” ‘If this nice friendliness would spread about in Mordor, half our trouble would be over’.” (Sam about an Orcs fight)

Hillary Rodham Clinton has yet another advantage over her main opponents for the Democratic Nomination in 2016. She knows enough people to ask the right ones for advice on how to avoid bad situations. She moves slowly where fools are likely to rush in. Nutroots Nation 15 devolved into a version of Chicago 1968 with a less appealing music track. Hillary chose not to attend as the Progressives showed their rectal orifices to the American public that was paying attention. She remained safe like a Chess King castled opposite the Queen. Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders rode forth manfully into their heaps of dung by even attending and legitimizing this freak-show fiasco.

What Hillary seems to understand better than either Governor O’Malley or [mc_name name=’Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’S000033′ ], is that the Post-modern Progressive movement has morphed from a self-licking ice cream cone to a self-destructive ouroborus. The candidates that did attend were being interviewed on a stage as a part of the event. The first instantiation of what Sam and Frodo declared to be the spirit of Mordor came when Martin O’Malley was interviewed.

The protesters stormed the convention hall chanting, “Black lives matter!” As O’Malley and interviewer Jose Antonio Vargas looked on, one of the group’s leaders took the stage and addressed the audience as a largely female group of demonstrators railed against police-involved shootings, the treatment of immigrants and Arizona’s racial history. Before departing the stage, O’Malley told the convention: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,” prompting some heckles and boos in the crowd. O’Malley was immediately met with scrutiny and apologized for his comments.

Having to apologize for opining that all lives matter? That only happens under conditions of intense evolutionary competition. That only happens when several groups compete to be the ones that get resources and space for their herd to continue to graze. In the aftermath of President Obama’s last term of office, this is exactly what is happening.

A lot of the White Neo-Liberal Democrats and the Upper Class White Progressives have seen much of their Congressional representation get flensed off the map in 2010 and 2014. In every major election year since 2008, no major Democratic wins have occurred when Barack Obama has not been on the ballot. What you’re hearing from White, Upper-Middle Class Democratic Socialists is not white privilege as much as fear of white exile. Bernie Sanders senses that opportunity and has answered the call of the Rhodesian Farmer.

Of course the political activists manning the guns for the Black Lives Matter Movement totally understand that. They also understand that every dollar, every vote, every seat in the House or The Senate won by a member of an emerging O’Malley or Sanders faction comes out of their hide. Their voices will diminish greatly when Barack Obama leaves the White House. They do not intend to gently into any night of political irrelevance. Thus, any effort by a white, moneyed Democratic candidate will route through a minefield of racial resentment and desperate realpolitik. Here is some of what Bernie Sanders ran into at the convention.

Sanders was met with heckling and protesters from the crowd as well as he tried to address the 3,000 Netroots activists. At one point, Sanders said: “Black lives of course matter. I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and if you don’t want me to be here, that’s OK.” During an abbreviated 20-minute appearance, the self-described democratic socialist from Vermont spoke about the need to address wealth and income inequality, noting that blacks and Hispanics face high rates of unemployment. Sanders was scheduled to meet with representatives of the organization Black Lives Matter after the speech, but his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, attended the meeting instead, spokesman Michael Briggs said.

And if sending his campaign manager instead of attending himself was a calculated snub, it delivers a subtle message. If it was an error, Hillary stands watching the carnage from afar and smiles. As these two go into the minefield of Nutroots Nation 15, and experience the Spirit of Mordor in all its one-eyed glory, she gains as they desperately pander. It can’t raise anyone’s stature on the national stage to sit there and tolerate one activist Mansplaining White Privilege.* Hillary wins, America loses, the Progressive Ouroboros fights itself to determine which end will eat the other.

*-I don’t even have to define this for you to smell the whiff of rotting garbage.