Ruh-Ro

Oh Hillary, where did all go wrong? I so wanted you to get the nomination. Your campaign managers certainly had a hand in screwing this up. Why did you hire that idiot Mark Penn? You could have had it all...

Except that somehow, each time we get a candidate who's a policy wonk, voters don't seem to like it (just ask Al Gore!). People see policy wonks as too cold, too intellectual, too whatever. Or is it that people think she's too calculating? Isn't every politician? And then there's the "voters are afraid of Bill Clinton in the White House again" argument. I think that's some shit the 24-hour news channels made up.

I really have a beef with the news channels. They've gotta find something to talk about to fill all their air time, so they take stories that are completely lacking in substance and get a bunch of commentators to analyze it forty different ways. The way they beat her to death on that Bobby Kennedy assassination comment drove me nuts. I'm no apologist, but I really think she was just talking off the cuff and didn't know where she was going with that thought.

Hey MSNBC, why not take some of that air time and actually explain the substantive issues to the voting public. Do your job as journalists and talk about what it would mean to have, say, nationalized health care--What would it cost? What are the benefits? What are the trade-offs? Don't just talk about the political feasibility of it. Tell voters what they need to know and then let them make up their own minds.

For the record, I've got no huge beef with Barack Obama--he's a smart guy, and as far as I am concerned, he ran a close second to Hillary the whole time (probably because their stances on issues aren't that different). I like his wife too, she's a tough broad and I like tough broads who don't take any shit.

That being said, I think Obama's got a tough road ahead of him. McCain and the Republicans are going to trot out every questionable thing he's ever done in his life (somehow doing blow will be held against him while George Bush got a free pass), and they're going to harp on the lack of experience. Faux News will keep playing those tapes from his church in Chicago. They'll flirt with every racist notion you could probably think of, and I'll guarantee you, some people will fall for it.

Can't wait to see who the running mate will be (no, it won't be Hillary).