Letters to the Editor
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rabid
uh, may wanna check the mirror there, shawny. I mean, I don't own a rabidity gauge or anything, but somehow the froth from the corners of your mouth came right through my monitor.
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Fault is a stupid word
This is the democratic process. Instead of whining about it, maybe we should appreciate the fact that we can engage in this process peacefully and without (major) corruption. When the worst thing that comes from the primaries are a series of poorly written shills/editorials, that's a pretty amazing accomplishment for free society.
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Nobody Listens
Look, the media, and Rush's Operation Chaos specifically, are pulling for the Democrats to fight, to tear up the others until there's nothing left to fight McCain with.
Bottom line is, Democrats can either pull together or hang apart. A house divided among itself cannot stand.
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An opportunity that shouldn't be squandered
I am waiting and waiting and waiting for one of the candidates to make a big push for a new national energy policy. And no, I don't mean talk about gas prices. I mean a broad discussion about our future, and how to move from dirtier fossil fuels to cleaner fossil fuels to non-fossil energy.
I hope somebody takes this opportunity to change the subject from flag pins and "the last surviving member of the Weather Underground" and other nonsense (ahem, that's you Barack, and also you, MSM).
I know both Obama and Clinton have detailed policy positions on energy, but for whatever reasons, those seem to have been kept in the shadow of the trivial.
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Chiefpayne, You Make a Crucial Point
The operative word here is "promises." Let's go there, shall we? I'm so glad you brought this up.
Every since The Great White Father in Washington began making promises to my Indian ancestors, and later to my (distant and obscure, but at least one-drop yard child) forebears, and later to the Negro freedmen and women, and all the while to the complacent white majority, those promises have been written on the cheapest toilet paper and flushed no sooner than they've been written, if they ever even got written (which, in the earliest instances they did, an enduring outrage).
However, the Great White Father (a position like the Pope, who carries the title but the face changes periodically), also known as our President, is not in a position to make promises, because he has never had the authority to carry them out without the complicity of Congress, which makes him not The Decider (as the most recent incarnation has called himself), but, if we're luckier than hell, The Pesuader.
The current Democratic nomination contest has been a case of promises vs. ideas and ideals. Ms. Clinton has made promises out of all proportion to their warrantability. This has been the lying, promising, cheap, condescending approach which has been used since President Jackson onward unto this very day.
The upstart Obama is criticized for several flaws seen as fatal by both the Clintonites and McCain basket cases: first, how can the Great White Father be black (or, as some insist, only half-white? So much for splitting hairs). Second, he won't make promises but prefers to deal in speculation as to what might be possible. Third, he has proven himself, in his campaign, to be a supreme master of persuasion. Else how could he be in the position he is today, leading the formerly annointed candidate?
These odd questions about Obama's credibility as a candidate are, obviously, founded largely upon race, since Obama does appear to be a black man, is married to a black woman (has anyone done any DNA testing on her to determine just how black she really is? This seems to be a concern for a lot of people with nothing better to do with their minds). He attends a church where the congregation has traditionally been mostly black, but is part of a denomination which has nothing to do with race, political leanings, or anything else that might belong to Ceasar. So he is at least nominally black, just as I am nominally black, or at least, as we like to say in my family, I pass for white. At least until I open my mouth to speak. Then all bets are off.
But I digress. It is the notion of promise-making, and to a far leser degree (or greater, depending on one's expectations), promise-keeping. For a candidate to promise anything other than that he or she will try very hard to bring about certain policies and make certain changes via persuasion, is the most bald and florid sort of pandering, and it has been bought not only by my ancestors of various races and tribes, who first saw The Great White Father as their best hope, right down to the blue collar, Scots-Irish/German caucasoids (to which I am also genetically glued), along with various other nominally "white" folks, like Italians, eastern Europeans, middle easterners, etc., and, yes, even Californians (though they come from another planet or at least another state as a rule).
Promise me anything, but take it back at the first opportunity. Healthcare reform comes to mind.
For this reason alone, I would support a candadate who predicates his campaign on "hope" and "change" rather than on concrete and unwarrantable promises. Check with what's left of the Powatomac Indians and see what they think of the "promise" concept. Check with the desecendants of former African slaves, whatever shade of brown (are there shades of black?) also. Hell, check with the cynical white majority who have been screwed over for years by insisting on buying their candidate based on promises. And they keep doing it!
The rest of us are perhaps tired of the endless loop of meaningless campaign promises.
I didn't mean to try and make this a selling point for my candidate of choice, but I guess it was unavoidable, since he's the one who hasn't been making promises much. It's that other one who worries me. The would-be Great White Mother.
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Why does this "stalemate" have to be a fault?
Why does the duration of this contest have to point out a flaw in our party or in our candidates?
Why isn't it just that we have two incredible candidates with very strong, different personalities who appeal to different attitudes and demographics within our party?
We have two incredible people to choose from. This is called "the democratic process" which is what we're trying to preserve here. So what is the point of all this self-defeating anxiety?
Are we children who have to rush to a judgment in order to look "tough" to beat those "scary" republicans and not "fail" again?
Yes, they are making some errors in attacking each other, but this isn't a Willie Horton ad, or a stealth campaign about John McCain's Black baby and potential insanity run in the deep south. It's a few rude remarks and all of a sudden it's "she's a bitch who's ruining the race" and "he's a whiny wimp who can't close the deal" and "those loser Dems are going to blow a sure thing because of this!"
The reason the republicans have a candidate right now is because Romney and Huckabee were nowhere near on par with the caliber of Hillary and Barack, and clearly John McCain was the most centrist, sane person with a track record. They were choosing between PBR and Heineken. We're choosing between champagne and champagne. It's not the best analogy, especially if you like PBR as much as me, but you get my point.
If "we" democrats feel that one or the other of these candidates are so weak compared to McCain that we're going to lose if the wrong one is chosen, that shows a lack of faith in the strength of our ideas and in the competency of both of these candidates, who are both eminently qualified to lead no matter what your personal preference is. I'm tired of this negativity . . . assigning blame is part of the problem.
Take a breather people . . . what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.