Manifested in Psychobabble

By Molly Ivors

Well, after the tongue-bath Joe Biden gave McCain's wrinkled ass the other day, I have no qualms about saying what I think has been obvious to a lot of people: I believe it really would have been better for the party and the country if Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton for VP. Aside from thumbing your nose at 18 million voters—the vast majority of whom will vote for you anyway, but less enthusiastically—I was assured that the Biden pick was great because he had foreign policy experience and was a pit bull who would face down any and all negative campaigning. But he took the first week of Palin-mania to cuddle up to McCain. As I understand it, that's what pit bulls do to their owners, not those who pose threats to their owners. Whatever. How are all those bankruptcies going?

More dismayingly, it has freed Maureen Dowd to invent another in her line of patented Bullshit Scenarios™ between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, in an imaginary 2012 where these voracious women have dispatched the men who helped them get into office and are now head-to-head. She dubs them "the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits" (the comparative number of adjectives tells you where her oatmeal-sharp wit really wants to sink its blade, of course). Dowd can't give up the idea that she and she alone recognizes the dark underside of the junior Senator from New York, and she tries hard not to reveal that, despite the fact that Palin is certifiably insane about science, a retrograde cultural throwback, proudly ignorant red meat for the christianist base, and violent and heavily armed in the bargain, she "gets" it. And for that, MoDo reluctantly admires her.

PALIN: I've got a little news flash for you, Hillary. Your night-shift, blue-collar-waitress, boilermaker routine didn't fool me. It's in your polls but it's in my D.N.A. I've actually been up at 3 a.m. — gutting moose. While you got to go to your snooty Wellesley, I had to switch colleges six times in six years. While you got to go to Yale Law, I had to enter beauty contests and turn my back to judges in a bathing suit to get scholarship money.

CLINTON: I've got a little news flash for you, Annie Oakley. Dinosaurs disappeared a lot longer than 4,000 years ago. I admit you've had a profound influence on America, and I'm not just talking about all the women wearing up-dos and rimless titanium $375 Kazuo Kawasaki designer frames. You and John are now at war with four countries — Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden has opened a storefront in a strip mall in Pakistan to make TV ads.

PALIN: Those wars are tasks from God.

CLINTON: You said you wanted to help women, but you've only hurt them with your silly mantra that women can have it all if they just work harder and pray harder. You put Medicare on eBay. You cut funding for special-needs children. The Dobson Supreme Court has outlawed abortion, evolution and gun control. With sex education banned, baby bumps in high schools are rampant. And the head of your Abstinence Outreach Program, Levi Johnston, has failed to force any other teenage fathers to marry their prom dates.

PALIN: Life is always welcome. Unless it's on four legs.

Maureen knows, deep in her heart, that Clinton is smarter, sharper, and more in tune with reality. But Our Mo is shallow to the core, and so the Attack of the Eye Creatures hair and the glasses (honestly, it never occurred to me to look them up) impress her. She isn't quite so far removed from reality to think that Palin has any, you know, qualifications, but her hatred of all things Clinton is so ingrained that she really can't help herself, I think. And make no mistake, that's bad for all of us.

UPDATE: Apparently, Biden's performance on Meet the Press did nothing to alter the basic thesis here.

Comments

[eddie]

If Obama had chosen Clinton, McCain wouldn't have chosen Palin.

If your grandmother had wheels, what kind of car would she be?

[Molly Ivors]

If Obama had chosen Clinton, McCain wouldn't have chosen Palin.

And that would have been an objectively good thing.

[DrDick]

Why do you torment yourself this way? MoDo rots the brain and destroys the soul. You deserve so much better. After all, your teenage daughter did not get knocked up by a high school dropout "fuckin' redneck."

[Bloix]

Have you already forgotten that Hilary said that two candidates - herself and McCain - were qualified to be C of C and that Obama was not? That comment among others made it impossible for Obama to choose her. And why do you think she would be any tougher on him than Biden?

[Molly Ivors]

Bloix,
She was not running against McCain at the time. Biden is.

And you want to give me "impossible" with Palin on a major ticket? Give me a break. It's politics.

[b]

No. Hillary never sucked John Sidney's balls like Biden now does

[rootless-e]

So Lanny Davis, Hillary's old friend, who wrote an Op-ed explaining that Hillary and Sidney should run on a unity ticket would have disappeared? Mark Penn, who worked for Charlie Black would have disappeared?

Resentment is no substitute for thinking.

[Righteous Bubba]

I believe it really would have been better for the party and the country if Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton for VP.

Well if Hillary's campaign hadn't been run by shitbags hired by Hillary who knows what kind of rainbow coalition could have been mustered?

[Me]

I don't get why you're saying that Biden is sucking McCain's balls. He prefaces his attacks with the pro forma "He's a fine American" it's true, but I honestly haven't sensed him holding back. Indeed, I like the fact he refers to him as "John" in these attacks--it gives the impression that he's disappointed in a friend having gone wrong. He's able to attack without seeming too vicious.

Remember, it's not us he has to convince.

[El Cid]

Pardon me, but what evidence from the primary suggests that Hillary would fail to give McCain such a tongue-bathing, excepting a partly mythological view of her toughness? I've seen a great deal of her zeal at employing rhetorical opposition and sneering at fellow Democrats, but I just haven't seen her with that zeal against McCain or Republicans in general. Am I missing something?

[actor212]

If Obama had chosen Clinton, McCain wouldn't have chosen Palin.

And that would have been an objectively good thing.

I'm not sure I agree with either end of this premise.

First, I think Palin was the choice, whether it was Obama or Clinton. McCain would have had to prove his commitment to shaking things up.

Second, Sarah Palin will only prove to be a goldmine of progressive goodness as the election nears.

[rootless-e]

I guess what pisses me off about your Junior Modo Act is that there are so many other Hillary supporters I know who are out registering voters, making calls, raising money, organizing, donating technical skills, and so on, and not sitting on the sidelines reinforcing republican themes.

[Zap Rowsdower]

I guess what pisses me off about your Junior Modo Act is that there are so many other Hillary supporters I know who are out registering voters, making calls, raising money, organizing, donating technical skills, and so on, and not sitting on the sidelines reinforcing republican themes.

Lame.

Not to speak for Molly, but you treat her as some BTD, Taylor Marshian. Your bit is good, but the smear is unfounded.

[Jemand von Niemand]

I wanted to see an Obama-Clinton ticket. Biden seemed a not unreasonable choice, but his ass-kissing display was embarrassing.

What I'm left with now is a quizzical impatience towards the Dems, after a week of Thug Chimps hurling their own body waste at us via the teevee: Why haven't Our Side stepped down, hard, on Grumpy & Kitten?

Whatever you may feel about Hillary, I don't see her spending more than eight seconds recognizing McCain's character or prior national service, before she gave him a political colonoscopy without anesthetic. Certainly, she wouldn't have kissed his ass.

This may just reflect my desire to see Our Side come out swinging, and make the Thugs eat every bite of the pie they've baked in the last eight-plus years. But Obama-Clinton; man, that would've been something.

[Supertroy]

"Whatever you may feel about Hillary, I don't see her spending more than eight seconds recognizing McCain's character or prior national service, before she gave him a political colonoscopy without anesthetic. "

And then she would have spent the balance of her time offering a lame assed narrowly parsed excuse as to why she's attacking St. John now when she spent so much time giving John McCain's wrinkly old ass a tounge bath during the primaries.

Really, are you guys so enamored with Hillary that you don't see how she painted herself into a corner on that?

[Righteous Bubba]

the smear is unfounded.

Yeah that was low.

[Jemand von Niemand]

The political colonoscopy would (because it's my fantasy; so there) take the form of hitting the Thugs on the issues -- taking the focus of the campaign off of Grumpy and Kitten's bleating about values and who did what with miniature American flags. And Hillary could do that on the issues without backtracking from any prior, positive personal comments about McCain.

And fantasy or not, for a politician at Hillary's level that kind of delivery is a simple rhetorical flourish. Biden could have done that himself.

He didn't. He did exactly the opposite, and that's the point of bringing up Hillary, I think.

Not to speak for Molly, but you treat her as some BTD, Taylor Marshian. Your bit is good, but the smear is unfounded.

Actually Taylor Marsh is fighting for our common goal now. She's not re-fighting old fights or using demeaning terms for the Democratic candidates.

[El Cid]

Ignoring any looking back on the primary, at this time I assume Hillary Clinton would much prefer to make yet another historical achievement and have her name on the nation's first national health-care system that she can create, shepherd, and pass under a President Obama, and stop having to fight for health care reform and actually get it.

[Incontinentia Buttocks]

It seems to me that the ass kissing, such as it is, is Biden staying on message.

Don't like this level of praise for McCain? Blame the top of the ticket. This has been Obama's approach all along. And given what a tight ship he runs, I cannot imagine him having put anyone on the ticket who wouldn't play along.

As for Hillary Clinton, as has been noted upthread, she has already shown a propensity for McCain ass-kissing during the primary campaign. No reason she'd behave differently left to her own devices, let alone as the bottom half of a ticket with Obama (or as the top half of a ticket, for that matter).

Also, much as I love your blogging, Molly (and I really do), what rootless-e said!

[Molly Ivors]

there are so many other Hillary supporters I know who are out registering voters, making calls, raising money, organizing, donating technical skills, and so on, and not sitting on the sidelines reinforcing republican themes.

Gee, the candidate whose campaign I'm managing might beg to differ.

[Falstaff]

One thing I don't see covered here is my own suspicion -- I have no basis for thinking this, it's just a feeling -- that Obama asked Clinton to run with him, and she turned him down. (As I suspect, if he did ask, he knew she would.)

And, honestly, that was the best move all around. Why the hell would Senator Clinton want to be Vice President of the United States? Apart from it being the boobie prize (oh, lord. That was unintentional) of elected offices, it means she gets taken out of the fight. That's been the case ever since the Senate decided to punish John Adams for getting too involved in their debates and banned the VP from doing anything but presiding when the Senate's in session.

I want her where she belongs -- down on the Senate floor kicking ass, not up on the dais gavelling the occasional tiebreaker. I agree that Biden's not the choice we'd all prefer, but the Senate can afford to lose him to the dais. We need Clinton, though, especially with Kennedy ill.

[rootless-e]

"Gee, the candidate whose campaign I'm managing might beg to differ."

in that case, i apologize. But your insistence on throwing matches in the gas tank still seems deeply misguided.

[res ipsa loquitur]

More dismayingly, it has freed Maureen Dowd to invent another in her line of patented Bullshit Scenarios™ between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin,

As if Dowd would not have invented another in her line of patented Bullshit Scenarios™ between HRC and Palin if HRC had been the VP? Please.

[Molly Ivors]

res,
Well, it's true there's no managing MoDo's fantasy life.

[actor212]

And then she would have spent the balance of her time offering a lame assed narrowly parsed excuse as to why she's attacking St. John now when she spent so much time giving John McCain's wrinkly old ass a tounge bath during the primaries.

Nonsense. We're talking about the Clintons here, who as the Obombers were quick to point out during the primaries, would stab anyone in the back.

Buyer's remorse sucks, don't it?

[Jemand von Niemand]

...there's no managing MoDo's fantasy life.

Actually, there will be soon. I understand Mo will be licensing her life as an online RPG similar to Second Life.

Sources whisper it will resemble a fusion between the films "Zardoz" and Election; Mo will play a character who looks like Tracey Flick but acts like Sean Connery.

[Lawnguylander]

Buyer's remorse sucks, don't it?

I wouldn't know but it can't be nearly as bad as sour grapes.

And El Cid, how dare you call into question Clinton's toughness? Don't you know she's a fighter? I must have read that in a million different fucking blog posts and comments during the primaries so it must be true. Let's see you employ racist dog whistles while trying to maintain plausible deniability, tough guy!

[Molly Ivors]

Sources whisper it will resemble a fusion between the films "Zardoz" and Election; Mo will play a character who looks like Tracey Flick but acts like Sean Connery.

I thought it was more of a Sex and the City meets Tomb Raider kind of thing.

Reality isn't her strong suit.

Keep demonizing the Clintons if you feel the need to, as you clearly do. But you know, you might not do as well with some wan figure like Sebellius shadowing Palin. Just a thought.

For another good reason to be cautious about Biden, read Hecate.

[Jemand von Niemand]

I thought it was more of a Sex and the City meets Tomb Raider kind of thing.

Listen Up -- Important safety tip for the PDA crowd: Do not surf blog comments on your Blackberry while in a meeting which places you at risk of coffee coming out of your nose.

Other meeting participants may not ken the simeultaneous choking and laughing which may result.

You, of course, may have nasal pasages of steel. You think, That warning's for losers and wimps -- but there it is, kids. Just FYI.

[mds]

First, I think Palin was the choice, whether it was Obama or Clinton.

Yeah, there have been reports that the Dobsonites vetoed McCain's preference of Lieberman and handed him Palin's name. Not because she's a woman, but because she's a bloodthirsty anti-science anti-choice Christian Zionist sociopath. So if it wasn't "See? We picked a woman," it would have been, "See? We picked a decent woman."

[Molly Ivors]

So if it wasn't "See? We picked a woman," it would have been, "See? We picked a decent woman."

Absolutely. Because decent = heavily armed.

[skippy]

i believe it really would have been better for the party and the country if obama had chosen hillary clinton for vp.

just what i said, only i said it the frickin' day he announced biden as his veep.

i even went a little farther: worst vice presidential pick ever.

[Mo MoDo]

I think you are being a little hard on the Dowdster. She gave all the best lines to FauxHillary. It shows that she would rather have Cllinton than Palin. Which is a big admission for her.