While I was quite pleased to learn that Rudy Giuliani has decided to drop out of the Republican field of Presidential candidates, I’m a bit disappointed to learn that John Edwards is also calling quits in advance of MegaTuesday. I have never been much of an Edwards supporter, but after Dennis Kucinich dropped out last week I decided that I would vote for Edwards in the Massachusetts primary as my second choice.
At this point, I am weighing whether to vote in the primary or not. As an unaffiliated voter, I usually do not vote in primaries, but, as I said a couple of weeks ago, I felt that this year, with a broader range of candidates to choose from, it would be worthwhile to have some input by voting for a candidate who wasn’t a front-runner. Though voting for Kucinich wasn’t going to win him the nomination, votes for the "lesser" candidates help direct the party in its message and goals. This op-ed in The Nation makes the point that the Democratic Party has been changed by the re-involvement at the grass roots level, spurred on by the campaign of Howard Dean in ’04. That re-engagement at the ground level of politics is EXACTLY what worked for the Republicans in the 1970s and 80s. The Democrats need the same thing, whether they want it or not, and more support for less "mainstream" candidates works toward that end.
But now it’s Hillary and Barack, Barack and Hillary, and neither of them comes anywhere near representing "change", no matter how many times they say it. The Bushies are so sure that Hillary is going to win that they’ve been passing along their notes to her informally so that she can be up to speed on what’s been going on. The horse race aspect of the campaign makes a good show, but the delegate count matters more than the individual wins, and Hillary’s lead is bigger than you think. When November comes around, I will vote for her over anyone the Republicans might pick, but it won’t be with any satisfaction.
And I hate to say it, but I can’t manage any enthusiasm at all for Barack Obama. I think he’s "all hat and no cowboy", as Dan Rather might say. Sam Smith, who authors/edits the political blog Progressive Review, posted this op-ed yesterday, and sums up a lot of the things I have thought about Obama. Now, it has to be said that Smith particularly dislikes the Clintons; he’s rarely got anything good to say about them, so it’s not a surprise that he thinks Obama is more honest and thoughtful than Hillary. But he’s dead on about Obama’s empty platitudes:
For Obama to put so much emphasis on hope suggests that he is either a con artist or deeply policy deficient.
It is fine for a politician to offer us hope, but for it to be real it has to be the byproduct of proposed policies or past actions and not the beginning and end of one’s platform.
There are two good reasons for voting for a candidate. One: the candidate has done something for you. Two: the candidate promises to do something for you.
No candidate meets the first criteria and only John Edwards meets the second.
Without question, this is the most important presidential election in my lifetime. The disaster of the last eight years is going to take an enormous amount of work to repair, and rhetorical flourish isn’t really Qualification Number One. The Republican Party has been put in the position of having to make some difficult decisions about the future direction of their party, but at least those directions are clearly represented in their field of candidates. Not a one of those men deserves to be President, by the way, but at least the party is beginning to re-align itself. The Democrats, in the meanwhile, have winnowed their choices to A and A1, choices B, C, D, etc. all gone now. If American politics is already too much like choosing between Coke and Pepsi, the primaries are now like choosing between Classic Coke and New Coke. I’d prefer a 7Up, thank you.
