Connecticut Republican Linda McMahon is running an ad in which some of her black supporters assure the audience that it’s permissible to vote for both Barack Obama and Linda McMahon. “You don’t have to always agree on everything, but you agree on the most important things,” an Obama/McMahon supporter says. Given McMahon’s standard-issue Republican criticisms of Obama, this strikes some excitable people in my home state as “shameless” and “desperate and dishonest.” They write angry editorials arguing that a moderate Democrat and moderate Republican could never under any circumstances cooperate. “It is impossible to imagine [Obama] participating in something like the WWE, or even being a fan of it,” insists Journal Inquirer editorial page writer Keith Burris, a point that perhaps speaks to the impoverishment of his own imaginative capacity.
Among the women in the ad is a locally famous woman known as the Prophetess Geraldine Claytor, a Pentecostal minister who runs a Bridgeport, Conn., food bank in the poorest part of a poor city. She also looks great in hats. “Prophetess Claytor,” reports a Connecticut blogger, “is not bashful about asking local pols for help. How about some money? How about a refrigerator? A stove? Food? Supplies?” The allegation being that such a woman has been bought off with, say, a massive food bank donation. (Profitess?) But Claytor just says she wants to send a strong woman to the Senate. And it’s hard, it turns out, to lecture a prophet on the presumed consequences of her electoral choices:
Asked about concerns McMahon would obstruct Obama if he wins a second term, Claytor said she knows that will not happen and that God is on the president’s side.
“I’m a prophetic person,” Claytor said.
I lack Claytor’s divinatory powers, but it looks increasingly unlikely that the state is interested in experimenting with a Republican senator. That means that over two failed campaigns McMahon and the WWE empire have expended nearly $100 million for not much. One hopes some of that money does make it into a food bank.
