So, somewhere around the 4th the wheels fell off for me. The incredible slog which was the lead up to what was, all along, a no-win for Barack in PA just broke me, I just wasn't feeling the magic. Though you wouldn't know from reading earlier postings here, I actually used to admire, if not like, the clintons. Watching them over the past few months perform, just like the crazy right wing nut jobs would have predicted, was painful. It also seems much ado about nothing. I mean from Jeremiah Wright to Bosnia-Gate, it is all the sizzle and none of the steak (as hillz would say at a campaign stop in TX). Hopefully, last week's debate was the zenith of this kind of nothingness in the campaign, but I am fairly confident that we are in for more.
It is exhausting.
Simultaneous with the PA onslaught I watched my beloved Washington Capitals seize the Southeast Division Title and enter the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in five years. This was a team remade in October with elevation of minor league coach Bruce Boudreau from Hershey Bears (aw) to the Caps' bench. Boudreau remade the team. The Caps became younger, more active team, skating harder and seeming for the first time to deserve their star, Alex Ovechkin. They entered the playoffs as the face of the new, young, family friendly hockey that the NHL's rule changes had hoped to spawn. Facing the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round the Caps encountered another brand of hockey altogether. The Flyers play a super physical, almost brutal, form of ice hockey, their much older and more experienced squad were relentless in seeking and creating opportunity, not always playing fairly. While the Caps ignited excitement and hope on the part of their newly energized fans, the Flyers fans wore hunter orange t-shits emblazoned 'VENGEANCE NOW!'
Yes, if the Caps' late season surge resembled the sudden flourish in interest and intensity of the Obama campaign, the Flyers were the hard charging, experienced and established Clintonites. The Caps won the first game with a kind of youthful exuberance, best represented by the ecstatic image of Ovechkin jumping up and pressing himself against the thin glass that separated him from the pulsating crowd. The Flyers beat the Caps back in the next 3 games, forcing the Caps to hit back, to play a little rougher, until they hit their stride in games 5 and 6, forcing a must win face-off in game 7. Even in favored territory, on home ice at the Verizon Center, the Caps weren't completely in control of the game and, when the Flyers tied it up after a questionable 2nd goal, a certain dread crept in. Going to sudden death overtime felt awful. Losing at about 7 minutes in was even worse.
At the end of game 7 there was a palpable feeling of 'no way' it just didn't seem possible. How could the nasty, brutal Flyers beat our sweet Caps? It was like 2000 and 2004 and the OH/TX primaries all in one. That feeling that 'yup. those guys, the ones who play like complete assholes win again.'
Oh, did I mention this all happened this Tuesday? The day Obama lost PA by 9% and everyone started talking about Hillary's mo?
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