This has nothing to do with Palin being a woman (although it wouldn’t surprise me if some Johnny-come-lately feminist comments on here that I am a sexist because there is no other defense of her pathetic record). This has everything to do with McCain’s selection being a political blow job to the conservative right.
Now that it’s finally over, you have to wonder, will we see Hillary as the v.p nominee sending Clinton-haters everywhere into a frenzy against Obama too, or will Obama turn away from the millions of blue collar Clinton voters and go with another possibility? This post is by no means exhaustive, and I for one have been intellectually salivating since Sam Nunn’s name starting making the rounds. I have not been at all excited about the idea of Clinton as a v.p., until this morning when I thought about it in a different way.
It was an election that says volumes about what citizens want in more traditional parts of the country. Apparently tired of what they have had for years, voters turned out more of the same and voted for a new, fresh face.
So Bob Barr is running for president as a possible Libertarian candidate. Obamaniacs everywhere are practically squealing with delight in anticipation of finally getting to be on the other side of a Nader-esque spoiler in November. I can’t say I am much different. I think this could be fantastic for Obama in the long run by siphoning votes off from John McCain, but I’m not ready to declare it Christmas in May yet.
The day has finally come: Pennsylvania primary day!
I’m an Obama supporter, but personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the outcome is as long as it goes as planned and we don’t have to hear about it any more. I couldn’t believe how much press the Pope’s visit got last week, but at least it meant I didn’t have to listen to HIllary’s campaign throw everything they’ve got at Obama. The closer we can get to the end of the primaries the better. Their are bigger fish to fry in a race with John McCain.
Hillary will likely win, but it will likely not make any difference. Obama will still win the war. Also notable is that even if Hillary loses, it will likely not make any difference, because she will have plenty of excuses why Obama won but she should have - i.e. he outspent her, she’s the underdog, blah blah blah - and she will still continue with her scorched earth campaign policy of not letting any Democrat win if she doesn’t win the election she apparently feels she’s entitled to.
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Do we have to keep talking about this? I don’t mean Hillary winning big last night, or Obama losing, but the Democratic race. I mean, seriously, is this still going on? Do we have to keep talking about this? I’m ready to hear something else in the morning when I wake up besides Clinton Obama Obama Clinton Obama Obama Obama Clintion Clinton Obama.
Of course, while I’m getting woolly… uh, weary* over it, I wonder if maybe it’s not good for the Democrats in the long run. McCain is just a side show right now. No one cares about him, it’s all Democrat all the time on the national scene. Blame it whatever conspiracy theroy you want, but it’s true.
From a different angle, I watched Obama’s speech in San Antonio last night, and I wonder, or worry, if this was the pin-prick moment and all the air is about to come out of his balloon. One of the most appropriate bumper stickers I saw between the 2004 Iowa caucus and the November election said, “Dated Dean. Married Kerry.” I wonder if in four months we will see some similar stickers that fill in the names of this year’s rock star and establishment candidates, respectively. I sure hope not.
Ralph Nader has again begun his campaign for president of the United States, and in doing so he has revealed his growing and unparalleled laziness in the world of United States activism. While it would be fair, in my mind, to compare his impact on American society in the 20th Century with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez his increasing laziness has has not only led to a regression in the world of corporate responsibility, it also shows he is no longer willing to actually fight the fight for social justice.
Tricky those Sulzbergers at The New York Times… First their editorial page slams Rudy Giuliani and endorses John McCain, only to have their political reporters drop the scarlett letter on him. I stumbled on the article Wednesday night by chance, apprarently right after they posted it, and I couldn’t figure out why the media’s collective head hadn’t exploded with excitement over it.
Then the 10 o’clock news came on and it all began.
There is so much that can be said, and I don’t think anyone would appreciate me rambling on and on about it, but I would like to point out a few important points.
I try not to hero worship, especially with politicians. I see no reason. With all of the build-up and hype surrounding any campaign, I tend to get either disgusted with or caught up in the hype. If I get caught up, I try to take a step back and ground myself. Politicians are only men and women, just like you and me. They are not gods, nor are they superhuman. So, while I have tentatively been supportive of Barack Obama’s campaign since my man John Edwards dropped out, I have held off from throwing my support behind him entirely, mainly because of the hype but also because of my belief that Hillary Clinton could do an excellent job as president.
With John McCain’s win in Florida, for the first time in around seven years, I am reminded of the amazing benefit of the electoral college and all that it has spawned in American politics - in particular the primary process that mirrors it. If it were not for the small rural states that began the primaries, we could have ended up with Rudy Giuliani in the White House.
When Giuliani decided on his “big state” strategy to win the Republican nomination, I was skeptical, yet nervous. I am not a fan of the overwhelming power that Iowa and New Hampshire hold in the presidential election process and think we need a change, but at the same time, I realize the benefit it provides in letting states that are not New York, California and Florida actually have a say in the election process.
If it were not for the state-by-state primary process, everything that is not a major coastal population center (including the Great Lake coasts), would get ignored almost entirely. For a while, I was worried that Giuliani had figured a way to outsmart the conventional wisdom of campaigning in the cornfields and living rooms and that the man who doesn’t include more to a sentence than a noun, a verb and 9/11 might actually end up winning the nomination. However, tonight, after the 2000 election when the electoral college elevated the Moron to the Oval Office, its little sister, the state-by-state primary starting with Iowa and New Hampshire has redeemed the process.
For full disclosure, I am a red state liberal who happens to prefer city life personally. I have spent around 4/5 of my life living in the Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi even though I now live in New York. So while I hated to see Bush lose the popular vote and win the White House in 2000, I understood why the process is the way it is - unlike Hillary Clinton and her shrill screeches against it in her first year in the Senate. Without the electoral college and the states’ primary process, the voices of Iowans and Nebraskans and Alabamians and others would be lost amid the glamor and glitz of New York and Los Angeles-based campaigns.
Now, with McCain’s win in Florida due to the momentum he built up winning in the great states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, maybe Giuliani can realize that all those people he ignored and didn’t care about in Iowa and New Hampshire actually do matter. If you want to be president of these United States, you can’t just understand life in the city; you also have to understand life in the country. This country is about more than New York and L.A. It’s about Omaha and Birmingham and Tulsa and Portsmouth and Cedar Rapids and thousands of other small cities and towns across the country.
Go back to New York, Rudy. The rest of the country doesn’t want you there either.
OK, I know I have said in the past that Ron Paul adds nothing of any value to the intelligent discourse of the presidential race, but I have to recant that statement. After watching the ABC/Facebook debate tonight and watching that nutty backwoods conservative scream over and over about the Iraq War and the welfare state, I have to say, he’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch. I don’t know how much longer he can last, but I almost want to give money to his campaign to watch the fireworks continue.
On domestic issues, I am about as opposed to him as I can be. I think he is a moron to want to cut the federal government as much as he wants to (that’s not to say it couldn’t use a little trim here and there). However, on foreign policy, while I disagree with his isolationist stance as a whole, there are some good and sound messages in there that we should take to heart.
The rest of the field fell all over themselves to say that Al Queda didn’t attack us because we have bases in Muslim countries, while Ron Paul was man enough to say that was the main reason it happened. Of course, none of them were able to say that it could have been a combination of that and the values that we hold dear as a nation (which it of course is).
So, I recant. I hope Ron Paul hangs in there as long as he can.
