Hillary's Big Lie

Everybody’s got one. I do. It’s usually a lie you tell yourself, and it’s always a secret.

Also, it’s usually inconsequential to anyone but you. The problem with Hillary’s big lie — that she is more electable than Obama in the Red States in November — is that it’s consequential to everybody. How it’s remained a secret is a fucking mystery to me. It’s always smelled like a stinker, every time I heard it repeated by campaign spokespeople and willing media surrogates, but I never sat down and worked it out why. Fortunately, some people get paid to do that and I just read a column by someone who has.

His name is Matt Taibbi, he writes for Rolling Stone magazine and he’s really smart and funny (if a bit grim; he covers politics, after all). It’s a lengthy, well-written, thought-provoking piece that I discovered, but the part that exposed Hillary’s Big Lie so succinctly I present here verbatim:

(CLICK HERE for the whole Rolling Stone article)

...Saying that Hillary is better qualified to take on John McCain because of her performance in those ['red'] states only makes sense if (a) you believe that the people who voted for Clinton in the primaries will not vote for Obama in the general election, and (b) you believe that no Democrat can win the traditionally red states. In fact, Hillary has mostly been winning the traditionally blue states —places like New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey —that are going to go blue in November anyway, no matter who is running on the Republican ticket. And even in the states Hillary has won, it has been registered Democrats, not swing voters, who have carried her to victory, while Obama has dominated her in virtually every contest among registered independents. Even in her home state of New York, Obama whipped Hillary among independents by fifteen percent. In Missouri, that margin was twenty-eight percent. In California? Thirty percent.

Obama, meanwhile, has performed extraordinarily well in traditionally red states like Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina. And sure, some of that is due to the black vote. But all of his victories have been marked by two things: larger-than-usual turnout and routs among independents, leading to the large number of blowout wins that are basically responsible for his delegate lead at the moment. On Super Tuesday, Hillary won sixty percent of the vote in only one contest, Bill's home state of Arkansas. Obama won seven states by that margin or more.

In other words, Hillary is winning the Democratic voters who are going to vote Democratic anyway. Obama is bringing in new voters, and he's winning large numbers of swing voters in red states.

Hillary’s too smart not to know this, but she’s still gonna sell this nonsense about her being more electable the same way “Mission Accomplished” and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was sold to just enough mouth-breathing yokels to fuck up our country for the last eight years.

Why aren’t more progressive-types screaming bloody murder about Hillary’s Big Lie? How ‘progressive’ are we really if we just keep swallowing politicians’ flimsier and flimsier lies? Shit, at least Colin Powell had a vial full of baking soda to wag at the cameras.... Every time I’ve heard Hillary’s claim to be the most electable in the last couple months I’ve wanted to scream.

Taibbi said it perfectly. Obama is picking up unequalled swing-vote numbers in red states, and Hillary is drawing the Democratic faithful, who will vote the ticket no matter who’s on it, an electoral formula guaranteed to result in lost red states again in November! Obama literally gives us reason to hope for some red-state victories (especially with an unpopular-among-the-base candidate at the top of the GOP’s ticket), for Christ’s sake, and Hillary continues to spew her vile, selfish lies.

Augh!! It’s her fucking hubris that pisses me off. But she’s a politician, I expect them to be full of themselves. What I really can’t understand or forgive is the reliability of the stupidity of the American voting public. “I’ll buy that for a dollar! Hyuck yuk yuk...”

God bless you, Matt Taibbi. How do we get your few vital grafs, above, out there in front of the pseudo-progressive knuckleheads who need to have a goddamned map drawn for them? How can we get you on “American Idol”?