My Heart Goes Out to Hillary
Hillary Rodham Clinton isn't the most sympathetic person in public life, but I find myself feeling sorry for her nonetheless.
Of all the things I never expected to say, “I actually find myself feeling sorry for Hillary Rodham Clinton” would be very near the top of the list. Probably the only words less likely to escape my lips would be “Hey, let’s take in the Will Ferrell film festival this weekend!”
I’d be the first to acknowledge that Sen. Clinton isn’t the most sympathetic person in public life. I mean, how many people do you know who come right out and admit that their campaign strategy is at least partially based on the possibility of assassination? In fact, in terms of overall warmth, I’d say she runs neck and neck with Vladimir Putin. But, say what you will about the ice queen, it’s hard not to empathize with her. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that she was trying on ermine, pearls and a diamond tiara, preparing for her coronation, when suddenly, out of the blue, this Barack Obama shows up claiming to be the rightful heir to the throne. If this were one of those old time swordplay movies with Louis Hayward or Robert Donat, he’d even have a royal birthmark on his tush to prove his bona fides.
If you think about it, Hillary Clinton’s story is just the reverse of Cinderella’s. In this version, the carriage turned into a pumpkin and the white steeds turned into field mice before she got to go to the ball.
It really doesn’t seem fair. One can almost hear her shrieking at the super delegates, pointing out that Obama only ran up that string of early primary victories because a gullible public still thought he was the Second Coming and hadn’t yet heard about William Ayers and Tony Rezko or heard from Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama.
She would be absolutely right, of course, but what are those delegates supposed to do about it? Even if they believe, as I do, that Obama probably can’t defeat John McCain in November, their hands are tied. After all, these so-called super delegates aren’t the least bit super. They’re nothing but a bunch of mayors, congressmen, senators and party hacks, who have their own careers to worry about. They can live with a Republican in the White House. Sometimes it’s even nice to have a scapegoat to blame for all their own failings. What they can’t live with are several million black voters suddenly asking themselves why on earth they’d want to support the party of former Klansman Robert Byrd.
But it’s not for me to worry my little head about the plight of the super delegates. I’m saving all my pity for the little lady with the shrill voice and the clenched jaw. I mean, imagine going through all those primaries, all those boring debates, shlepping around all those pantsuit outfits, all the while knowing, being absolutely convinced, that you’d make a much better president than your husband.
How many times, one wonders, has she tossed and turned in her bed these past few months, trying to get to sleep, and asking herself: “If I’m not going to be president, why oh why did I stay married for all these years to that philandering jackass?”
Television writer Burt Prelutsky is the author of The Secret of Their Success: Interviews with Legends & Luminaries.
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25 Comments
1. David WL:Bravo! Bravissimo!!
ROTFL many times over.
My thoughts precisely.
Between the little lady, the guy with the royal birthmark, and moderates giving Republicans McCain as their man, I KNOW there’s a God in heaven.
May 24, 2008 - 11:52 am 2. cnnr:Except that her behavior over the last few months has shown that she wouldn’t make a better president than her husband.
May 24, 2008 - 12:23 pm 3. jvon:She wasn’t a very good co-president the first time (hey, she keeps claiming that’s what she was, right?), so I don’t see where she gets off running for a third term.
May 24, 2008 - 2:21 pm 4. Ed Wallis:In DC, she’s trying to get a protest together on the 31st, by the Mariott Hotel (Woodley Park Metro), to say that “All votes count!”
GEE…isn’t that something the Democratic Party should have thought of before they showed their utter contempt with the American populace and the American republic with their Superdelegate sham?!
May 24, 2008 - 4:13 pm 5. Jvette:Well, I don’t feel sorry for her a bit. Has anyone but me thought about why her party, the one she was the queen of, was so quick to dump her for the new guy? She was like a favorite pair of shoes, worn, tested, comfortable and then, aha!, a new pair, just like the old pair only shiny, without the aged, lived in look.
As for the Florida and Michigan votes. What a hypocrite! Truth is, if she had won it outright after Super Tuesday, she wouldn’t give a flip about those voters. Just like every year when the nominee is settled early and the later primaries are important only for local and state races.
No, I don’t feel sorry for her a bit.
May 24, 2008 - 6:46 pm 6. cobalt6065:The super delegate idea was in in many ways a roundabout response to a process set in motion by liberal party activists who felt shut out at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Hubert Humphrey in 1968 was the last major party nominee to win the nomination without entering most of the primaries.
For 1984, the party leadership reasserted some authority with super delegates. It was a “reform” that was really a step backwards.
Super delegates in 2008 are Democratic members of the House and Senate, Democratic Governors, and members of the Democratic National Committee. Al Gore and Bill Clinton (Hillary’s spouse) are also super delegates.
There are approximately 800 super delegates of the 2125 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Since 1984, the percentage of super delegates has increased. It was 14% in 1984 and it is nearly 20% today.
At this point more super delegates were pledged to Senator Hillary Clinton than to Senator Barack Obama.
Super delegates can change their minds if they wish. They can do anything they want.
They are like a House of Lords, or something that crawled over the Berlin Wall.
This process is undemocratic. Delegates should be elected by rank-and-file members of the party. If a sitting Governor or Senator can’t win a spot in a primary or a caucus, what type of legitimacy as a popular leader does such a person have? If Senator Clinton should win, we democrats would drop her like a hot potato. Senator McCain could win by a ‘landslide’. We democrats invented that word also!
May 25, 2008 - 12:20 am 7. eric:I bet Hillary is thrilled that the act she sponsored with Kerry to RESTORE THE VOTE TO CONVICTED FELONS in 2005 never passed. Guess what ethnicity the majority of those felons are! So much for every vote counts!
May 25, 2008 - 5:28 am 8. Tess:Giving the Clintons another chance to fill that bottomless pit of appetite they share for money and power is a bleak future to ponder; and, mercifully one that Hillary herself may have permanently thwarted by coldly concluding that Obama’s potential assasination is a reason for her to stay in the race.
May 25, 2008 - 9:43 am 9. Trochilus:Cobalt6065 has it exactly right.
This year, the Democrats went out and selected their standard-bearer through a singularly undemocratic process, one where party hacks — who they euphemistically call “superdelegates” — hold the whip hand in Denver.
Moreover, it cannot be emphasized enough that it is a process entirely of their own creation. They wrote the script and the rules.
It was their plan.
And we know how Democrats are so fond of reviling any Administration, or for that matter, any significant organization that fails to demonstrate that all along they had a virtually perfect plan in place, regardless of unforseen circumstances! Think FEMA, the military, oil companies . . .
Yet, in the implementation phase of their disasterous and undemocratic candidate selection plan this year, the Democrats also managed to disenfranchise the voters of both Florida and Michigan, and to thereby render meaningless the Democrat primary vote in those two key states — all because those two states did not want to go along with the timing of the process being implemented by “central planning!”
“Off with their heads!” declared Howard Dean. No one objected. In fact, everyone agreed. But Hillary feigned, and then quietly “forgot’ to take her name off the ballots.
And in the end, the Democrats also managed to publicly reveal what may become a significant tear in their party fabric. At the very least, it is a decrement threatening to sunder the unity of purpose underscoring the “coalition” of interest groups. Each has paid it’s dues, and they all want their slice of power, their piece of the action this year.
And they want it now.
But there is only one good-sized slice. So, someone is going to bed hungry for power.
May 25, 2008 - 10:14 am 10. 5/25 Reading List « Collin’s Blog:[...] Burt Prelutsky: My Heart Goes Out to Hillary [...]
May 25, 2008 - 2:32 pm 11. Will Becker:Oh the poor little thing.Now it’s time to work on Barako.
May 25, 2008 - 5:03 pm 12. Katablog:I have always detested Hillary, but like the writer, I also feel sorry for her.
Hillary is now getting the same treatment that her husband’s political candidates got from the media when billy boy was running. Proving I guess that what goes around comes around.
I still remember when I woke up to the insane media bias – the first time Bill Clinton ran for president. Every adjective used when describing Bill’s campaign was positive and upbeat (thongs of happy well wishers….) and yet every adjective used to describe billy’s opponent was negative (a few hundred die hard Republicans).
Obama has become the enlightened one to the media now. Hillary has become the unwelcome “Republican”. Even liberal Juan McCain receives better press than her (though that will change after the Democrat convention – wait and see).
The American people only think they choose Presidents. The fact of the matter is, the media does.
May 25, 2008 - 5:30 pm 13. Sue:Could not have said it any better. Too bad that the same scenario cannot happen to a male, yet, and in particular a black male in this country.
May 26, 2008 - 7:09 am 14. Bob,Palm Springs Ca.:Agree with You Sue totally. I say let’s start a 3rd Party.
May 26, 2008 - 8:09 am 15. Tony:Call it “The Populist Independent Democratic Party of America”. If we had that Party now I’d say a ticket of “Hillary Clinton and the Presidential Nominee and Evan Bayh of Indiana, as the Vice Presidential Nominee would kick ass in the fall and America would for the 1st time in a long time have a President and Vice President selected by the American people (wouldn’t that be a novelty) and not the “Elite Liberal Media” and the Major 2 Party Bosses.
Pity for Hillary Clinton? Ha.
I’d possibly feel pity for her in the same way I almost felt pity for Saddam Hussein when he was dragged out of his rabbit hole looking like a bewildered tramp……..it’s always a bit uncomfortable when the once mightly have fallen.
Boo f*****g hoo. Another loser with an unearned sense of entitlement.
May 26, 2008 - 12:56 pm 16. Believer:I had to return to read it again for all the laughs. Every bit as funny as the first time. Thanks. Pure entertainment.
May 26, 2008 - 2:07 pm 17. Burt Prelutsky:Dear Jvette, Katablog and Tony: It appears to me that you folks thought I was actually feeling sorry for Sen. Hillary Clinton. I was being tongue-in-cheek or at least that was my intention. I’m sorry if I misled you. That having been said, if we are to be stuck with a Democrat in November, I’d prefer her to Sen. Obama. That should give you some idea how I feel about him.
Regards, Burt Prelutsky
May 26, 2008 - 2:42 pm 18. Bob,Palm Springs Ca.:Thanks Burt for at least clarifying your feelings in reference to Barack Obama for all the far left, arrogant Obama supporters.
May 26, 2008 - 7:09 pm 19. George Clarke:To think that these same supporters expect Hillary, if Obama gets the Nomination, to just forget all the “namecalling” of Hillary which of course the first of which should a been a “Huge” sign to everyone of just how arrogant the people running the Obama campaing are when the “Bitch, Witch” remark was made.
The only reason it leaked out was because it was made in England and the Foreign Press reported it, the Far left Press in America would have never reported it to the America people especially the Obama Network of MSNBC with Keith Oberman, Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, but CNN is not to far behind. Amazingly the only network that has been fair to Hillary has been the Fox Network, who would have ever thought.
Katablog,
“Thongs of happy well-wishers [for Bill Clinton]?”
That is a great Freudian Slip, not too far from the truth, if I ever saw one.
LOL. You made my night.
May 26, 2008 - 8:55 pm 20. David Thomson:Hillary Clinton sounds like someone who might actually order troops into battle. Barack “Barry” Obama, on the other hand, seems committed to dishonest pacifism. He believes that America is responsible for the “backlash” of Islamic extremism. We imperialists supposedly imposed our racist policies on the victims of the Third World.
May 26, 2008 - 9:11 pm 21. Bob,Palm Springs Ca.:David, I believe you’re on to something. What it comes down to is Hillary WILL protect the American people and the American values of Freedom, Obama will give them away in the name of pacification, instead of having the willingness to fight for the National Security of America as a Nation.
May 27, 2008 - 8:19 am 22. Angry African:Everyone will soon found out just what Obama’s Foreign Policy will be modeled after as soon as Ex-President Jimmy Carter as a Super Delegate endorses Obama for the nomination and President.
Look out America your kids won’t have a country left if Obama becomes President, at least not the same Free and secure Country that you grew up in.
I just wonder how much Bill is behind all the Hillary stuff? So Bill – let’s talk. Puh-lease let Hillary step aside with dignity. Okay, fair enough – when she is ready. But don’t make it more difficult than what it should be. There is no “cover up”. Except if we can call your spin since Monica and now the “Hillary working class hero” and “wrap up in June” bull. Back off Bill. You had your chance. No be a good ex-President and go talk to someone who cares. http://angryafrican.net/2008/05/27/bill-just-back-off-will-ya/
May 28, 2008 - 8:56 am 23. dick york:[...] walked up to him and said, "Hi Groucho, I’m a big fan of yours." To which Groucho replied, &http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/my-heart-goes-out-to-hillary/What A Character: Dick YorkBiography, filmography, and television guest [...]
May 28, 2008 - 3:39 pm 24. Gary Ogletree:I have the same kind of sympathy for Hillary that I have for characters like Scarlet O’Hara and Richard III. They all have incredible chutzpah and tenacity, while being utterly despicable. A lot of us have, or once had, friends like these, people you know you can’t trust nor would you care to be seen with them outside the Low Life Club. But there’s something… As for Obama, he’s merely despicable beyond imagination. I wouldn’t be caught dead with him in the Low Life Club.
May 29, 2008 - 8:06 am 25. Mauri Yambo:Alright,
If Hillary’s not likely to be the Democrats’ nominee for President (we’ll know for sure in the next seven days), should the party reward her for her “sweat” with the number-two slot? Should the party compel Obama to offer her yje Vice Presidency?
Apparently, that’s what Bill is already trying to do — but with what motive, pray tell?
If that were to actually happen, and I don’t think it will, would it present us with a Hill & Bill Co-Vice-Presidency (instead of the more valuable Co-Presidency) in which Obama, as President, would be totally eclipsed till 2012 (if not sooner) — by which date he will be shunted aside for another Clintonian stab at the Presidency?
I have interrogated this possibility in my recent blog post.
May 30, 2008 - 11:54 pm