Democratic Sheeple Manipulation Drama

For many of us, this year’s election cycle has seemed to be nothing more than theater, a scripted playlet mounted on the world stage with a predetermined outcome, performed to appease, rather than entertain, enlighten or engage the masses, at the same time occupying the time and attention of the fourth estate in order to minimize their relevance.  I’d like to make the case that, at least for the Democratic party, that’s exactly what happened.  So, get your tinfoil hat strapped on tight, your Orville Redenbacher ready, and your Barcalounger seatbelt tightened.  We’re going on a bumpy ride.

At about 2:20 on the above You Tube clip from Yearly Kos, August 2006, Senator Clinton says:

We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.

(emphasis Newsbusters)

Now, most of the information about this quote and what it means for future generations, blah, blah, blah, comes from conservative sites who seem to have had a real bug up their butts about HRC’s “confession” at the time.  The other side seems noticeably silent on the issue.  Discover The Networks, American Thinker, and Newsmax have all spun tales of evil Hillary witchery at political play in conjunction with equally evil billionaire Georege Soros.  The theory goes, Hillary Clinton and George Soros hatched a plan in 2003 to take over the world.  Or, at least, the country.  The means for doing so, was to establish a think tank (Center for American Progress) and a media watchdog group (Media Matters) to manage the message and combat the “vast rightwing conspiracy.”)  In 2006, the Washington Post ran an article claiming that CAP was funded by a group of mega-money men, Democracy Alliance, Soros included, who determined which “progressive” entities received funding, and which ones didn’t.  One that didn’t is the Clinton-centric Democratic Leadership Council.  What’s up with that?  Why would a group reportedly founded to fund “progressive” entities give money to one organization supposedly founded by the Clintons and not another?  Is the DLC an old school Bill Clinton faction and CAP Hillary’s new way of doing things?  If so, where does Rahm Emanuel fit in?  Tom Daschle?  Are the Clintons the architects of the Democratic resurgence using both the DLC and CAP?  Too much tinfoil?

Okay, moving on.  On November 18, Bloomberg News ran a piece claiming that CAP was setting Barack Obama’s foreign policy.  Say what?  The Bill Clinton chief of staff-lead organization Hillary Clinton helped found, by her own admission, is now at the forefront of the new Democratic president-elect’s policy panel?  Huh?

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Now, in case you’ve forgotten, Barack Obama is said to be “thisclose” to naming Hillary Clinton Secretary of State.  The recent media reports have been full of speculation about the impact and implications of such an appointment, with some praise and much gnashing of teeth, but there also has been specualtion that this deal was done in June when Obama and Clinton met at Dianne Feinstein’s house, though MSNBC says the Obama/Clinton “good vibrations” relationship began to evolve after the Democratic National Convention.  Not only does MSNBC’s characterization seem unlikely, it also seems irrelevant.

Hillary Clinton is “dragging her feet” in accepting Barack Obama’s “unofficial offer” because it too, is irrelevant.  This seems to me to have been a done deal all along.  With the news that Clinton will choose her own team, with Obama’s loyalists being relegated to White House staff, or booted completely, it’s hard not to see this as a preordained fait accompli.  Not that everybody was in on the deal, that wouldn’t be necessary, in fact, too many people in the know would likely screw things up.  It’s not even like the outcome of the primaries was absolutely fixed, the deck was stacked to increase the likelihood of the ultimate desired result, but Clinton as president wouldn’t have been considered failure.  After all, the goal, as stated by HRC, over, and over again, was to “get a Democrat in the White House.”  However, Obama as president allows the Democratic party to not only re-brand itself while reinforcing it’s inclusive image, it redirects the party in the age of the internet in the manner John F. Kennedy did in the age of television.  Therefore, with Obama as the puppet-face of the Democrats and Clinton actually wielding the power, an argument could be made that an impressive win-win situation resulting from a well-planned, long-term “plot” has been achieved.

Maybe all the angst and interplay between competing Democratic factions played out in the news and blogosphere was merely smoke and mirrors distractions all along.  Perhaps PUMA was born out of the frustration of knowing something was wrong that we just couldn’t put our finger on.  Could it be that the frustrations of those feeling disenfranchised by the results of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and the subsequent farce of the Democratic National Convention were just a byproduct of the implementation of a foregone conclusion?  Is that why Obama selected an HRC supporting veep nobody would pay much attention to?

Could be.

Or, not.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.