April is the cruelest month, or so T.S. Eliot told us, and judging from the nasty turn that the U.S. presidential campaigns have taken this month, that seems to be ringing true.
As the four remaining candidates geared up for the crucial New York primaries today, the already embarrassingly foul rhetoric and shameful dirty tricks competition hit a new low, with a Bernie Sanders proxy essentially calling Hillary Clinton a streetwalker and Clinton hitting back with allegations that Sanders is running a smear campaign against her because of her big-money backers, just as Sanders supporters blanketed her motorcade with dollar bills in protest of the exorbitantly lavish $60,000-a-plate fundraiser dinner thrown for her over the weekend at the Hollywood home of George Clooney that netted her campaign a sweet $15 million.
And that is the civilized Democrats end of the spectrum.
In the GOP corner, we had an even more reprehensible Donald Trump calling the entire nomination process that he has been milking for months a “rigged system” and accusing the convention organizers of being “dirty tricksters” out to steal his candidacy and sending his surrogate Roger Stone to incite his supporters to inflict bodily harm on potentially wayward-leaning delegates.
Meanwhile, the highly cultivated and well-spoken Donald has come up with a yet new moniker for his chief Democratic rival, “crooked Hillary” (an extremely original slur, but at least he is no longer implying she rents by the hour), while the former first lady and secretary of state showed her exceptional grasp of the English language by responding that “she could care less” about Trump’s comments. (The correct usage of the phrase is “I couldn’t care less,” but hey, she only graduated from Yale Law School).
All of this was going on as the holier-than-thou Ted Cruz managed to smugly look down his nose at an entire state of 95 GOP delegates for their “New York values.”
Yep, the political cattle defecation is flying fast and furious as voters in the Empire States head to the polls today and any residual remnants of statesmanship and political decorum take a sharply negative trajectory.
It is scary to think that we are still more than five months away from the Nov. 8, since every indication suggests that the already-scathing political brawl is only going to get worse as the U.S. election day approaches.
April has been cruel, but May, June, July, August, September and October may be downright merciless as the All-American democratic process plays out with even more caustic name-calling and corrosive insults.
And what is even scarier is the thought that one of these four social hooligans is destined to become the 45th president of the most powerful country on Earth.
God help us!
