The 2016 campaign is becoming more and more rancorous each day, and the next two weeks after Super Tuesday promises another battle royale until the possible crowning of the king or queen of each party on Super-Duper Tuesday on March 15. Recently I wrote "Two Fairy Tales about Donald Trump" on The Huffington Post. Now I have been thinking of the whole campaign as something of a fairy tale, with a princess in trouble and a battle of evil between good with a goal of defeating evil at the end.
So if this is like a fairy tale, which one? The story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs immediately comes to mind, although in this case, I would call it Snow White and the Seven Candidates, who are trying to put Snow White away. In the original story, the seven dwarfs are trying to protect her after she falls asleep from eating a poisonous apple, so the evil step-mother queen can't kill her. But in the quest for the White House fairy tale, the seven candidates are in a heated battle to be the knight to dispatch her.
In case anyone has been asleep themselves, the Snow White story comes from a 1937 Walt Disney musical fantasy film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was itself adapted from the tale of Snow White by the Grimm Brothers published back in 1812, and before then was a popular folktale known throughout Europe. In brief, Snow White's step-mother keeps looking in the mirror and asking herself, "Who is the fairest in the land?" as Snow White grows up, and is reassured she is, until the mirror tells her the most beautiful woman is now Snow White, so the step-mother seeks to kill her. When Snow White flees into the forest, she hides in a cottage belonging to seven dwarfs who work in the mines for jewels, and they agree to protect her if she will keep the place clean for them. But eventually, the evil queen goes to the cottage and tricks Snow White into eating a poisoned apple, so Snow White falls asleep. Afterwards, the dwarfs and woodland creatures take care of her, until a prince kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her, whereupon the prince takes her to his castle. Meanwhile the evil queen meets her just deserts upon leaving the cottage, when the dwarves and animals chase her and she falls off a cliff to her death.
Well, if the 2016 campaign is like the Snow White fairy tale, who are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ...er...Candidates? Obviously, Hillary Clinton is Snow White, and the evil witch might be akin to the Republican Party, which is trying to get rid of her and the Democratic Party, so it can be chosen by the voters as the fairest in the land.
Meanwhile, the seven Candidates, rather than trying to help and protect Snow White from the devious machinations of the evil queen, they are first trying to fight and outwit each other before they take her on. So who are they? Well, there's Doc, aka Donald Trump, who might be considered the leader of the pack, at least for now, though they are all ganging up on him. Then, there's Grumpy, AKA Bernie Sanders, who is complaining about all the things wrong with America and what to do to fix it, but most Americans doubt he can really do that, so for now the other dwarfs are mostly ignoring him. Another popular dwarf is Sleepy, AKA Ben Carson, who doesn't do much except sleepily give some odd answers about how he's going to wake up the people, but then he drifts off back to sleep -- and most recently, he decided he would rather sleep off the campaign train.
Other dwarfs include Dopey, AKA Chris Christie, who dopily tried to take down one of the other dwarfs by claiming he was just a robot and dropped out of the campaign himself. Then, he tried to find favor with the leader of the campaign, which was really a dopey move, since he lost favor with his own supporters, many of whom stopped supporting him, while others have claimed his political career is ruined.
Still another dwarf is Happy, AKA Marco Rubio, though he isn't very happy anymore. For a while, he tried to put a happy face on everything he was doing, even when he was losing, and he kept trying to keep the party going strong, even as all the balloons were losing their air. Then, he tried changing his name to Angry, but that didn't work too well. So now maybe he might be called Dazed or Confused, while he hopes the party will want him to stay on and he tries to revive it. But if he can't, well, maybe he'll just become Lost or what Doc calls a Loser. And that's too bad, because it was nice to see him as Happy.
Then, too, there is Sneezy, AKA Ted Cruz, who is always sneezing up a storm because he has all sorts of allergies, and he can blow away anything or anyone in his path. That's why the other dwarfs usually hold their nose when he's around, which sounds about right. As a candidate, he doesn't like many other people very much and wants to ship millions of people back home, and the other people in his group don't like him very much either.
Finally, last but not least there's Bashful (aka John Kasich), who is quietly trying to present himself as the one adult, who can help to take over party leadership from Doc before it's too late. Then, he can victoriously lead the charge against Snow White and put her away for good. But more and more it looks like it's too late for him, because who wants a Bashful fighter, when it's more fun and entertaining to see a team of fighters fighting among themselves to see who will win the right to take on Snow White and win it all for the Evil Queen -- AKA the Republican Party.
But then, as it goes in the original folktale and Disney Story, the Evil Queen falls to her death over a cliff, which is seems to be what is happening to the Republican Party now.
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Gini Graham Scott, PhD, writes frequently about social trends and everyday life. She is the author of over 50 books with major publishers and has published 30 books through her company Changemakers Publishing and Writing. She writes books and proposals for clients and has written and produced over 50 short videos through Changemakers Productions and is a partner in a service that connects writers to publishers, agents, and the film industry. Her latest books are Scammed, Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How to Detect and Deal With Them, and The New Middle Ages: How the Growing Inequalities Between Rich and Poor Threaten Our Way of Life.