Biden 2: Leaving Las Vegas

Las Vegas, Nevada: October 17: After a night spent in the city of the unreal, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the American West (my roundtable with Vegas locals is forthcoming), I was intrigued by the John the Baptist-specter of Biden. At times his tall, jarring white-haired there-ness was striking against the night sky, his wheezy, declamatory vaguely senatorial insistence gave way to pauses which filled the night air with bird-like cries from an audience who seemed painfully away of Biden's (mere) role as Obamian surrogate, a substitution known in advance by the rally attendees and yet (like the toll of words themselves) still we felt Biden's body as the presence of (Obama's) absence, [perhaps the very zero effect posited by the Mayans not far south of here centuries ago]. We stood in the night like ancient Romans awaiting the return of a general from the East who would bring to Rome its Oriental booty (victories in swing states): restless vox populi dutifully applauded Biden who decried the "Robocalls", phone messages sent en masse to recruit right-wing voters scared of Obama's "terrorist" ties. Biden's vulture-like gaze befitted this hard-scrabble earth, here, in God's country, safe outside its opulent city of lush technicolor ruin.