Always a bridesmaid.
That's the sad story of the Palmetto State. We are wooed and won during primary season by progressive and conservative suitors alike. They love us then. We are Scarlett O'Hara to a dance card full of dashing beaux who promise us commitment in such gallant terms we're shopping for something diaphanous and white before you can say "Where's the ring?". Mm-mmm. Hoops and crinolines, buttons 'n' bows, tiny little ole pearls and yards and yards of tulle is what I'm talking about, sugah.
We get ourselves all gussied up for the ceremony, and then find out it's a shotgun weddin' to the rascal Big Daddy picked for us way back in the day. We don't even have to get out of the pick-up. We might hum "O Promise Me" and swoon over the young fella who really loves us and wants what is best for us, but we always end up hitched to the man who, like Big Daddy, has a God, guns, guts and glory fetish. It's a bad marriage, and we spend a mighty long time wondering why it is we're still doin' poorly, and why we're lonesome and miserable. Where's the romance -- or the future -- in that?
Truth to tell, we South Carolinians have been jilted before we got to the altar so many times we don't bother with trousseau shoppin' any more. We've lost faith. Abandoned hope. The Dems gave up on us long ago and the GOP knows we can be had, cheap.
John McCain is Big Daddy's dream, his ultimate nocturnal emission. Ole John is the uber-Dubya with a chest full of service medals, an itchy trigger finger, and an attitude. We can stay in Iraq until Kingdom Come. We can either "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran!" or kill 'em all off with gen-yoo-ine, made in the US of A cigarettes. Either way, he's the 21st century Marlboro man. He's that lone maverick on a stallion, silhouetted on a garish western sunset, who might just do anything.
Rasmussen says he's nine percentage points ahead of Barack Obama in South Carolina.
Above all, McCain is a hero. He's got a sweet, reluctant sort of "Aw, shucks" way of sharing his "I went through hell for you" experience in Vietnam, but a visit to the South Carolina for John McCain website puts the lie to all that false modesty. Prominent on the page is a video. One of those compare and contrast masterworks that warms the cockles of the American heart. It's an either/or thing. Shots of young, virile, handsome McCain suffering for the greater good at the hands of the enemy...juxtaposed with footage of the "Summer of Love" and all those filthy, high-on-God-knows-what hippies with their tongues down each others' throats. You were either for him or against him; you were either a red, white and true blue AMERICAN or you were one of those vulgar traitors to God and country. And he hasn't changed a bit. He's still living the heroic higher purpose. And you can't touch that.
Us Southerners, even those who had family clout and avoided the Vietnam draft like a raging case of Southeast Asian STD, do love us some war hero.
There are two McCain-lovin' posts on the front page of the website, both written in June. "Welcome Clinton Supporters!" is the message in both pieces. The McCain-Clinton union, it seems, is a match made in GOP heaven. Y'all come right on over here where Big John will make you feel all better.
What you won't find on the South Carolina website is any sense of urgency, of energy. What you won't find are any events scheduled in the Palmetto State. None. John's right cocky. He knows the pick-up carrying his Carolina bride is on the way. She's his for the taking. Shoot, he won't even have to shave first.
History, as they say, always repeats itself.
Unless that truck's passenger seat is as empty as W's cranium when Big Daddy pulls over for the cursory nuptials.
It could happen.
Romance is in the air. Unlike our progressive suitors in the past, Barack Obama won't give us up without a fight. In April Obama HQ quietly began decorating the church for a real wedding. State Field Desk Organizers went to work. South Carolina had her very own partner in Chicago and the grass roots movement was rebooted. Mission: Help bring in the North Carolina primary for Barack. And bring it in big. Phone banks sprang up statewide to call our North Carolina cousins. On May 6 Obama won a commanding double-digit victory in the Tar Heel State.
Meet-ups are on again. Platform Parties are in the works for the third week in July. Phone bank and canvassing teams are reorganizing. A statewide voter registration drive is underway. Phones are ringing again. Charleston for Obama called the rural Pee Dee Region offering help and volunteers if needed. Groups from all over the state are talking a mass meeting in Columbia soon.
Obama for President paid staff are on the way back to South Carolina. The same kind of professional staff that birthed a grass roots effort in the run-up to our primary; one that had veteran Carolina media saying they'd "never seen anything like it". The same kind of staff that organized a loose, defeatist confederation of Southern liberals into a powerhouse that delivered an Obama rout on January 26th.
Always a bridesmaid. Never a bride. Not a real one.
But this time the Carolina story may have a happy ending. We're being courted right up to the church doors. And the music is playing. Maybe this time we'll make it all the way to the altar. What a thought. It's enough to get us thinking diaphanous and white again...yards and yards of tulle...and tiny little pearls...
