Left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican.......they've all lost their meaning for me.

This year, I could've gotten behind either Ron Paul or Barack Obama. One is pretty far left (Obama, of course) and the other is so far right, he makes Ronald Reagan look like Fidel Castro.

So what does that say about me?

For one thing, it says that personal integrity is more important than where the next president lands on the political spectrum.

I used to be a partisan right-winger. Over time, my right-winger-ness eroded and I became quite liberal.

These days, I'm everywhere and nowhere on the political map. I wonder how typical I am.

It was already shaping up as a bad year for Republicans. Their House and Senate candidates were facing uphill fights and McCain was going to have a very difficult time beating Obama. McCain's age and his insistence on tying himself to the failed Bush foreign policy had already put him way behind the 8 ball.

And now this.......

You might as well start practicing how to say it, Republicans....

Pres-i-dent O-ba-ma

Yes, I know it's difficult. But start off slowly. Say it 5 times a day to prepare yourself for next January.

Bobby Knight will be the best thing that's happened to sports reporting since Howard Cosell passed.

We need obnoxious, opinionated, knowledgable, highly intelligent analysts to cut through the cliches and mindless hero worship that are so much a feature of sports.

Okay, so maybe Knight is an abusive bully. And Ty Cobb was a nasty asshole and a racist and Pete Rose had a gambling problem.

What do you want, plaster saints or analysts who will tell it like it is?

Hey, what's wrong with McCain and Huckabee? In marketing terms, their slogan could be:

Old white guys......they were good for America in the 19th and 20th centuries, and by damn, they'll take us through the 21st century!

Here in Columbus, we have torrential rain and gusty winds. Up in Cleveland and Toledo they're having a snowstorm. The weather is bad throughout the state.

There's no question the bad weather will depress the voter turnout. My guess is that more Hillary supporters than Barack supporters will choose to stay home, but that's just a guess.

Then there's the factor of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk show hosts urging their listeners to go out and vote for Hillary because she'd make the weakest Democratic candidate in the general election.

My guess is that the weather will make a lot of those dittoheads decide to stay home and oil their gun collections.

Experience, my ass.

Who cares whether Hillary or McCain or Barack has "more experience"? When any of these three candidates sits down in the Oval Office next January, they're going to start with a clean slate. It'll be day 1 of a new administration and they'll all start off on the same footing. What they've done in the past won't matter, except as an indicator of how they'll behave in the presidency.

As we go about the business of choosing the next president, what matters is not experience, but judgment. And on that basis, both Hillary and McCain have demonstrated very bad judgment in authorizing Mr. Bush's Iraq boondoggle.

The only one of the three who opposed the Iraq misadventure from the start is Barack Obama. I'd say he's demonstrated better judgment than either Hillary or McCain.

If you are a Democrat for whom victory in November is the most important thing, Hillary's wins last night have probably thrown you into a deep depression.

A revitalized Hillary campaign means that Team Clinton will crank up the politics of personal destruction once again and start tearing down Barack Obama. It means the Obama and Clinton teams will spend time and money fighting each other, while the Republicans sit on the sidelines...gloating, raising money, and licking their wounds.

If Hillary emerges as the winner in this primary season it's no cause for celebration among Democrats who care about their party. For one thing, Hillary is a very, very vulnerable candidate in a general election. (Can't you just see Karl Rove salivating over the prospect of resurrecting Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm, Gennifer Flowers and all the other Clinton baggage?)

And if Hillary should manage to eke out a win over McCain, do we really want 8 more years of the Clinton politics of division and triangulation? As much as hubby Bill's bedroom antics have amused us in the past, do we really want (to paraphrase Mitt Romney) Bill loose in the White House for 8 years with lots of time on his hands? Do we really want to listen to Bill's narcissistic, rambling bloviations for the next 8 years?

This is not a good day for Democrats.

I don't know. Assuming Obama will have more delegates at the end, why should he take the 2nd spot on a Hillary ticket?

And if Hillary would be persuaded to be Obama's vice president, I'd be continually worried that she would poison his soup during one of their lunchtime meetings.

We're having a great time.

Glad you're not here.

Eat shit and die.

Cordially,

GW in Ohio