Foaming At The Keyboard

January 7, 2009 by Stephen Kruiser
Filed under News/Op-Ed

Susan Estrich is famous in political circles for running the only Democratic presidential campaign to lose to a moderate Republican in the post-Reagan era. Four years after her garden gnome Mikey Dukakis lost, that same moderate Republican was beaten by a governor from Arkansas who nobody knew.

While reading her piece this morning, a strong new wave of Clinton fatigue washed over me. I had kept it at bay despite the fact that Barack Obama has done everything but exhume Vince Foster to make this administration Clinton 3.0 but Estrich reminded me of the worst of it and the relapse is in full swing.

Estrich lives in a gray area that’s remarkable even for a Democratic apologist. She’s a staunch feminist who tirelessly defended the fact that Bill Clinton’s zipper didn’t seem to have a “Closed” option when most feminists preferred to simply hide while he chased everything but his wife.

Today, Ms. Estrich defends Rod Blagojevich in that “kinda/sorta” way that’s become her trademark. She says that Blago hasn’t earned her respect for sticking around so far then goes on to explain why he’s so cool for sticking around so far.

Let the grayness envelope you now.

She contends that Eliot Spitzer would still be around if he had merely stuck it out. Estrich then bizarrely wanders back to her old confounding defense of marital infidelity, which may actually have to be written into the Democratic platform at some time in the future.

But Spitzer’s activity was a betrayal of his wife, not his constituents.

Translation: Who cares about that bitch? We’re still good, right?

One thing Estrich never seems to factor into her defenses of various Democratic cretins is the undue humiliation and enduring anguish that public spectacles cause their families. As long as the constituents are happy, right Susie?

Most of the article fence-dances about the fact that what Blago is accused of is very bad but he’s probably not guilty of anything other than stupidity. You can’t imprison someone for stupidity alone (see: Nancy Pelosi) so Blago is probably going to beat this, posits Ms. Estrich.

She seems to delight in political figures who, by all accounts and appearances, are unsavory human beings but can work the system. Hmm, do I smell a lawyer in the house?

He knows that. That’s why he’s going nowhere. He also knows that if you just hang in there and make some smart moves, you can make other people almost as uncomfortable as you are about what you’ve done wrong.

That’s what he did this week by sending Roland Burris, a decent and honorable man who would have been the only African American in the Senate, to be turned away by the Secretary of the Senate. Lucky for the rest of us, Barack Obama is the president-elect, and so those who would turn Burris’ rejection into a racial affair are having a little more trouble than they otherwise would.

Estrich does her best Ann Sullivan and miracle works Blago from stupid to smart in just a few paragraphs. She plays the race card then says that Obama’s election means you can’t really play the race card. It’s classic Estrich, having her cake, eating it then telling you that eating cake is only bad for you if someone catches you doing it. She even gets so caught up with herself that she admits that Scooter Libby was set up.

The whole article seems to be Susan Estrich’s way of getting ready for another presidential term where she’ll be one of the more prominent ass-covering talking heads for the Democrats. With that many Clinton folk back in power in Washington, Obama might want to create an office of “You Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do” and put Estrich in charge.

Somebody is going to have to spray the place for Clintonites before this is all over.

Cross posted from America Needs Me