonstrated via the ballot that they haven't given up on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (at right, Chicagotribune.com)--was it the debate? the tears? Bill's outburst? the attacks on Obama?--no one else should either. Those Clintons are tenacious folks! The New Hampshirites gave her enough of a margin to eke out a win over Senator Odreamy (who won Cheshire County, home of the city of Keene, naturally), and remind the rest of the country that this primary season isn't over yet. While I doubt I'd have voted for Clinton in this particular contest, I'm glad that she won in part because I do want Obama to recognize it's not going to be a crowd surf to victory, as his comments and the emails from his campaign acolytes suggest, and because her victory upsets the media's all-too-premature prediction of her campaign's end. The gasbags were really feasting on her breakdown, proposed campaign reshuffle, Bill's tirade, all of it. On the other hand, she and Bill had better watch the nasty crap and white ops they were planning on Obama, because not only the GOP, but the media, have shown that she'll be an even more inviting target if she gets the nomination. As it is, the 16-year media assault on her husband, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other major Democrats, has already hit her hard, so just as Obama ought to watch the right-wing frames, she should be careful about rhetoric about his fickleness and effectiveness. She's already being portrayed as a cuff-holding weathervane as it is.

On the GOP side, the media fave, 71-year-old warmonger John McCain (who looks like a ghost to me) finished first ahead of the Man Who Keeps Falling to Earth, Mitt Romney. According to a figure I read on someone else's blog, Romney's spent more than either Clinton or Obama, and has yet to finish above second, but he has money to burn, so he'll probably hang around until it's clear that the Southern preacher and ex-gov, Mike Huckabee, has the lock. (A fast fact: only one GOP president has ever been born in a former Confederate state--they're all from the Northeast, Midwest (mostly Ohio), or West--Dwight Eisenhower, who was born in Texas; with Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky native, they're the only two Southern-born Republicans presidents. The Decider Guy, like his father, was born in New England.) Rudy Giuliani finished just marginally above Ron Paul, and I know the word is he's waiting around till the delegate-rich super-primary day, but he should do us all a favor and drop out now. BE. GONE. He is not positioning himself as the socially moderate--though viciously racist--Republican he was as New York mayor, but has kept only the crazed neocon part, and there are already enough of those in the Republican field, so why stay on? I know Fox News and many GOP business types love him, but surely they see he's not going to beat out a former POW warmonger; a multimillionaire flipflopper; and a guy who's suggested hosting revivals on the White House lawn. Right? Maybe Huckabee can offer us a preview down in South Carolina, say in Columbia or Greenville or somewhere else. I think people should see what they might be getting. Then he can jam with a rock band and give a speech about how he's not a primate. Or something equally colorful!

Yesterday, a claque of bipartisanophiles met in Norman, Oklahoma to chatter about how they want to hold the 2008 election hostage unless the nominees--meaning the Democratic nominee, meaning Hillary Clinton--pledge to be bipartisan, whatever that's supposed to mean, or else they're going to unleash liberal Democrat-passing-as-Republican-but-now-independent Mike Bloomberg on us. Since he's a multibillionaire and his business is thriving so he could easily spend $500-750 million on a vanity campaign and enthrall the punditocracy, draw lots of moderate Democratic voters (or more than the few moderate Republicans out there), and perhaps throw the race to the GOP, who've demonstrated over the last seven years that their right-wing ideology is a complete and abject failure in every way, except for effecting a net transfer of even more wealth to global conglomerates and the mega-rich. Not that the Democrats in Congress haven't enabled them at every step, because they have, but then isn't that bipartisanship? Isn't that the very bipartisanship that got us into Iraq and permitted the lies about 9/11 and warrantless wiretapping and the outing of a covert CIA agent and legalized torture, without any penalties or a real threat of impeachment, and passed the Patriot Act and the bankruptcy bill and Cheney's energy bill, and abandoned New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and...well, I guess the Pro-Bipartisans are convinced we must have more of the same. More, more, more. Except that Obama is promising a bipartisan revel that will CHANGE the mess we find ourselves in and pass progressive legislation. Not the proto-fascist stuff we've seen. Hmm. Cognitive-dissonance meter registering strong wave effect.

So let's see if these jerks, led by former Senator David Boren, a dear frien of the Bushes, decide to act out. In the meantime, congratulations to Hillary.

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And then there's this very important case looming at the Supreme Court. You see, W hasn't failed at everything. He has managed to pack the courts, including the Supreme Court, with hardcore right-wingers from now till Kingdom come, as my relatives used to love to say. Another reason not to ever grow complacent.