Primary Problem

It's been a long time since I've posted here, pretty much since the primaries have heated up and since cooled off. John McCain will be the Republican nominee, a fan of special interests and a good ole boy Republican that despite his actual record still has a closely cultivated reputation as a maverick.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton trails Barack Obama in a surprising turnaround from last Fall, when it looked like they'd sail into the opposite spots that they are in now. I'm going to skip a recap of the stuff that has gone on so far. You've either been paying attention or you haven't. I'm going to skip what would surely be a long rant about how the DNC sucks because they've chosen to arbitrarily kowtow to the early voting states, states that generally don't even go Democratic in the General, and to screw uover two states that are almost fundamentally necessary for a Democratic win in November, real swing states that could lose the election for the Democratic nominee. I'll bring us to the latest grounds of the battle between Clinton and Obama.

When this whole thing started, I was between the two of them, leaning towards Obama. Then I was for Obama but thought, "If I have to vote for Clinton, I will be perfectly happy, there's really no wrong choice here." Now I feel like if I have to vote for Clinton, it'll be with a gun to my head, and that gun will be McCain shaped, as there is no force on Earth that'd get me to vote for him. I'll say before I go any further that Obama has made a lot of mistakes that I'm not happy with. He's done his fair share of pandering, and he's gotten off the "audacity of hope" message a bit from where I first really got hooked and has since taken a more wonkish policy laden view which I suppose is necessary give the fight he is in. But Clinton, whew, she's dipped into a bag of dirty tricks that I thought only Republican had access to.

In the last month, Clinton has accused Obama of being against the democratic rights of Florida and Michigan because he didn't sign off on the revote in those states. Nevermind the fact that no revote would have happened anyway, and that even if it had, it never would have been fair considering the mistakes the DNC made in the first place. But since saying that, she has also said that almsot no pledged votes thus far matter, and that those are really superdelegates who can vote for whoever they want. To clarify: Obama is anti-democratic because he's disenfranchising two states (which isn't even true, but that's a different debate), but Clinton on the other hands says that all 50 states, basically, don't matter, and that the delegates can vote for whoever they want, voters be damned. It takes a special kind of stupidity and gall to think that isn't a far worse crime than the one she is accusing Obama of. And we'll ignore her fabrications about Bosnia and what did and apparently didn't happen there, and the story she made up about the hospital and the dying mother. We'll forget the controversy she tried to create over Obama's connection to Rev. Wright, and for the matter the serious boost the mainstream media tried to give her by seriously misrepresenting the sermons that were plastered all over CNN that he gave. To be sure he's a controversial figure who said some inflammatory things, but those things (well many of them) were tempered by the surrounding portions of his sermons that were largely left off of the sound bites.

And yet surprisingly the American people seemed to have seen through a lot of that, and in a state where no one though even Obama could win, he's polling even with her. In a state where many said that if Obama could lose by five points it'd be a victory, he's polling even and in some cases ahead of Clinton. I think we're seeing a rejection of Clinton's tactics, the sort of tactics that seemed to work in Ohio and Texas to bring Obama down. And it's good, and I think it will both toughen Obama up, and at the same time leave the voters leery of what may come from the Republicans come September.

I have to wonder how Clinton could hope to go on if she loses Pennsylvania, but, she technically lost Texas and still went on, and I don't see her stopping until the last vote is counted, regardless of what the best thing is for the country or the party, she may well be 2008's Ralph Nader (which is ironic, because Nader is running). She might ruin it for the Democrats in what should have been the easiest win they've had in decades. 2004 should have been an easy win, this should have been a lobbed softball, and still they might find a way to hand it over to the Republicans. If they lose this time around, I think the party should start over from scratch. If they can't win with the money, the momentum, and the dislike the country has of the Republicans, well, then what would it take? For now, the primary problem standing in the way of a win seems to be Clinton.