Hillary Clinton's campaign did not display overconfidence when it directed the recent fusillade at Barack Obama. Her campaign's rhetorical megatonnage was in response to a prominent Obama contributor saying rude things about her. Her overreaction was one of several developments that have clarified the Democratic contest.
Bill Clinton has said, regarding presidential candidates, that Republicans like to fall in line and Democrats like to fall in love. Which explains the Clinton campaign's palpable panic: Democrats have fallen in love, but not with her.
Republicans tend to nominate the next person in line: Vice President Richard Nixon, not Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, to follow President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960; Vice President George H.W. Bush, not Sen. Robert Dole, to follow President Ronald Reagan in 1988; Dole rather than Lamar Alexander or any other contender in 1996; Gov. George W. Bush, whose dynastic lineage propelled him past Sen. John McCain in 2000.
There is a GOP tinge to Sen. Clinton's campaign: She is next in line. That fact - combined with the Clintons' (how often the plural is pertinent) money machine, combined with the Clintons' earned reputation for ferocity - is supposed to impart to her an aura of inevitability.
But such an aura annoys voters by telling them that they really have no choice. And that can provoke them to play the game that G.K. Chesterton called "Cheat the Prophet": The players listen politely to explanations of what is inevitable, then they make something else happen, which defeats boredom.
Boredom, the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote, is among the universal and insistent forces driving human behavior. Mankind's nervous system evolved during millions of dangerous years (saber-toothed tigers, etc.). Now, however, mankind has suddenly, in a few millennia, encountered the monotony of orderly life, which bothers human brains formed by and for hazardous circumstances.
Among the cures of boredom that Nisbet listed are war, murder, revolution, suicide, alcohol, narcotics and pornography. He might have added presidential politics. Memo to the Clinton campaign: Inevitability is boring."
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Which is why so very many things are referred to as "sexy", when by all accounts they certainly are not. Doesn't matter. Enough people call something or someone sexy and it's as the French say a fait accompli*. Problem is getting people to peek from within their state of boredom in order to agree that anything NOT boring MUST be sexy. And the reason so august a personage as America's Mayor is having so difficult a time persuading the right side of the aisle that he's the man for the job.
Display the hunter's prowess or be the bard. John Kerry tried to get us to admit that he was hunter enough to lead the pack, and came close because those, for example, who are frightened of the word "faggot", believed so limped a wrist as John to indeed be hunter enough for their vote. Yet the ones he really attracted were the gatherer's, but not enough of them to make a difference. RodHam believes that she can with with JUST the gatherer's, and if so it'd be the first time ever. Can't count hubby Billy because he never received a majority as he faced off against two hunters that split the red meat vote.
Can Rudi evolve into a balding but still virile slayer, or has the country been so thoroughly pansied that the time has come for a flower child to lead us.
Crepes or sweet meats.
Difficult to say, isn't it, when even the so-called "Conservatives" get their panties in a bunch over a girl calling a fairy a faggot.
*Done Deal.
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