Will The Political-Revolution-That-Could Be Derailed by Power-Politics-As-Usual?

Quinnipiac University Poll numbers released today, showing Bernie Sanders easily beating all GOP contenders.

If superdelegates steal the Democratic presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton in 2016, her “nomination” won’t be worth having.

That’s a view I’ve been hearing again and again in conversations with Democratic voters over the past two days, voters who do what they can to live as comfortably as they can manage these days in the quiet suburban streets ringing the giant hotel-casinos that form the empty, rigged, voracious heart of Las Vegas.

It’s a view I’ve encountered so often, in my role as as an out-of-state helper for the Sanders campaign, that I feel obligated to bring it up, for whatever consideration anyone might think it’s worth.

But the truth is that I feel stunned by just how many regular Democrats have volunteered to me over the past two days that they’ll never vote for HRC. A woman I talked today named Mary Ann just shook her head and said this: “She’s been around too long. I’m tired of her. Besides,” she added darkly, “Hillary has blood on her hands.”

A 66-year-old union guy named Duane told me that, even though his union leadership (“suck-ups,” he called them) endorsed Hillary, he’ll never vote for her. “I’d rather see Trump in there,” he admitted.

Most Bernie supporters, though, seem much more buoyantly pro-Bernie than anti-Clinton, although their optimism seems guarded, tentative, as if they recognize that Bernie’s little political-revolution-that-could might ultimately be derailed by power-politics-as-usual players from the past.

Then what? Head shakes. No one knows. We’ll cross that trestle when we come to it.

Others, though, are unabashed in their disdain for Hillary, and aren’t afraid to say so. They’re so, um, out there, and so willing to share it, that I was able to use the intensity of their dislike for HRC as a reason to caucus for Bernie.

“There’s only one way you can stand up against Hillary this week,” I told three different voters today. “And that’s to stand up for Bernie Sanders. Because he’s the only one running against her.”

That might seem a helluva piss-poor, superficial reason to vote for anyone, much less a cool, democratic socialist from Vermont with all the amazing bona fides that Bernie Sanders has accumulated over a lifetime of selfless public service, but the fact remains: There are a helluva lot of Democrats who genuinely don’t like Hillary Clinton.

And worse, there seems to be a helluva lot of insider Democrats set on tilting the outcome to her who are completely oblivious to that fact.

But no one ever accuses them of listening to people like me. They listen to big-dollar donors and each other.

That’s why I predict that if the Democratic Party nominates Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders in 2016 because of insider deals involving superdelegates, they will lose the election to someone named Trump or Cruz or Rubio or Bloomberg and they’ll never even know what hit them.

And here’s the real hell of it: They won’t even know they were holding a winning hand until they threw it all away.

Then There Were Two. Then Came Another.

And brother, what an other!

Over the weekend, I made a case against what seemed then to be the ultimate Big Lie in Hillary Clinton’s desperate arsenal of slash-and-burn rhetorical slop hurled against Bernie Sanders.

I argued that male Bernie supporters — me, for example — are not woman-bashing misogynistic trolls just because we hold Hillary Clinton to the same standards to which we hold male candidates, Bernie included. We just find her lacking.

Birds of a Feather: Clucking together.

That, I thought, would be that. End of her campaign’s fanciful, artful smear involving the so-called “Bernie Bros.”

Then came the sad, dueling displays of the once-iconic Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright on national TV, alternately trying to scold and shame young women for backing Bernie Sanders in such overwhelming numbers.

To Steinem (before she tried walking her comments back and explaining it all away), this meant mostly that young female Bernie supporters are basically clueless, boy-crazy bimbos, which in Albright’s mysterious mind ultimately destines them for nothing more than ringside seats in hell.

But, hold everything — as corporate media outlets used to say (before we stopped listening to them and started listening to each other): This just in…

The latest narcissistic nuggets rendered on Hillary’s behalf come from the mouth of the biggest serial philanderer and personal prevaricator in modern political history.

And since it probably plays out best in undiluted form as the unforced farce it is, let me switch to my best carnival barker rhetorical voice, because that’s all this mockery of political discourse deserves:

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s put our hands together (but, ladies, please keep your knees together, just in case) and welcome to the stage, the original Democratic Party “Ho-Bro” Bill Clinton*!

I could ramble on in excruciating detail and pander at great length about the sheer absurdity of Bill Clinton lecturing anyone on personal morality and public sexism (much less Bernie Sanders) but I won’t. It’s likely to only bring up ugly memories that are better left alone.

What I will cite, though, is a derisive sneer that Bubba hurled at Bernie for having the shameless audacity to describe our current economic system as “rigged,” which could only come from a worldview that exists in a “hermetically sealed box.”

Bill Clinton: The Pot Calling the White Linen Napkins and Tablecloth Black.

There. I said it. I told you that thinking about Bill Clinton, too often or for too long, is a bummer.

That’s why I’ll keep the rest of my particulars brief — which, we know now, is where Bill Clinton should have kept his particulars while in the Oval Office: in his briefs.

Does that make me sexist, Bill? And is it even possible to be sexist when ridiculing a member of my own sex?

And lest I say anything else that may eventually serve to feed the Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton slime-machine so squarely aimed at Bernie Sanders, I’ll sign off on this installment of Dirty Dog’s Delicious Dig of the Day in my own voice, so not to confuse Clinton campaign followers, who actually believe in both “Bernie bros” and bimbos:

“I’m Jim Parker and I approved this message.”

If I could afford it, and right about now, I’d float a tiny disclaimer over the bottom of the screen: 

“Not affiliated with any campaign or political party, especially the corporate whores and shills in charge of the Republican Party and Democratic Party.”

Then I might even hurl a last splash of slop of my own as a final tag line:

“Bill Clinton would have been better served if he’d kept his own ‘rig’ in a ‘hermetically sealed box.”

Because, me, I’m no gentleman. I’m as lost and lowdown as Bill Clinton.

* * *

*Ironically (and not uncoincidentally), Urban Dictionary’s “Top Definition” for “Bill Clinton” still reads this way: “To get a blowjob while at work.”