Super Tuesday is done. The Potomac Primaries approach. Things have evolved.
Now it appears that the Republican nominee will be John McCain. Let me tell you something: I would rather have George W. Bush as president than John McCain. McCain is MORE of a warmonger than Bush and more of a cronyism-driven conservative. His "straight talk" is mostly bull -- he's changed his tune more often than Mitt Romney -- and he's maybe the biggest kiss-ass of the bunch as far as religious lunatics and "decency" bluenoses are concerned (despite the fact that his wife is a former stripper and prostitute).
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, I believe that he is insane. He is always teetering on the verge of losing it in a temper tantrum that would be the envy of any petulant nine-year-old kid, and the only reason he hasn't exploded publicly is that the press always, ALWAYS, treats him with kid gloves. He has a crusader's mindset about the Muslim world that may exceed even that of Bush's neocons. His economic ideas are absolutely 180 degrees reversed from what we need. Does anyone sane really think that Federal spending on such programs as Medicare and Medicaid is what has brought us to our current sorry state of affairs?
Since when does languishing in a Vietnamese POW camp make you a military strategist? Since when does being a senator from Arizona provide you with foreign policy experience? Everything this guy advocates is 100% wrong. He's WORSE than Bush!
The attacks on him by right-wing radio hosts was nothing but a ruse. It was a deliberately contrived strategy orchestrated for the benefit of undecided moderates AFTER it became clear that McCain would be the nominee. It leaves him in a stronger position to feign moderation during the general election campaign. It gave him plausible deniability he will be able to play on when confronted with questions about his arch-rightwing record.
And, of course, the mainstream press has eaten it up.
On the other hand, we are left with a virtual, if not an actual, tie on the Democratic side. Obama and Clinton, with their relative strengths and weaknesses that so closely balance each other out, are more-or-less right about every issue and policy but have liabilities as candidates that leave McCain in an unusually strong position. As I have said before, if either Clinton or Obama becomes our nominee, I don't give us even a 30% chance of winning the general election next November. I'll explain why a little farther down.
But, although my hopes about so many things have proven utterly false in recent years, this gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, we can come all the way to the convention without a winner. This will give our convention HUGE additional exposure, and in a much better light than the heinous time we had of it in 1968, the last time our nomination remained in doubt after such a tumultuous spring.
Not only will this blunt the effects of the Republican slander machine, it might give us the opportunity to pick somebody else. I know that the chances of this are very, very small, but we do have several other candidates we could run who might have a much easier time against the likes of John McCain, and even carry enough senate races to prevent filibusters (even after kicking Lieberman out of every committee) and actually get things done.
I have explained at length in previous pieces why I believe that Obama and Clinton are weak candidates -- the weakest two among our original field -- for the general election. In brief, Obama has many factors that the Republicans will use to slander him successfully. Clinton has been the target of sixteen YEARS of their slanders, and that has taken a toll that may be impossible to reverse. Don't forget that the television press in particular will shine a much harsher light on our candidate than they will on John McCain.
But that's not all. Because the only "credible" (and I use that word with a grain of salt the size of the Rock of Gibraltar) source of information about the war and statistics about the economy is ultimately the Bush administration, this information will be manipulated to present the state of our prosperity and the progress of the war in a highly favorable light. Conditions, both domestically and militarily, will be painted as improving during the months leading up to the election whether they actually are or not. People will forget that it was not Bush himself but the whole conservative/neocon/supply-side philosophy that got us into this mess, and the election itself will be portrayed as a referendum on whether we should support stability or embark on the risky proposition of changing horses in midstream, and doing so during a sever storm and raging waters. They won't think of where the storm's lashes and waters' rage originated, and instead just raise doubts about our uncertain future.
We have a very, VERY tough row to hoe during this campaign. They will CERTAINLY unite behind McCain, and the candidates we currently offer will energize their base to an extent greater than anything we have ever seen. They will do everything they can to, on the one hand, blunt the mandate for change, and on the other hand, present John McCain as the candidate of wise and prudent change.
I pray we come into the convention without a frontrunner, and that it goes into a fourth-ballot free-for-all. I see it as our only hope, and it is a slim hope at that.
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Both candidates need to be ditched in favor of somebody far better. We had that chance with John Edwards, and, to a lesser extent, Joe Biden. But the media didn't want them.
