Well, the Malaysian elections are all over while the fratricidal battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama drags on as old John McCain struggles to make up the mileage against his formidable potential foes. The US elections are a world and a half away from the twisted, corrupt farce that are the Malaysian elections, yet both the democrats and republicans will do well to keep in mind the results of this quasi-democratic exercise from the middle of Asia’s willy.

Right from the outset the ruling National Front (BN), an all-conquering juggernaut, formed of a coalition of numerous political parties goose stepping in time to the beat of the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO, dominated the electoral scene. Dominating the media airwaves, they arrogantly assumed they’d win the mandate they so richly deserved against the under-funded, disjointed opposition consisting of a fractious mish-mash of ideologically opposed groups that, under normal circumstances, would never be able to exist in the same general vicinity without tearing each other apart. The election was theirs for the taking and the only thing to do would be to decide who would get the largest share of the prize.

Well, we all know what happened next didn’t we? The scrappy underdog named Anwar Ibrahim just took a colossal dump all over their victory parade. The under-funded, under-covered, supposedly despised, disjointed and dismayed opposition whipped up a storm of discontent and rode the tsunami to victory. Well, almost. If it hadn’t been for flagrant gerrymandering and colossal fraud (two words – Khairy Jamaluddin), the National Front would have been swept. Instead they cling to power, beaten and on the verge of disintegration amidst the bitter acrimony that has followed their most catastrophic defeat in decades.

Is this the fate that awaits the democrats? On the surface, things couldn’t be more different. BN was the incumbent - the Dems are the ones mounting an assault on the status quo. The vast well of discontent is trained against the Republican, John McCain as a scion of the failed Bush years while the insurgent Malaysian opposition was riding with that very wave of voter fury.

Yet, consider this. It is John McCain that is running the insurgency here, not the Democrats. The mass of discontent there is against the Republicans may not be made stick on John McCain who benefits from his standing and reputation as a maverick who has been willing to work with Democrats in the past. He’s tied to unpopular issues, yet this may, perversely, demonstrate a level of character for refusing to go the expedient route and twist himself like a pretzel…he’s already been proven right on the surge and, I will note, has been proven right on Iraq on a more regular basis than any other in the current administration – he opposed Rumsfield and all those who insisted on “doing it on the cheap” – and is a powerful opponent of torture, both of which mark him as proper warhawk, rather than the chickenhawks that have polluted the Bush regime. Carefully managed, the Democratic campaign’s most powerful artillery can be muted by these factors alone.

And consider that, like the Malaysian Opposition, the Republican base was considered to be irreconcilable with its candidate. Where the opposition was never supposed to work together (A secular leftist party united with Islamists? Ribbentrop and Molotov would have been proud.), the rallied around a central figure and laid aside their differences for victory. This has happened in the Republican race as well. The arch-conservatives have grudgingly coalesced around McCain and are patiently biting their tongues. Apart from initial outbursts by the likes of Coulther and Limbaugh, the Republicans have found that they can work together once more. If anything, Coulther/Limbaugh’s resistance to McCain may well be a contrived master stroke to drive the American center (who loath the pair) into the arms of McCain. How’s that for Realpolitik?

At the same time, the Democrats are involved in a catastrophic, fratricidal confrontation with one another, just as the National Front is doing to itself right now, with the only difference being that the Malay fratricide is due to having LOST the elections. The similarities are uncanny. An embattled leader who is said to be incapable of leading, embroiled in the scandal of being associated with controversial figures while a long-shot candidate, with the backing of a powerful former premier tries his best to destroy the party’s chosen leader, regardless of the fact that this would leave the party dangerously split and wrapped up in infighting as their opponents make hay and consolidate their gains. The BN has incalculable resource advantages over the Opposition. It still dominates (i.e. controls) the media, it can raise copious amounts of cash for the kind of shady deals and insider trading that so perverts Malaysian Democracy.

Yet all these are being rendered useless as the party turns on itself and devours one another, further demoralizing and polarizing their base so that no one can command the loyalty of any significant portion of it. And all the while, the center drifts further into the arms of their opponents, dismayed at the bloodletting and repulsed by the airing of all that dirty laundry. Now the Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah is no Hillary Clinton and the hapless, insipid Abdullah is certainly no Barack Obama by any stretch of the imagination, but the implications are clear – the Democrats are weakening themselves at a time when the opposition shows every sign of resurgence. Their attacks on McCain have been tired, insipid and uninspired, with candidates reserving their big guns for one another. They still possess huge advantages, but every moment they delay makes the likelihood of further catastrophe overtaking them.

The democrats need to get their shit together FAST. John McCain on the other hand, is probably relishing his time in relative obscurity. The media will see only what he wants them to see…because the ratings are all to be had in the media playground of the Democratic Civil War. He can rally the troops, smooth out his campaign points and quietly raise the funds he needs without worrying too much from being hit by the Democrat’s nuclear arsenal; because, right now, their arsenal is turned on themselves. Come November, Obama (seriously, who is this “Hillary” person) may well find that the Mac has got quite a few boom-booms to toss back at him from the safety of his long-constructed Atlantic Wall.