Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

The saw as it had attached itself to what I remember had some comedian dishing on Whoopi Goldberg and it went thusly:

"She's not funny." [audience boos]
"Oh, come on. You know I'm right. What? An entire nation is afraid to hurt her feelings?"

No mistaking that on the Wednesday after a razor thin majority of voters in Texas [and a slightly larger grouping in Ohio] has decided to not hurt SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON [to write it any other way gives rise to the paranoiac delusions of the forgotten tribes of perpetually aggrieved 55+ year old women] and her feelings, the rest of us are sitting in a residue of reality that the over-compensating media, tastemakers and established guard types clearly care nothing for.

A win streak of 12, and small, single-digit loses in Texas and Ohio, a loss in tiny Rhode Island, a win in Vermont, a lead in pledged delegates, popular votes and a rapidly narrowing superdelegate gap, were it to be worn on the other foot, would all but have the barely winning Clintonistas backing up the 4-By and picking drapes. But smitten as they were with a late-night TV dig, the Fourth Estate is [again] stumbling over themselves to now, not hurt a Clinton's feelings [no proof yet that these really exist despite the crocodile variety shed at opportune photo ops] and get us all to see what they see through the rosy lens of Topsy Turvtonia where losses becomes wins, wins become losses, Hillary is our best-loved Betty Crocker and every state, and there are and will be many more, that's opposed her doesn't represent the "real" will of the "real" people.

So the cognitively dissonant vertigo I've been feeling since 2000 continues.

Reminds me of Jake La Motta and Sugar Ray Robinson. Reminds me of how Scorsese saw that fight in Raging Bull: a heavily damaged La Motta spluttering through bloodied lips, "I ain't go down Ray. I ain't go down."

And he ain't answering the phone at 3 a.m. either.

I, however, have spent a lot of time out at 3 a.m. All over America. That is, recently my book tour's taken me all over America. Not the hothouse America replete with soundbites and TV camera crews following celebuticians, but a real America where real people live with lives populated with real problems, and while participating in rich people's pastimes--golf and almost every other pro sport, politics, moving pictures--is amusing enough, in the real wake up of the quick decision making of a voting booth moment, WE are not returning to the last 16 years of bad family drama. Not in Oklahoma, not in Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Illinois and it goes on and on despite what the few fans of fantasy in the big city states, states that couldn't save us from the most misguided administration in historical memory before, think.

Or what Hillary thinks. Or what they're thinking at the New York Times.

This is not prognostication. This is another kind of wake up call...to superdelegates, to the myopians, to everyone who thinks Hillary's story is a Cinderella story, I know this hurts but, it's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN this year. And risking a play wherein Hillary plays "Ralph Nader" is exactly what the Democratic Party should not let happen but is exactly what the Democratic Party WILL allow to happen. Because victory must be squandered at all costs.