The Max Factor Blues

I think one of the major reasons the Clintons are running such a disastrous campaign is their thoroughly ingrained belief that American politics, non-parliamentary and divisive, is, by nature, a zero-sum game. The fundamental assumption that you’re either with us or against us is just as basic to the Clinton mindset as it was to Bush. One can only “win” by destroying one’s opposition since they are irrelevant and expendable anyway, both in the campaign and in governance.

The mere thought that there might be some sort of paradigm shift, of whatever duration, is too horrible for Clinton to conjure. The fact that Obama’s campaign and supporters seem to be already operating within that new paradigm could be why her own campaign has been so supremely off kilter and reactive. She simply doesn’t get it. It is impossible for her, and that entire wing of the Democratic party, to imagine a system without entrenched elites, $15 million dollar “speaking” fees, poll-driven positions and thuggery.

I would like to think that this is in some way generational and, therefore, inevitable. Her trajectory – from cowgirl-clad Goldwater supporter to Bill Clinton wife and regent – is typical of that sort of woman of that particular time. Some of them believed they had to cultivate a public persona of sweetness and light, overachievement and perfection. But they also believed, viscerally, that it was very much a man’s world, so, in her case, she hitched her wagon to one, all the while plotting her own place in that world.

And, since the playing field was crafted and populated by men, these women still believe that they have to play by the same old rules, much in the same way some women of a certain age cling to the same makeup, hair and fashion choices of their youth. In Clinton’s case, it’s still liquid eyeliner, orange lipstick and atrocious asexual St. John’s suits instead of, oh, probably Jonathon Logan jumpers from her salad days.

Once they entered the political [and business as well] arena, they clung to the old school ground rules , playing hardball as well as, or better than, the boys. So we have sweetness and light on the one hand, ruthless expediency on the other. And that, of course, is where her endlessly vaunted “35 years of experience” lie: learning, honing and practicing the Machiavellian arts of politics as usual. Thus that schizophrenic shape-shifting which only serves to strengthen the public perception of Clintonian duplicity.

I actually do know a few women just like her [and her cabal of Ferraro clone supporters]. Women who have no sense of their own core, who have been playing what they thought were the necessary [and sufficient] games all their lives only to end up enraged, embittered and confused. They have been so much immersed in whoring themselves out for a few crumbs of power and patronage they never noticed that the playing field, political as well as fashion, had shifted.

Sometimes, I’ve decided, a bitch really is just a bitch.