By now, most of the really interesting stories regarding the Democratic nominating race have been thoroughly analyzed, dissected, re-examined, picked clean, and been left in a ditch to be gnawed at occasionally by journalists that have run out of things to say about a beagle winning the Westminster Dog Show. The 'new and interesting' stories receiving prominent placement in political media center on Barrack Obama's plagiarism of a politician that gave him public permission to use his words and an argument over the number of ideal debates in this election cycle being twenty or twenty-one. It's fair to say that political reporters should either get lost or provide some meaningful analysis of the positions proposed by the candidates in question.
Obviously I am not a political reporter. I am a blogger, and an undisciplined one at that. I'm allowed rant and rave. I can re-visit political discussions long since settled for no other reason than I feel like it. I'm allowed to swear. Fuck. A real journalist, or even a relatively respectable blogger would never have been able to do that, and I just did it for no reason at all. I'll do it again, because it's the word that keeps popping into my head when I start to ponder this election at any length. Fuck.
Not to long ago, everyone believed that the Democratic nomination was going to be decided by Iowa and New Hampshire. Maybe if we were really lucky, the whole thing wouldn't be wrapped up until South Carolina. This was seen as a bad thing. 'Why, O why do we not let the voices of all Democrats be heard!?!' was the cry of teachers in Wisconsin and pipe-fitters in Ohio. It turns out that there was an exceedingly good reason for keeping decision making powers out of the hands of rank and file democrats. We're fucking idiots.
The field of potential Democratic nominees, with the exception of Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich, was one of the deepest in recent history. From this field of foreign policy experts, democratic populists, and immensely qualified former senior executives we have narrowed it down to the least experienced candidate and least electable candidate we could find. In addition, we've split the vote for these two right down the middle, all but ensuring an ugly nomination and groups of dispirited partisans among the losing candidate's supporters.
Don't take this the wrong way, I'm all about Obama, and up until about two weeks ago I would have happily cast a vote for Clinton against John McCain. But in the last few weeks I've begun to understand why my father, who has been a staunch Democrat his entire life, maintained such disdain for the Clintons. I was not a political animal in college. This ambivalence was partially due the unflagging national prosperity that at the time I viewed as an accepted fact of American life, but mostly I was just blind drunk a lot of the time in college.
In any case, I never internalized the evidence of the Clintons' less appealing political personality traits during Bill Clinton's Presidency. But when the Clinton campaign began to make noises about seating the banned delegations from Florida and Michigan, my perception of Hilary Clinton as a good second choice began to flag.
Stories have begun to leak out of her campaign hinting that Clinton plans to sway pledged Obama delegates to her side, should either candidate fail to win the necessary votes for nomination.
We're not talking about the oft-publicized super delegates here. If this thing is close, she means to ignore voters and attempt to convince elected delegates to join the dark side.
I want my nominee to be tough enough to stand up to Republicans in the general election. What I don't want is a nominee acting like 'That Guy' in a game of pick-up basketball, so focused on personal glory that he (or she) throws elbows at his own teammates underneath the basket.
Labels: politics, rant
