Well, it happened again … the neocons and the Petersen Institute have lost their candidate. The only real pleasure I derived from last Tuesday’s primaries was to watch them have their asses handed to them yet again, this time with even greater finality. They really don’t have any even marginally viable candidates left. Cruz makes some of the right noises for them, but he’s from a different stream of reactionary politics and no one can stand the guy. Kasich is basically finished, unless he discovers some way to earn 110% of the remaining GOP primary delegates. Rubio was the last worthy vessel for that extremist clown car, and that fucker and his retrograde cold war revival worldview is out. Good riddance.
With that out of the way, I am sure the imperial war machine party is looking for another tin car to drive around in. It’s quite possible that they would settle on Trump. Someone, after all, is going to populate his foreign policy establishment – thousands of them, keeping the gears of empire turning day by day. That’s kind of what makes him dangerous, though not so much as a Rubio or a Bush. It is also just conceivable that the neocons at least might begin to look favorably on a Clinton presidency. She is bellicose, obviously, and her differences with the Bill Kristol crowd on regime change are relatively minor. They might not overtly support her, but I could see them not vehemently opposing her if the alternative is Trump.
Many of the folks I know who have been involved in the Sanders campaign found Tuesday night to be very discouraging. I really think that, aside from the fact that Sanders would make a good president, an important function of his campaign and the movement associated with it is to push forward progressive policy positions that have never really seen the light of day in the institutional Democratic party. Win or lose, he can accomplish this, and it may be our best defense against neocons and paleo-imperialists (like Kissinger) looking to find a new political home. I support Sanders’s decision to continue fighting for that reason as well as the simple fact that a Bernie victory is still mathematically possible (unlike Kasich, though it’s hard to discern this fact from the news coverage – neither MSNBC nor any of the other cable outlets played Sanders’s speech Tuesday night, though they did cover Kasich’s).
So, fight on, Bernie people. We owe it to the country and to the millions around the world who are sweating out this scary superpower election.
luv u,
jp
Things are more complicated on the right. The Republican races inspire a mixture of joy and dread. The possibility of a Trump presidency is not something I want to contemplate. That said, I couldn’t stifle a chortle of joy to see the institutional G.O.P. leadership get what they so richly deserve. After decades of stoking the most virulent reactionary sentiments imaginable, they are reaping a bitter harvest in Trump. They are watching him win primary after primary, and resolve to stop him at any cost. Then they look at second place and see someone they perhaps despise even more than Trump – Ted Cruz. Best of all, every vessel the neocons chose to carry their message forward has hit a wall, trounced by a man who calls the Iraq war “a big fat mistake”, who says he will protect Social Security, and who sees Planned Parenthood as a valuable asset on some level. Heresy!
Gingrich’s grandiosity is wasted on these polite debates, though, and he knows it. That’s why he’s complaining so bitterly. When he gets a good shot in – “puts Juan Williams in his place”, as some in South Carolina have described it – and the crowd starts to cheer, you can see him begin to inflate like the Michelin Man. It is a wondrous sight to behold. This business of tamping down the audience’s enthusiasm is just, well… deflating for a veteran bomb-thrower like Gingrich. Perhaps this will give the GOP’s favored candidate, Romney, the boost he needs to edge out his corpulent rival. Damned liberal media! Newt told us it was all their fault!! Ah, the favored narrative… always a winner.