This is a fabulous and important piece of thought and writing - zjm
Operation Obama Erasure
It was only by accident that I discovered Operation Erasure, and what I have to report is a remarkable advance in 21st century campaigning.
Dr. Jeremiah Queenheart is not your typical political operative and in fact admitted to me that he was a bit of an anti-social nerd who spent most of his time dealing in parallel universe quantum mechanics. He hadn't voted before (this reality wasn't really important to him) and really didn't know much about the 2008 election before he was contacted by the Clintons to help them solve a problem or two.
What he did know about, he told me, was creating alternative realities and developing wide-scale historical revisionism software models.
We met by chance (or perhaps not )when I was attempting to dial into a conference call by the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was the day after Clinton's decisive victory against Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary and the campaign gurus set to talk about how the tide was turning in her favor.
What I didn't know is that Dr. Queenheart was the driving force behind the campaign's latest phase — and I found that out when I dialed the wrong number.
"PU shop, Queenheart here" was the answer.
"Uh, is this the Clinton campaign conference call?" I replied.
"No, right campaign, but wrong office, I'm afraid. They spin reality upstairs and we manufacture it down here."
"Excuse me?" I stammered.
"Not familiar with alternative realities, are you?"
"No, the one I inhabit is challenging enough."
"You know there are many out and about."
"That's a scary thought."
To make a long negotiation short, Dr. Queenheart, a transplanted Englishman and descendent of H.G. Wells, let me interview him and even to write about it — but he promised me it wouldn't matter because no one would believe me and he would eventually transform the reality of our encounter into non-existence.
"I was contacted by the Clinton people after that peculiar holiday you call Super Tuesday," he explained while allowing another self in a different reality work on his latest project — create a new historical record for the bastard primaries in Michigan and Florida.
"We've been bashing at this a few times. I'm sure you've heard Mrs. Clinton's announcement that she's now the popular vote leader in the primary."
I said I had, but was skeptical because Michigan and Florida don't count in the vote totals because the primaries didn't count.
"So you say. Well, Mrs. Clinton believes it entirely now — that was the problem before when she brought it up. She wasn't entirely convincing. Eventually, we will insert enough pieces of the alternative reality puzzle to have it become reality — one I dare say will be embraced by you and other gullible members of that media herd, the superdelegates, the voters in Michigan and Florida, and even the Obama campaign itself."
When I asked how this was possible, how could history be erased and rewritten, he said it was the wrong question.
"You should be asking, why not?"
Eventually, he admitted, Clinton would win the nomination because it will be proven that Michigan and Florida primaries actually did count and that Clinton won them big and bagged a huge cache of delegates.
"That's why we laugh when we hear another pundit shout that she should leave the race. Give it a few weeks and the conventional wisdom will shift and Obama will be under pressure to quit the race."
I was shocked.
"Dear chap, you know all those irrelevant caucuses in god-forsaken places like Iowa and Alaska and Wyoming?"
"Irrelevant?"
"Indeed." It seems the gang at Clinton's PU (Parallel Universe) office were changing perceptions of results so that superdelegates, even those from caucus states, were ready to dismiss those delegates as illegitimate.
"We call it the Orwellian invective."
Dr. Queenheart continued to tell me that "when the Clinton brain trust called me on Feb. 6, they told me they had made a slight miscalculation. They thought the race would be over because of the inevitability factor, but they missed a few variables. I became their Plan B."
It was brilliant, I told him.
And there was more, he told me. His group of chemists, computer experts and mechanical engineers (the machines used to create alternative realities were recycled from defunct factories) were working fast to create a new Bosnian sniper-fire reality.
"We think by the time of North Carolina primary, not only will the sniper fire in that 1996 incident be real, but many will die — and she will take charge, fly a helicopter gunship, and kill the attackers with a few well-placed missiles. It fits in with her new muscular profile of obliterating Iran if they raise an eyebrow."
When I mentioned this explained why the campaign was broke and had lost 11 contests in a row in February, Dr. Queenheart agreed.
"We were getting some things in place. Hillary will be the nominee; it's guaranteed."
I knew better by this point, but when I mentioned that Obama's delegate lead seemed insurmountable, he quickly cut me off.
"Who's Obama?"
The top alternative reality project is called Operation Erasure and it is the equivalent of a miracle that Clinton supporters were waiting for.
"Obama will simply no longer exist as a candidate. It's tough work and we are fighting hard, but we are making PU inroads. By our calculation, just after she wins the Puerto Rico primary, she will be declared the nominee because Barack Obama won't exist."
"He does exist," I countered.
"Not if his African father doesn't come to America or his mother stays in Kansas. He will become stuck talking about change in a meaningless parallel universe."
It all seemed diabolical, right out of Karl Rove's playbook. Wasn't he afraid, I asked, that all this alternative reality creation for the sake of one person's political ambitions, well, wouldn't it tear the fragile space-time continuum mentioned by Einstein?
"This isn't a game for the faint of particle heart. People forget what Rove and Einstein both said: If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen of alternative realities."
When he's not jumping into parallel universes, political columnist Michael McCord is the editorial page editor of Seacoast Sunday and the Portsmouth Herald.
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