Ickes Withdraws

Newsmax is reporting that longtime Clinton confidante, Harold Ickes, has placed himself out of the running for the coveted chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. And, Newsmax is suggesting that Ickes’ out-of-school remarks to Time magazine may have led to the Clintonoids pressuring him to withdraw.

Ickes told Time, “I’m one of the few in the semi-inner circle who [doesn’t] think she can win” the White House. Dick Morris disagrees, by the way. Morris says, “She’s so far ahead of Kerry and Edwards and any other possible nominee in the primaries that there really won’t be a primary.”

I have no idea whether Newsmax’ Clintonoid conspiracy theory is valid, but it’s certainly possible, especially since Ickes said in withdrawing, “I just decided I probably did not have enough of the attributes [a chairman needs] to do the party justice.” When and how did he arrive at that conclusion? Surely he knows himself well enough now to have realized that before he applied for the job — and before he cast his negative assessment of Hillary’s White House prospects. But alas, that’s idle speculation. What’s interesting is to ponder what attributes he thinks are required for the position. Does “pathological liar” come to mind? “Shyster?” “Propagandist?” “Political Hit man?” “Don’t Touch Me Sean!”? If so, perhaps Ickes either doesn’t have a firm grasp on the qualifications or on his own attributes. You decide.

Also interesting is Dick Morris’s assessment, which is probably on the money. When you think about Hillary being the overwhelming Democrat favorite, given her repulsive personality and intrinsic coldness, you have to consider the pathetic state the Democratic Party is in. For President Bush’s entire first term, through the election, they have been pining for the Clinton years — those glamorous scandal-ridden years accompanied by inexplicable, serendipitous prosperity — as if they were the second coming of Camelot. They have been looking for a Clinton clone ever since WJC’s tenure expired. And Hillary is the closest thing they have. How sad is that?

But when you think about it, much of the Democratic psychosis we’ve seen every day since the election over why they lost, can be traced to two main things, one having to do with Clinton.

The first is that they simply cannot fathom how the Democrats could have been voted out of office in 2000 (they still, irrationally, don’t believe they were), given Clinton’s record. Of course they fail to grasp that 1) nothing Clinton did had much to do with the economic prosperity that accompanied his watch, and thus they wouldn’t know how to repeat it even if they controlled all branches of government; and 2) Clinton screwed a lot of things up — having nothing to do with his scandals. But nostalgia and the passing of time has deluded their already-warped perspective and so they see nothing but roses when they look back upon the Clinton nineties.

The second force behind the Democrats’ collective psychosis is their constitutional inability to comprehend how the electorate could re-elect President Bush, given their view of his abundant stupidity and his fraudulent and unwarranted attack on Iraq. They are in such denial over this that they think the faulty exit polls are evidence that the election was stolen again. Alternatively, they just think the majority of Americans are stupid and evil enough to have re-elected Bush. Say what you want, but as a group they’re not playing with a full deck. This herd-oriented longing for Hillary is just a manifestation of their psychosis.