Ruminations...
This presidential election process of ours is really something to behold. After all these months of endless campaigning, it gets down to a couple hundred thousand Iowans engaged in something resembling an auction. One night.
The excitement is palpable, isn't it? Iowa followed so closely by New Hampshire really stokes the furnaces. I'd love to be able to capture for posterity the numerous breathless predictions of Barack as now inevitable, and/or Hillary coming in third in NH and being done.
This thing is a marathon, not a sprint. We've got some electoral results, but very few delegates are actually selected yet. I have an idea that the Rudy Giuliani strategy of not wasting time on the small early states may turn out prescient. Perhaps this race will look a lot like this year's college football season with multiple frontrunners bumping each other off.
I feel for Hillary Clinton's plight. As a woman candidate, I'm pretty sure she felt entitled to the victim's role in this thing. Imagine her dismay when a black guy got in the race. Poor John Edwards. As a white male, no matter how disadvantaged his upbringing, when it comes to victimhood, you can't beat black.
So it would seem that at this moment, the Democrats seem poised to nominate a man who has absolutely no business being President, who speaks in airy terms about some sort of ethereal "change". Change from what? To what? Nobody knows. Thanks to its totemization of victimhood, the party is completely bereft of any ability to challenge this guy.
Unless the nominee is Huckabee, you can bet the Republican will show no such compunction. The entire Obama campaign revolves around the comparative novelty of a "clean, articulate" African American actually viable as a candidate. Except that in any meaningful usage of the word "viable", he ain't.
This year, the Republicans have assumed the traditional Democrat condition of a wide open field. Unlike this year''s Dem field, the Pubs boast a deep roster of seriously qualified candidates. I can actually see someone like John McCain or Mitt Romney running the country.
Ultimately, if Obama does become the nominee, the false promise of unification is likely to be cruelly torn down. Obama is an old fashioned liberal black pol, packaged very slickly. Ultimately, however slick the presentation, America is unlikely to elect a redistributionist, preferences-loving, foreign policy naif to her highest office.
Sadly, many will seize upon this entirely sensible rejection of an utterly unqualified candidate as proof that "America is just not ready" for a black president. Actually, it's the candidate who's not ready.
This presidential election process of ours is really something to behold. After all these months of endless campaigning, it gets down to a couple hundred thousand Iowans engaged in something resembling an auction. One night.
The excitement is palpable, isn't it? Iowa followed so closely by New Hampshire really stokes the furnaces. I'd love to be able to capture for posterity the numerous breathless predictions of Barack as now inevitable, and/or Hillary coming in third in NH and being done.
This thing is a marathon, not a sprint. We've got some electoral results, but very few delegates are actually selected yet. I have an idea that the Rudy Giuliani strategy of not wasting time on the small early states may turn out prescient. Perhaps this race will look a lot like this year's college football season with multiple frontrunners bumping each other off.
I feel for Hillary Clinton's plight. As a woman candidate, I'm pretty sure she felt entitled to the victim's role in this thing. Imagine her dismay when a black guy got in the race. Poor John Edwards. As a white male, no matter how disadvantaged his upbringing, when it comes to victimhood, you can't beat black.
So it would seem that at this moment, the Democrats seem poised to nominate a man who has absolutely no business being President, who speaks in airy terms about some sort of ethereal "change". Change from what? To what? Nobody knows. Thanks to its totemization of victimhood, the party is completely bereft of any ability to challenge this guy.
Unless the nominee is Huckabee, you can bet the Republican will show no such compunction. The entire Obama campaign revolves around the comparative novelty of a "clean, articulate" African American actually viable as a candidate. Except that in any meaningful usage of the word "viable", he ain't.
This year, the Republicans have assumed the traditional Democrat condition of a wide open field. Unlike this year''s Dem field, the Pubs boast a deep roster of seriously qualified candidates. I can actually see someone like John McCain or Mitt Romney running the country.
Ultimately, if Obama does become the nominee, the false promise of unification is likely to be cruelly torn down. Obama is an old fashioned liberal black pol, packaged very slickly. Ultimately, however slick the presentation, America is unlikely to elect a redistributionist, preferences-loving, foreign policy naif to her highest office.
Sadly, many will seize upon this entirely sensible rejection of an utterly unqualified candidate as proof that "America is just not ready" for a black president. Actually, it's the candidate who's not ready.
posted by alwaysright at
6:43 PM
1 Comments
