Machiavellian

It's gonna be a new day for you
A new day for you, new day for you,
new day for you
--New Day for You, Basra

Oh,when the working day is done,
Oh, girls,
Girls just wanna have fun
--Girls Just Wanna have Fun, Cyndi Lauper
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The Washington Post's editorial staff has been cheerleading for democratic candidate Obama from the primary's start. But one WaPo blogger, Chris Cillizza in his appropriately titled blog The Fix, observed the Machiavellian nature of the primary race yesterday and lo, it was Obama's camp who were the Machiavellians (What Went Right for Obama):

The Obama campaign realized that the only metric that mattered in the end was delegates, a strategic assumption that Clinton never made. (As late as Tuesday night she was touting her popular vote victory and her ability to win swing states. Both points are as true as they are meaningless; the nomination is decided on delegates, nothing else.)

How silly of Clinton to think that the votes of the average citizen actually mattered. Especially those of coal-mining, embittered sorts. She ran an old-fashioned campaign in these New Times, where you daren't admit that politics as usual is politics as usual. Had she only re-read her Vance Packard. People don't want real, they want to think themselves new, uplifted, updated.

Had she only noticed that bookstores are packed to the gills with "Self-Help" manuals. Had she only combined the message of any of Oprah's gurus with a little uplifting Sunday sermon rhetoric.

"Be audacious!", "Be Your Best You", "Find The Universe's Purpose for You." It is not about graphs and tables and conciliation and bipartisanship. These are dire times, and people just want to feel a little better. Better than they really are. Unfortunately, Hillary didn't learn the vital skills of packaging herself as a guru capable of shepherding and ferrying the people to some imaginary better shore. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, where are you we when we need you?

Hillary needed a little consciousness-raising, to learn that it no longer is what it is, it is what you want it to be. A little Baudrillard might have helped her out. She could have constructed a reality to take her outside of the Old Clinton paradigm, perhaps even accessing some sort of ironically self-mocking Hillary. Surely the boilermakers were a start. She didn't have Obama's "Pooky and Ray-Ray" (he doesn't either,) but surely there was some home girl self she could have accessed.

It really was all about us, but not in any realistic, old school politics sort of way. No, it was in a mushy, touchy-feely sort of way. We wanted to feel cool, hip, young and multi-culti. Down with the white bread way of politics. Step out of the beltway, forgetting for the moment the reality, which is that is where your politics actually occurs.

Cillizza gave an honest assessment of a cool, efficient Chicago party machine, well-oiled with now-inmate Tony Rezko's ill-gotten booty. This was not a populist contest; this was a delegate-grabbing exercise by a more efficient campaign which cultivated the veneer of populism.

Even in defeat Clinton is demonized. The WaPo's Robert Novak writes on a a conference call between Clinton and NY Rep. Nydia Velazquez, "who suggested that only an Obama-Clinton ticket could secure the Hispanic vote ("Playing for the No. 2 Spot.") 'I am open to it,' Clinton replied, according to several sources."

You would think that would be seen as a conciliatory gesture to party cohesiveness. Instead, opponents said "(t)alking about an unlikely dream ticket further slows the party unification process that Clinton's critics say already comes two months too late because of her."

Even though candidate Clinton played it fair and square, and stayed in the race until the end of the primaries, which was her right, and even though she conceded she would accept second fiddle if it were offered, still she is the wicked witch. I proffer that if she had declined second fiddle, she would also be denounced.

At least if she had lost by an embarrassing margin we could all pity her. Instead, she ran neck and neck, and that is the hell of it. She is truly damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.

This is not a voting process I'm proud of. Why doesn't my vote count? Why are the delegates chosen to represent me having their votes chopped in half? Am I only worth half of an Iowa voter? Someone please tell Michael Moore: 1/2 is less than 3/5ths. I am worth less than a slave in 1787. Ain't I A Woman? This is 2008 -- what gives?

It's time the U.S. reconsider the delegate - superdelegate process, and the electoral college while we are at it. What is wrong with allowing everyone to vote for their president, and having everyone's vote count equally?

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