Did Ann Coulter slip in a parenthetical dig about Hillary's sexuality? "(I also predict more Oval Office incidents with female interns.)" It's not Bill who will be in the Oval Office.

I'm sick of this high school football meantality that says I have to vote for a right-leaning Democrat (Clinton) you can't pin on anything if they get the nomination over a moderate Republican whose views I know because they have a "D" next to their name.

Sorry. For reasons I have stated earlier I have not made up my mind between McCain and Clinton, and I refuse to vote for somebody solely on party loyalty.

What have the Democrats done for me lately?

*crickets chirp*

Has American politcs always been this way? Am I more involved than I used to be, so that I see it more than I used to see it? Or are these people crazier and more dangerous than their forerunners?

For me, right now, the only solution is to stop caring so much, and to focus away from politics.

"That's because Obama beats McCain, and creates a new dynamic that the GOP can't dent for generations."

I understand why an Obama presidency would be good in that he is for most everything I'm for and against most everything I'm against.

I don't understand how his election would create a new dynamic that the GOP couldn't dent for generations. Please help me understand.

For me, right now, the only solution is to stop caring so much, and to focus away from politics.

Marvelous idea. I'm getting started immediately.

CHEERS!

I don't think these talk show hosts realize that they are not conservatives.

By bringing the majority of independents back to the Democrats, basically. The GOP and the DLC Dems have done the blue island/red sea contention for quite awhile, now, even though both parties are representing diminishing slices of the electorate -- the GOP by narrowing themselves into their Brimstone Base, their hard, nasty core (thereby alienating their more moderate members and libertarian independents, now endangered species in the GOP), and the Dems by watering themselves down by trying to try to appeal to everybody (and thereby losing more progressive-minded independents, who've been nearly extinct from the mainstream Dems since nearly forever).

Whether either party wants to admit it, Independents are the new emerging majority, and the party that can consistently win them will win election after election, just as the party that loses them will lose election after election.

The GOP's hard-headed strategy is contracting them ever tighter, as they go off into Fascist Country, and the DLC Dems keep trying to become the everything-for-everybody party -- not very satisfying or inspiring.

Obama has managed to win the enthusiasm of the independents in a way that Clinton just hasn't. McCain likely has a chunk of the independents who'd support him -- that's why he threatens Clinton in the general; but the independents who favor Obama are more numerous than the ones that favor McCain, so, head-to-head, McCain loses, even with the GOP hardheads on his side (since Dems + Independents = victory for the Dems).

This is compounded by the immense dissatisfaction all but the lunatic 20% hardheads feel about the direction of the country. The party tapping into that dissatisfaction and finding productive expression of it wins, and for a very long time.

..........and there's good reason to believe they won't. The only thing that trumps a conservative's selfishness is their sense of vengeance. And because McCain is closer to their camp than Hillary or Obama, his snub of them is that much more hurtfull to them, and therefore their desire for vengeance is that much greater towards him than to the potential democratic candidates.

They would rather exact revenge on McCain than vote in their self interest.

Their hatefulness and their inability to compromise will be their undoing yet again, and they will exile themselves from public life, back into their rural hovels, as they've done throught most of our history. And won't it be grand.

Adios Muchachos!!!

Back in the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and people were more openly talking about the democratic process, one word seemed to pop up a lot more than any other: "pluralism". We were stuck in three generations of one-party rule, and we were getting very very sick of it. Same old slogans, same old bullshit, same old corruption. So, when people start getting hopeful about the imminent collapse of the Republican party and the imminent unification and supremacy of the Democratic party, I get a little scared. Do we really want that to happen? Is one-party rule what we want?

Look at what happened: in 2004 Bush was re-elected President, Congress pretty much belonged to the GOP and at least one conservative Justice was about to be installed in the Supreme Court. Dick Cheney was smugly talking about a takeover. For all intents and purposes, we've been as close to one-party rule as it gets, the so-called "win" of the Democrats in 2006 nonwithstanding. Do we want to merely invert this? If the Democrats are the ultimate ruling party from 2008 onwards, will things be better?

I'd argue no. Pluralism is a big boon of the liberal ideology: we love disagreeing with one another. That's the POINT. The very word "liberal" is derived from the word "liberty". Some perceive this as our weakness, we can never march in lockstep, and the much more "united" Republicans therefore successfully push through our agenda. But if we become like today's GOP in this respect, we risk becoming like them in other respects. It is a bad idea to march in lockstep, it leads to abuses of power that have characterized the beginning of the 21st century in this nation. This must not happen again.

I see hope in how the Democratic electorate is torn between Clinton and Obama, and I am especially hopeful that the indecision is not entirely about electability but is in great part based on the issues themselves. The fact that the GOP is having a hard time coalescing around McCain as its Supreme Leader, but is trying ever so hard to do it anyway is an indication of how counter-democratic they have become. The GOP has sold its soul to a form of dictatorship in order to regain power. Let's hope the Democratic Party will not succumb to the same temptation.