When did I say I wanted the young/new people to "bug off"?! Quite the opposite. What I said was I want them to learn that they still have to VOTE in November... REGARDLESS of whether or not their main man or woman wins the nomination. Saying you're not going to vote unless your chosen candidate is the nominee is childish and ultimately self-defeating. Politics doesn't work that way. You don't take your ball and go home because your team got knocked out in the first round. This isn't grade school. This is for real.

And to the brave Anon I've already forgotten how to identify... if you're enough of a Democrat or even Independent to not want another Republican regime, you'll vote for the Democratic nominee, whomever he or she may turn out to be. I'm no big John Edwards fan, but I'd rather see him in the White House than any Republican. Sometimes in life we have to take the next best thing if our first choice is not a realistic option. It's part of growing up.

I'm certainly not going to risk another four years of a Republican stranglehold on the world by either not voting or lodging a pointless "protest" vote (which is just a tantrum in response to not getting your way) if the nominee isn't my perfect choice. There's too much at stake to be that immature, irresponsible and self-absorbed. It's not all about ME. THIS is what the young/new people have to learn--and fast.

Oh, how I wish I did not agree with you... but I do.

You should really read up more on Wesley Clark. He is HARDLY pro-war. He supports war ONLY as a last resort, and did not support this one.

Not everyone with a military background is a warmonger. That's a lazy and simplistic conclusion to jump to. Wes Clark is an honorable, intelligent, accomplished and peace-loving man. And this is coming from a card-carrying member of the Socialist loony left.

It's like you're all so married to your chosen complaint, that even when proof that you're MISTAKEN is put right in front of you, you stubbornly stick to it anyway. I can understand the human element at play--who likes to admit that their perception of something is actually very different from reality?--but come on. It's staring you right in the face.

Joe Conason has been pretty hard on Hillary at times. Way harder than on Obama. Perhaps your misperception of this is colored by his having written a best-selling book about the Clinton years, that's all I can think of. Because the facts DO NOT bear out your insistence that he's given her a free ride (as a Hillary supporter, I've often wanted to smack him for how hard he's been on her).

Go back and actually read his past columns. You'll find that perception is not, in fact, reality.

You wrote:

"The lame folks who call Clinton our first black president are nothing but sad-ass liberals, who couldn't stand an actual black person running. Where were these people when Jesse Jackson ran?"

I'm not quite sure I get your point. Sounds like you're saying unless I would support *any* black candidate for president, I'm a racist. As if all black people are the same, and there's no difference between Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama because they're both black. Sorry, there's a *world* of difference. I can easily "stand" Obama (who, last I checked, was an "actual black person") running. Jackson... notsomuch.

Maybe those "lame folks" (of which I was one) simply didn't think Jesse Jackson was a qualified, viable candidate to run the free world, no matter what his race. To assume that any white person who didn't support Jackson is a racist is akin to saying the same about black people who didn't support Kucinich. It's about viability, not race.

The idea of demanding that I either support *any* "actual black person" put in front of me or I'm a racist is ludicrous, and pretty insulting to black people.

The only living Kennedy who truly matters to me, Bobby Jr., has endorsed Hillary. How much an endorsement means is relative to how any particular voter feels about the endorser. So if you prefer Bobby to Uncle Ted, RFK to JFK (as I do), Bobby's endorsement will seem more valuable. And vice-versa.

To follow on what someone else said, I too have never understood or been impressed by the melodramatic, basically Pavlovian exclamation of "Oh, but it was Camelot!" that invariably follows any mention of JFK, even though I find the utterer rarely even knows what he or she actually means by it. They just know they're supposed to say it. (And yes, I was alive when JFK was shot... sorry, but not everyone buys into everything. Make it your friend.)

Our man Tim Hollinger, the 19 year old who skipped a day of skiiing to come hear Hillary and is trying to decide whether to vote for her, Obama or McCain, pronounces himself "impressed" by Hillary's 50-minute appearance. He's still undecided, but says "she's definitely more of a consideration for me now" although he was disappointed with Hillary's failure to clearly define torture. Hollinger wants to know why Hillary didn't clearly define waterboarding as torture, according to the Geneva Convention. At that point, Hillary overhears our conversation and, pointing at Hollinger, answers his question about waterboarding: "It is," she says. With that, she's gone.

--Newsweek.com, 1/5/08