My two o’clock consultation today was with Dr. Gwenyth Sguthan Gotsan-Cedors, Principal Technology Analyst for Developing Economies at the World Bank. I expected that we would continue our previous discussion of micro-banking strategies to provide water purification, solar energy solutions and Internet access at the village level in rural Africa, but when she primly set herself down in the chair located to the right of my desk and leaned in, I knew something different was in store.
“Bugger your damned American politics, Collins,” she declared with a glare. “It’s ruining my love life.”
“How so?” I inquired with my most innocent tone.
“For one thing,” she complained, “your presidential elections take years! My fiance started getting wrapped up in them in December of 2014, not quite six weeks after I accepted his proposal. At first it was just a bit of nuisance, seeing the man I had agreed to marry become hopelessly enthralled by the process, subsequently using it to endlessly provide one rationale after another to postpone our nuptials, until Bernie Sanders kicked off his campaign in May of 2015, after which the presidential race was all he could talk about. And when Donald Trump jumped in two and one half weeks later, he became completely obsessed! He couldn’t believe the American public could be so stupid, not even the Republicans. All he could talk about was Trump’s latest outrage. And after it became obvious that Trump was beating all the other Republicans in your ubiquitous American public opinion polls, and that he might actually become the Republican nominee, my beau quit his job at the Natural Resources Defense Council and signed up to work for the Sanders campaign, full time!”
“Well,” I interjected, “as a British subject raised in Cardiff, I’m sure you’d prefer we Yanks hold nice, clean, brief elections similar to the ones you folks have for Parliament. But the United States is too large, culturally and geographically diverse for a parliamentary form of government. It’s like we have fifty separate countries to deal with here, you know. Every state in the Union has its own constitution, legislature, court system and chief executive. The federal system we evolved demands a much more lengthy process to select the individual who will lead all of them.”
“My fiance,” she growled back at me, “went traipsing around after Bernie Sanders all over your large, culturally and geographically diverse federated nation for ten straight months, until the Senator’s campaign lost California and they had to let him go!”
“Oh” I responded. “So – he came home, then, back to Washington?”
“He did,” she nodded, rolling her eyes with a thick air of irony. “And now, all he can talk about is how Hillary Clinton robbed Bernie Sanders of the Democratic nomination with a bunch of party hacks she had appointed as super delegates before Sanders even announced his intentions! That, and what a bloody mess the United States of America is going to be if Donald J. Trump becomes President.”
“Did he get his old job back at the NRDC?” I asked.
“Yes,” she sighed, “they were very understanding and sympathetic. But now, he wants to postpone the wedding again, until after the Democratic convention, and use the money we’ve saved up for it to finance a move to Canada if Hillary emerges victorious. Meanwhile, as soon as he gets home from work, he’s on the phone, hatching schemes with other progressives to either take the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton, beat Donald Trump in the general election, or both.”
“What kind of schemes?” I wondered.
“As far as the Democratic convention goes,” she said, “it’s mostly been talk about various strategies to flip those super delegates.”
“He does realize,” I sought to confirm, “that Hillary Clinton has received three million more votes than Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, doesn’t he?”
“Christ!” she exclaimed. “He’s got about a dozen arguments about why that doesn’t matter, and I’ve heard every bloody one of them! Hillary has higher negatives in the polls. Hillary might be indicted for violations of US security laws before the general election because of her email server coverup. Independent voters don’t trust Hillary. She’s a Wall Street insider during an election year when voters are angry at the financial industry. Sanders is more electable than Hillary. If the Democrats run Hillary against Trump, he stands a better chance of winning. If Hillary gets nominated, the election turnout will be too low for her to win. If they have to choose between Trump and a Democrat, black voters will vote for Sanders, but white voters won’t vote for Hillary. Sanders is stronger in the key swing states than Hillary is. Sanders stands for change in an election year when voters are demanding change, while Clinton stands for the status-quo, and running her will be political suicide. Trump will drag out all of Hillary’s baggage, from Whitewater and Vince Foster to Benghazi, and he will make up lies about all of it so nasty, so vicious and so preposterous they would embarrass Ronald Reagan – and the voters will believe them. Trump will trot out Monica Lewinsky to remind everybody about how Bill Clinton stained her favorite blue dress, and then call up more molested women than Bill Cosby has to deal with and have all of them testify as to what Hillary’s husband did to them, and then start speculating on how Bill Clinton will behave when he moves back in to the White House. Hillary turns off younger voters, Sanders attracts them, and they’re essential to winning against Trump. The voters think both Hillary and Trump are untrustworthy liars, but Sanders can offer the voters an alternative with integrity. Hillary is…”
“I believe that’s more than a dozen,” I observed.
“Well,” she assured me, “my fiance can go on like that indefinitely if given the opportunity.”
“Has your fiance noticed that President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton last week, shortly after she beat Sanders in the California primary?” I pointed out.
“He says,” she ruefully muttered, “that Obama will campaign in the general election for whomever the Democratic nominee is, and even Obama knows Sanders has a better chance of beating Trump.”
“Did your fiance see Sanders on ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday?” I asked. “He’s scheduled a meeting with Hillary Clinton to discuss the Democratic platform.”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “My beau is quick to point out that Sanders continues to reiterate that his primary objective is to defeat Donald Trump in November; and Sanders never says the best way to do that is for him to capitulate to Hillary. And he’s quick to note that Sanders still maintains that Clinton having four hundred super delegates pledged to her eight months before the first vote was cast in the Iowa caucuses is totally absurd.”
“There are rumors inside the Beltway,” I revealed, “to effect that Bernie Sanders may be more realistic about his situation than many of his followers.”
“My fiance has heard them,” she lamented. “He says it’s better to vote for something you want and not get it, than to vote for something you don’t want and get that.”
“He has a point there,” I asserted.
“Not if the thing you don’t want is an ugly fat orange mashup of Adolf Hitler, Franciso Franco, Tomás de Torquemada and the Emperor Nero,” she objected.
“No,” I rejoindered, “the correct comparison for Donald Trump is an ugly fat orange mashup of Benito Mussolini, Silvio Berlusconi, King Edward I and Juan Perón.”
“Well,” she opined, “whatever kind of ugly fat orange mashup that monster is, if he’s elected president of your country, I’m moving to Canada to join my husband, who, presumably, will already be there because this Sanders chap hasn’t a prayer of taking the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“So tell me,” she demanded, “what the hell should I do about this mess?”
“Develop a taste for ice hockey?” I proposed.
“Not bloody likely,” she spat. “Actually, I’m not terribly fond of Canada, you know. Too damn cold most of the time.”
“You could move to England,” I began.
“What!” she exclaimed. “Have you forgotten? I’m Welsh! I hate the [expletive] English!”
“Oops,” I acknowledged. “So you are. My apologies. You and your new husband could live in Wales, then.”
“And die of boredom!” she wailed. “Jesus Christ Almighty! Why should we have to go anywhere, I ask you? What the hell has happened to you Americans, anyway? Have you all gone mad?”
“I think we may be getting there,” I admitted.
“Oh, bugger all!” she yelled. “How can I get my fiance to quit obsessing over Bernie Sanders?”
Her words hung in the air for a moment while I considered a solution. “You two… saving it for after your wedding day, by any chance?” I inquired.
“Of course not,” she answered with a note of nervous laughter in her voice. “We’re both sophisticated adult professionals with graduate degrees. This is the twenty-first century. We’ve been shagging up a storm since our first night out. Except when he was on the road with the Sanders campaign, naturally.”
“But plenty of it since your finance returned,” I sought to confirm.
“Absolutely,” she replied. “I’d say we’ve been making up for a bit of lost time, actually.”
“Simple then,” I responded. “Take a tip from our old friend Aristophanes. Go Lysistrata on him.”
“What – cut him off?” she whispered, astounded. “Tell him he’s a wanking bachelor again until he gets off this Sanders jag and starts supporting Hillary?”
“Yep,” I asserted.
“And you’re sure it will work?” she murmured, eyeing me skeptically.
“Absolutely,” I assured her. “How do you think Hillary’s female supporters get their husbands to volunteer and write checks?”
“Really?” she shrieked.
“In fact,” I told her, “they even have a name for it.”
She leaned in all the way, very close to my face. “What?”
“They call it,” I confided, “playing the Woman Card.”