The Wild Kingdom of Berkeley

It's an urban jungle out here, what with the raccoons, the feral cats, and now that the rains have visited, the ants. The f**king ants. I think every house in Berkeley sits atop an ant hill, after the South American exodus a few years back. But my house covers an ant metropolis, and they're carrying out their annual explosion. They come through the floor heating vents and the spout in the bathtub. They surge up the side of the kitchen cabinet and over the stovetop. Where do they come from? Cracks in the grout? The sliver where the baseboards don't adhere to the wall? Is there a safe way to seal up my house and keep them out?

Each year, I shy away from using the really bad chemicals in the Ortho aerosol cans sold at all the hardware stores. Currently, I've put my faith in Orange Guard, a water-based spray with a super-duper dose of orange peel extract. But it's not curbing the masses, only extinguishing them once they've invaded. I'm at the end of my patience though, and plan on mixing up the lethal boric acid/peanut butter spread that the varmints actually take back to their kingdom. Since more rainstorms are due this week, drastic measures are warranted.

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In more important news, I'm riveted by the political battle that's unfolding. Quite a different landscape than that outlined in the way.too.long lead-up, in which the press sang their one-note tune endlessly and unimaginatively. Which wasn't really news, if you think about it, just an extended round of inside baseball. Doh!!! Nothing really happens until the actual race begins!

And what a different and unexpected race it's already turning out to be. Which is the beauty of letting the people speak, isn't it?

I've had one recurring thought about Hillary Clinton and her campaign since the lackluster showing in Iowa. Okay, maybe two. The first, and to me the most striking, is how clear it is that she may be a capable candidate, maybe even a great one, but she is the wrong girl, running at the wrong time, with the wrong message and way too much baggage. It is one of those bad hands that fate sometimes gives the undeserving, one impossible to shake or defeat. And, of course, it's inextricably tied to the albatross of her husband. Because of all the controversies that have swirled around their political partnership, she can never be evaluated without him. And because she is so identified through her choice of him, her choice to stay with him, her choice time and again to support his political career, it's a demon she can't outrace.

I say this as a longtime, fierce Hillary admirer. It's painfully ironic that someone so smart, so skilled, who embodies the strengths and strides that now define the American woman, who was at the forefront of all the battles it took to expand what the possibilities were for modern women, is unable to benefit from that hard work and those hard earned achievements.

My second thought is, how plagued she is by bad choices. The quickness to compromise and go for the safe middle ground, the political calculations to offend the fewest at the cost of weakening your integrity, the inability to relax and be yourself. You can't blame her for keeping her guard up. Anyone who's been scrutinized so closely and judged so harshly in her public life would be wary. Now, all the bad judgments and missteps have united to form an insurmountable barrier to her chances for President.

What if team Clinton decided to put her forth as the political rising star rather than Bill, after Yale Law School? Would she have been elected governor of Arkansas? (Or Illinois, her home state and a far better ideological fit.) As a sitting governor, could she have been a viable candidate for President in '92? Somehow, I don't think so and not because of her "difficult" likableness. I don't think this country, then, was ready to put a woman, even a credible, capable one into the White House. And now that we may be ready to, it can't be her.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth, two days before New Hampshire.