Hillary’s Voice

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

There is no limit to the man’s hypocrisy. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

This is Obama responding to a reporter’s question about the alleged Michelle tape:

“We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in emails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”

This from the man whose campaign — not two weeks ago — was furiously pushing the grotesque RFK assassination smear against Hillary. Calling up reporters, circulating quotes out of context, spreading the lies, fanning the flames, pumping the story until it had legs.

And he’s done the same goddamn thing the whole campaign. He’s like Humbert Humphrey, only worse. Humphrey had that whole nice guy shtick going, too. Nice guy, a good guy, your friendly neighbor from Minnesota, always taking the “high road,” as Hube called it, always talking about the politics of decency — while in the background his campaign was slinging every goddamn bit of dirt it could find or create. Pure unadulterated mud. Humphrey also had the corrupt Chicago machine backing him, and a nomination stolen from the more popular candidate.

But Obama’s younger than Hube was, and better-looking, and hip. Poor old Hube didn’t have masses of young fanbots talking about swirling vortexes of love and pink fuzzy hearts. Nobody ever painted a picture of Hubert Humphrey emerging from the Willamette River with roses cascading at his feet and a white horse/unicorn/pony galloping behind him.

And that, my friends, is the difference. It’s all surface shine. All packaging, modern and slick and insidious. Barack Obama is simply the new, millenial version of Hubert Humphrey. He’s Hubert Humphrey with sex appeal. He’s the focus-group-tested, Madison Avenue version. He’s who the Hube would have been if he’d been designed by Ogilvy & Mather.

I feel the way so many of my elders felt in ‘68, after Bobby was killed (and Hillary, not Obama, is Bobby’s heir), after McCarthy was robbed, after their last chance to be represented was torn from them and they were stuck with….Humphrey.

Hubert. Fucking. Humphrey.

(Oh, hi, everybody. I’m almost back! A humongous thanks to everyone who has helped and donated, which I’m going to write more about in the morning along with an update. But first, tonight, I had to eject this very bitter pill that was rising up in my throat and suffocating me. Projectile vomiting on the blog, you might say.)