I did tons of stupid things in my younger days. I can recall at one point listening to the radio news thinking I was hearing a report of North Vietnamese SAM-2's shooting down UFO's over the Nile Delta. I am often amazed I survived my own idiocies.
However I feel like I am higher than a kite on better mind benders than I ever saw in mi vida loca. Hillary Clinton staggers through a month from hell that has not quite finished her off and the only two A list endorsements she has gathered up are Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Viva loca indeed.
Michael Barone is the guru I swear by on political demographics. He has a good article on this year. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/throw_out_the_maps_in_2008.html). I am not sure I am yet ready to agree that the gridlock of 1995-2005 is cracked for good. All I saw in 2006 was a break to the Dem side of what swing vote there was. They were voting against W but in a year when all the Democrats had to be was against. They could win a house seat in NC running a pro-gun, pro-life football hero and not have a national Democrat up top on the ticket to remind the good voters of far western NC what national Dems really stand for.
Now the early action looks as if we are seeing a realignment election on the level of 1932. GOP money dried up in the summer of 06 and except for the Ron Paul crusade hasn't come back. Money is pouring in the the Democrats from both vested interests buying 'insurance' and a mass of internet donors who are really excited about a race between two history making identity candidates. Turnout in the Dem primaries and caucuses is vastly up while Republican turnout is stagnant or down.
However see yesterday's post on how we are adding apples and apes in most states. There simply wasn't a race in 04 after New Hampshire and wasn't even a pretense of one after South Carolina. Here we are seeming a cavalry charge. A charge where the preverse rules of Democratic nomination is needlessly drawing things out.
HRC has run the most inept campaign since Dole in the general election in 96. People will be writing books for a decade using this as a 'how not to' manual. A friend on LidlessEye summed it up as 'so 90's' . However Obama has not been able to put her away. Think about it - she was endorsed by Coulter and Limbaugh and is still considered a serious candidate. This is something like a candidate for Pope getting a nominating speech from Satan.
Which brings us back to the true strangeness of the year. John McCain becomes the Republican nominee despite never taking the Republican vote in any state before he was declared the winner after Florida. The open primary system has a Republican essentially nominated by independents, Democrats and the media [who as soon as they put him in turned on him right on schedule]. On the Democratic side the media have sold Obama with as much hard sell as they sell beer and new cars. It would have been amusing to hear the private conversations in the Clinton inner circle about what it is like to be treated by the media the way the media treat Republicans instead of how they treat Democrats. And yet HRC is only losing via organizational short commings of her idiot campaign people. She never organized the caucus states. She had no money and no organization in place for any state after super Tuesday. The first woman to seriously run for the Presidency and she hasn't milked the identity issue for huge dolalrs off an active web presence. Her web site is SO pathetic that I couldn't get simple answers from her campaign on where my Dem caucus was in Iowa so I could vote for her [used google and eventually found the info; most people would have given up in disgust]. The national polls still show John McCain [who is the caricture of a GOP candidate as an aging white man who plays golf] running relative even with both Democrats.
Now it is a fact that some 90% of the population is paying zero attention to politics this early in the year [normally it is 95% but this is a special year]. So it is possible that the 45% or so of the public who say they will vote for McCain are doing so on reflex. People hate to admit they aren't paying attention so it is easy for people who normally vote Republican to just say McCain. However the history of national polls from 2000 onwards is that they overpoll Democrats. The hsitory of this year is that the polls overpoll Obama even beyond the normal Democratic tilt. So the entire realignment could be smoke and mirrors at this point. Gonna be an interesting year. all that is missing is the Reopublican convention nominating Hillary after a stirring nomination speech by Ann Coulter. Imagine that ticket - Hillary and Ann. Interesting times.Labels: If I no longer take drugs why do I feel like I'm tripping
posted by scott 4:58 PM