I’m getting tired of this Democratic nominating campaign.
I mean, I was playing my guitar during coverage of this most recent “Super Tuesday,” the Texas/Ohio/Vermont/Rhode Island primaries. I didn’t sit glued to the TV screen as I have in all the earlier Super Tuesdays and Saturdays, eagerly awaiting the incoming results. In fact, I barely paid attention to them. I just picked up the news at the end, when most precinct totals were in and the results were final.
Except nothing’s final yet for the Democrats.
John McCain has already started trashing Senators Clinton and Obama, and at the same time kissing up pandering whoring himself smoothing over relations with the radical right end of his party, and by the time of the Republican convention they’ll be ready for the usual coronation. With no doubt about the outcome, the money from contributors will be flooding into the war chest and the “real” presidential campaign will have been going on for months.
But the Democrats are still slugging it out, beating each other up, giving the Republicans a bunch of excellent sound bites to use in their eventual (dirty) campaign against whoever wins the nomination. They’ve got two big states, Michigan and Florida, who broke the DNC rules and held their primaries too early. The DNC doesn’t want to seat those delegates, who are mostly pledged to Clinton. Clinton is saying it wouldn’t be fair to “disenfranchise” those voters. Obama is saying it wouldn’t be fair to let those states willfully break the rules and not bear the established consequences.
Clinton probably can’t catch Obama in pledged delegates. She’d have to win landslides in all the remaining primaries, which is so not likely. But Obama probably can’t get the required majority of pledged delegates to lock up the nomination before the convention. This is the point where they will go negative. Jones’ Law states “Bullies always win.” A corollary is that negative campaigning is more effective than positive campaigning. In plain English, you get more people to vote for you by calling the other guy names and demeaning his abilities, integrity and experience than by laying out your own thoughtful master plan for a peaceful, just world led by you. Since Clinton is behind, she’ll be the one slinging the mud. Obama might sling some back. Whoever “wins,” the GOP will have a lot of ammunition to use against him/her in the general.
If the delegate totals are close by convention time, I expect Clinton to try lobbying or pressuring the superdelegates to flip the outcome and give her the nomination. If this works, it will piss off the electorate and make a bunch of liberal voters stay home in November. When people don’t vote, Republicans high-five each other.
Why does this have to happen? I thought this election would be a cruise, given the metric buttload of great candidates the Dems had and the horrible, horrible record the Republicans have built in the past decade. (They’re still at it, by the way, this time screwing themselves and their contributors, ha ha.) I still think the Democrats will retake the White House and increase their majorities in Congress, but damn, they are making it hard for themselves.
Now that my guy is out of the race, I’m trying hard to remain neutral about which Democrat gets to be president. Truthfully, I can live with either one. But if the primary campaign gets ugly (uglier, by some lights), I will be disheartened, and so will a lot of other voters.
I won’t go into the litany of damage the Bush Administration has perpetrated — that will take an entire series of long posts. But in order to start cleaning up the mess the nation needs unity, resolve and participation. To this end, somebody in this campaign needs to make the hard choice to drop out and enthusiastically throw support to the winner, so we can right now eliminate the possibility of a third Bush term.
I don’t need any more drama, do you?
I’d like for it to be over now, too, so the winner can get to the real work of winning the presidency and digging into the immense stinking mess facing him or her starting Jan. 20, 2009. I was pulling for Edwards. I was distressed when he dropped out of the race. And now I’m hoping that Obama gets the nomination.
Unfortunately, this means I don’t want him gracefully bowing out just because Clinton will, inevitably, sling the larger portion of poo. And I know for sure that she won’t bow out until she truly has no other choice.
Soooo. We’re stuck with a long and ugly fight, it seems. It distresses me. But after seven years of G.W. Bush, distress almost feels normal.
Alas! That’s the total truth. {sigh}
Part of the reason I put my hope into Obama is that I that, as I mentioned then, I could see Edwards getting utterly short-shrifted by the MSM. Your average voter bought the “Edwards as ambulance chaser” BS lock, stock and barrel, and dude never had a chance after that. The fact that (the) Clinton(s) fed that myth is only one of the reasons I disdain her qualifications. Talk about “Beltway insiders”!
Blech…
None the.. I do have hope that Obama will get the nomination and squeak by in November. Even if it’s Hil at that time, I’ll still relatively gladly vote Democrat for President.
Just another {sighhh}, eh.
I don’t need any more drama, do you?
Us political junkies secretly thrive on it, no? We’ve had to have learned by now that politics doesn’t exist without it.
What I don’t get is what you briefly wrote about above. Maybe I’m being naive, or maybe my memory is short, or I didn’t learn my history like I should have. But, man, if things ever needed to be fixed, that time is now. It’s not like any Democrat would have to make things up out of thin air. It feels like this country is sinking faster than a box of rocks and neither one is sincerely addressing any of it! Do either of them *really* want to fix the system that’s rigged in their favor? They’re all so full of it.
That’s what distresses me. The thought that each of them are out *only* to get theirs. (Eliot Spitzer: Exhibit A)
Blue Girl – Not sure what I wrote that you reference. What I meant is that I want to start campaigning against McCain right now, to assure a margin of victory in November so wide that it cannot be gamed or rigged by the Republicans. I am so sick of them and their empty-headed mouthpiece in the oval office that I’ll gladly accept either of the remaining Dems, but I think they need to get on with it.
Oh, and regarding Spitzer: I really don’t care if he went to prostitutes. He shouldn’t have, because of what it does to his wife and kids and (probably) family finances. But he has to go, and the sooner the better, because now we see that he is a hypocrite. He brought the hammer of the law down on others and campigned for Governor on that record, but he has not lived up to the standards he enforced on them. Still, I wonder if the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting Spitzer is one of the “loyal Bushies” who played by Karl Rove’s rules and did not have to be fired like those others.
Not sure what I wrote that you reference.
Oh, just everything Bush has screwed up that you’d have to devote an entire series of posts to.
I guess what I meant was…can we trust any of them? I’m just off on my own little tangent here. I’ve been hearing from lots of readers who live overseas. *They’re* not happy with either Democrat or believe either one is truly progressive and/or liberal.
Sometimes I think we’re all just fooling ourselves. It’s tough not to believe when I read the emails I get.