nv1962

This was way back then:

[...] the Nov. 22, 2000, protest was dubbed the “Brooks Brothers riot” in homage to the throng of out-of-state preppies called in to storm the Miami-Dade government building, bang on the windows and scream until the election recount was called off. Back then, Stone professed innocence about any kind of orchestrated plot. He told CNN, “I was there as a volunteer. I knew nothing about the protesters other than the fact that I approve Republicans expressing their First Amendment rights.” Eight years later, he admits he was eavesdropping on the Democratic recount team from a nearby trailer with a walkie-talkie.

Ah, those good old times…

But now, things are different. See, this is change you can believe in:

Barack Obama on Saturday picked up one additional Nevada delegate, stealing it from rival Hillary Rodham Clinton by drawing more supporters to the party’s state convention. A vote of more than 2,500 convention delegates broke 55-45 percent in Obama’s favor, giving Obama 14 of Nevada’s 25 pledged delegates to the National Democratic Convention in Denver this summer to Clinton’s 11. The shift is a gain of one pledged delegate for Obama over the split calculated after the state’s January caucuses. Although Clinton won the support of 51 percent of the caucus-goers in January, under the complicated system of awarding delegates Obama was put on track to winning 13 delegates to Clinton’s 12.

On a similar note, I recall:

Bill Clinton today [May 14, 2008] made an expanded and direct argument for seating Florida and Michigan delegates, suggesting his wife is being punished and arguing that Obama’s campaign opposed a re-vote. “I never thought it would be the Democratic Party that didn’t want to count votes in Florida,” he said at a rally at the University of Montana. “I thought that was a Republican strategy — or strategery as the case may be. And I just ask you all this, do you really believe Florida would be getting this kind of treatment if the vote had turned out the other way?”

At this point, I’m afraid Senator Clinton has less than a snowball’s chance to become the nominee - much to my chagrin. Under any other circumstance, that’s just the way the democratic cookie crumbles: you count the votes, and…

Oh wait.

If it weren’t for the terrifying consequences of an utterly unelectable Obama candidacy biting the dust this November, I might be tempted to insert a modicum of glee in the following comparisons.

I remember the preelectoral contest in France of 2006, then between Ségolène Royal’s strong internet supporter base driven and somewhat overwhelming victory touting a return to ideological refreshment and the more pragmatic but clearly stale “old school, old boys” candidacies of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Laurent Fabius. The strength of Royal’s “inspirational” aura — among her hardcore supporters, carrying the day in the party’s election of the formal candidate — bit the dust in the national contest, against the much more sly Nicholas Sarkozy. Never mind buyer’s remorse when you’ve already pocketed the gratification in the process!

In a slightly different setting, I’m also reminded of an older case in Germany, the Oskar Lafontaine “versus” Gerhard Schröder saga, when in 1999 - within a year of Schröder’s overwhelming election as Chancellor - Lafontaine spectacularly decided to leave in a huff, going on leave “his” SPD party to create a new German party project, named not too impressively the “Left Party” (but which undoubtedly will continue to fail). Schröder managed to win a subsequent, second term in the elections of 2002, but the never ending attrition from his left flank (within the SPD, but also of what now is that “Left Party”) ended up collapsing a support base for a third term. In 2005, Angela Merkel narrowly beat Schröder, something she wouldn’t have been able to pull off without the handiwork of Lafontaine’s ideological purity-obsessed hordes.

In Britain, I think a reasonable case could be made in the current and increasingly deteriorating collapse of Labour - although a combination of Blair’s severely tarnished (Iraq) legacy and current Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s severely lacking of any appeal whatsoever have a lot more to do with their impending bad loss (and the triumphant return of the Tories to Downing Street).

My point is that all understandable enthusiasm over and fascination with a message of “change” aside, the overall electorate is just what it is: generally very cautious and very wary of “progressive rushes.” And looking at the distribution of votes in all the primaries and caucuses so far, I see a major disaster looming ahead for candidate Obama, come November. He may be highly successful in attracting a “fired up” base, as did Royal and Lafontaine with their respective enthused followers, it’s a combination of that very same “change” message and the utterly underwhelming support in that big fat middle of “average voters” that will hand McCain a victory in November elections.

It is all the more distressing to see how that doomed enthusiasm — oftentimes “celebrated” as an insurgence of “a new political base” — builds essentially on the disenfranchisement of voters in Michigan and Florida (speaking of which: I just can’t shake off the unwholesome image of Obama supporters deliberately sabotaging their respective primaries, to nullify a likely substantial margin of delegates in favor of Senator Clinton in those states) and now, here in Nevada as well.

The sad irony, as Marie Cocco intelligently observes, is that Obama has all aces in his hands now to push through his nomination, while support for Clinton lacks that last little oomph to make it through; however, looking at next November, Obama also falls woefully short of having his voter fundamentals in a row. He simply doesn’t have a feasible winning strategy to carry a majority in the electoral college.

It’s satisfaction today, and resignation and bitterness tomorrow, in November. It’s an utterly false promise: change you can disbelieve in, driven over the abyss by an enthused minority mass of myopic creatures, just because yes, we can.

I’ll see whether the elections in 2012 will show a more sensible collective of Democrats. In the interim, I’ll lean back and enjoy this morbid spectacle: destroying the village in order to save it. Let’s enjoy the pyre, bring me that lyra!

Added later: come to think of it, maybe it’s in the local water here - Republicans have their share of hotheads, too.

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