Wednesday, February 06, 2008

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you



The New York Times captioned this photo, "Senator Barack Obama celebrated with his wife after his victory in Illinois, at left. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, at right, after winning in New York."

You get the feeling that the Times, by juxtaposing these two embraces, is making some kind of comment about Senator Clinton's home life.

Just sayin'.

It's an interesting year so far, isn't it? At first it looked like the Republican party wasn't bothering to field a non-fruitcake candidate, reasoning that the next four years are going to be spent mopping up and apologizing for all the large loose dumps this administration has left all over the neighborhood, and they'd rather not be the ones trying to cart off all the poo, preferring instead to point at the Democratic incumbent in 2012 and say, "Ew! That guy smells like crap!". Then the Democrats took advantage of this potentially winnable election cycle to present two undeniably strong, intelligent, and basically unprecedented Presidential candidates. THEN the Giants win the Super Bowl!

And now, with a scant 9 months to go before the Presidential election, we still don't know who's gonna win! Crazy! We might actually see a presidential election here in Maryland! Usually such things pass us by - the Democratic primary is usually sewn up by the time we get around to it, and since Maryland always goes blue, we don't get much candidate love during the regular election either.

I myself am paying little attention so far. I don't care which one wins, as long as it's him or her. Which was kind of a done deal until Republicans woke up and smelled the crazy, and started voting for McCain. Dag nabbit, we've got the likable veteran to run against instead of the religious throwback or the lipless prosecutor or the actor or the... other religious throwback? Crap.

I look at the kids at the Big Man's school, and I want them to see someone who looks like them in the White House. I want the girls to see a woman holding the reins. I want the black kids to see a black man in the Oval Office. Either way, half of those kids win, and I can't decide which half deserves it more. (Actually, I can. I know who deserves it more, but I'm not telling.)

I tell you what though - if it's him, the first call he ought to make should be to her. He should offer her whatever she wants, he should ask for any of her people she is willing to give. You can bet she has an extraordinary bench lined up. You can bet she wakes up in the middle of the night strategizing. She's waited a long time for this and put up with a LOT of bullshit: you can bet that she's been using that time to think of the best ways to get certain things done.

Not at all off-topic: have you seen Fundrace 2008? Since campaign contributions are a matter of public record, the Huff Post has put 'em out as a big searchable database. Search by zip code, last name, employer, city, occupation... SO fun!
George Clooney? $2300 to Obama.

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