In Texas, an Ivins-fulfilling prophecy

I sure do wish Molly Ivins were alive and writing about the vote in Texas this week. The rest of us writers can and will try, but we all know, particularly us old Texans who know who Molly Ivins was, that we’d all come in a damn near invisible second, if God decided to hook Molly onto Eternal Press International, and let her description of this election appear in tomorrow morning’s editions.

It has been just a little over a year since Molly Ivins died, and I wonder how many thousands of Texans have suddenly sat up straight in the last couple of weeks and cussed the fates that she, and they, are going to miss the story that, above all others, she was meant to write.

The funny, and typical, thing, is that she saw this story coming. She may even be responsible for it, a self-fulfilling Molly Ivins prophecy. It would be interesting to go back and see who in the Democratic Party read her column of Jan. 20, 2006, dateline Austin, distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. It began:

“I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president . . . Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges . . . “

If you aren’t familiar with the Ivins style, she tended to not hold back, and she did it with humor, and a pure feel for her native vernacular. To-wit: “I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachsunds were ‘German dogs.’ They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism by opposing this (Iraq) war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did.”

Molly wrote this by way of lecturing the Democratic Party on “political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”

At that time, January of 2006, the country was so tired of bull that events leading to the Democratic victories in the midterm congressional elections were already clicking into place, and Hillary was emerging as a leading party candidate in the 2008 presidential election. Clearly, she was not Molly’s gal. “Enough,” she wrote. “Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone.”

Then Molly Ivins wrote:

“If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it.”

Well, he turned out not to be from Minnesota, but from Illinois, and here he is, front and center in Texas. Damn, this would have been the perfect Molly Ivins story. It has her brand all over it.