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Saturday, January 5, 2008 12:00 AM

A Democratic donnybrook

The debate was rich in sound and fury, but did little lasting damage to unruffled frontrunner Barack Obama.

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  • Sunday, January 6, 2008 09:34 AM

    Pointing Back at 35 Years of "Experience"...

    ...only makes one look old and in the way. Whatever happened over the past 35 years has already happened, it's been done for better or worse, and we cannot unring that bell. At the same time, I do the math, and what exactly was Ms. Clinton doing 35 years ago? Finishing grad school? Starting her law career? At best a civic activist maybe? What kind of experience are we talking about exactly? I'm more interested in what the experience of the next 35 years is going to be like on the planet, and if it's going to be built on the old and rotting platform of politics-as-usual and MIC ties and talking points and all the things which already play like an endless loop in our collective head, then why even bother?

    Right after the "donnybrook" (which word doesn't even come close to applying to last night's debate except maybe as a sarcasm) I watched the movie "V For Vendetta" while waiting for the calls to start coming in from the SoCal office. "Never underestimate the power of words", "Hope is of far greater value than fear to a free people", and "Ideas are bulletproof" all struck me like whiplash from the "donnybrook" just ended.

    It is, indeed, time to "Tear This Building Down." We don't get to start over by doing the same stuff we were doing for the past 35 years. It is precisely that which got us here, to this point right now, where we are lying in the bottom of the barrel because, well, that's as far down as down goes -- I hope.

    Barack Obama, by simply being positive, and John Edwards, by his recognition he has nothing to lose, have set the stage for a sea change in American politics.

    "What's wrong with experience?" whines Bill Richardson. Everything, if it's all you've got. It is history, and history is what's already happened, experience is nothing but war stories.

    War stories.

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