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Danny |
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Here we go again.
Seven candidates and seven states. 7-Up!
For the past couple of weeks since Iowa and New
Hampshire there has been an awful lot of TV and radio static about
“what it all means”. What
will John Kerry do? What
will Howard Dean do? What
about Joe Leiberman and Dennis Kucinich?
Or John Edwards and
Wesley Clark? And what about Reverend Al?
Now we’ve had seven more states.
What have we learned? Well, for one thing, Joe Leiberman has
learned it’s six-up now.
But basically what we’ve learned so far is
to pay no attention to anyone predicting anything.
Nobody has a clue. All
the talk recently has been about Kerry winning in Iowa and New Hampshire
and Howard Dean showing less than expected results. But
in the most important race of all going into Tuesday night, the race for
convention delegates, Dean was ahead of Kerry because of the concept of
the “Super-Delegate”, and no, that’s not like in “you’re a
swell delegate. We love
you. You’re SUPER!!” Super-delegates
are the party bigwigs and faithful worker bees in every state that get
to go to the convention and help nominate the party’s Presidential
Candidate- -people like Governors, Senators, Congressmen, Statewide
office holders and the like- -that are “automatic” and don’t
figure in the voting. They’re going to the convention to vote for their favorite
anyway. So after New
Hampshire, when you include those Super-Delegates, Howard Dean had a
total of 113 convention delegates and John Kerry had 94.
There are hundreds and hundreds left to go. Edwards and Clark had
36 and 30 respectively, and Joe Lieberman had 25.
Al Sharpton had 4 and Dennis Kucinich had 2. The total needed for nomination is 2,162.
Congressman Kucinich would seem to have a way to go.
Now Kerry has added 129 to total 223 but Dean only added 7 to
total 120. No one else is
close. But the biggest,
most populous states are still to come. So
why all the fuss on TV and radio? Well,
for one thing, that’s their job- -the sooth-seers must say something
even when they know naught. And
secondly, money, the “mother’s milk of politics”.
If candidates seem to be doing well they have an easier time
raising money. And in so
many places from now on it will be TV and radio ads and mailers that
voters see, as there are multiple state primaries or caucuses upcoming
for the next few weeks. And
commentators do have their favorites even if they say they don’t.
In
New Hampshire, every citizen has the opportunity to meet every candidate
if they care to, sometimes several times.
It’s a state you can drive around in no time- -heck, you can
drive around it two or three times in a day if you like. Iowa’s bigger, but since it’s first, candidates can start
weeks in advance to meet every possible caucus-goer if they care to.
Mostly,
Governors have a leg up in winning their party’s nomination for
president- -Reagan, Carter, Clinton and G W Bush- -by arguing that they
are experienced executives ready to move on up to the big gig.
Howard Dean is the only Governor running this time, but he was
Governor of Vermont- -a state with fewer people than Omaha, Nebraska. Senators
argue that they know how to work with Congress to get things done.
John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Leiberman are Senators, and
Dennis Kucinich has been in the House of Representatives.
Neither Clark nor Sharpton have ever held elective office. Voters
like war heroes too. Heck,
we started with one- -the original G W, George Washington- -and Andy
Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S Grant and Teddy Roosevelt
plus, of course, Dwight Eisenhower. But
nothing beats the one-two punch of being both a war hero and something
else, like Senator John F Kennedy, who was both a Senator and a war hero
(See: P T 109). This time we have two decorated veterans: General and CNN
pundit Wesley Clark, and an actual battle-scarred hero in the tradition
of JFK or TR who has also been a Senator for four terms, the Lieutenant
Governor of a populous state and a hard-nosed District Attorney in a big
Metropolitan area for twenty years before that.
He’s also a Vietnam veteran who returned a hero and then
opposed the war, helping to bring it to a close.
John F Kerry, the new JFK. On
a recent edition of his Cable TV Blabberfest, Hannity and Comb-over, Sean Hannity sneered that John Kerry was “a
Massachusetts Liberal” as if it were a bad thing. Sorry, Sean, that’s a badge of honor to a lot more people
than you realize, so smile when you say that, pardner. “Liberal” is a great word and a great concept.
Did you ever hear of anyone going to a
“Conservative Arts”
college? And yet, you
flag-waving Mini-Mind, all the baddest of the bad guys in Iraq were the
elite Republican Guard.
Who are the ones involved in “the troubles” in Northern
Ireland? The Irish Republican
Army. Do you see a pattern
here? I don’t want to say
that all Republicans are the bad guys, but you’re cutting it mighty
thin. Sean, don’t you realize that the old
“Tax-and-Spend-Democrats”, the ones who left office in 2000
bestowing a budget surplus, have been replaced by the current
administration of “Don’t-Tax-and-yet-
Spend-Even-More-Republicans”?
Never before has so much been owed by a government.
Never in all of human history has there been a deficit like the
present half-a-trillion dollar deficit.
Bush the First did a similar thing and it cost him his job.
We can only hope like father like son. And
if Kerry, or perhaps Edwards or Clark, or maybe even Dean, keep up the
head of steam that is exciting and uniting Democratic Party faithful in
an “Anybody-But-Bush” campaign, it will mean bus tickets back to
Crawford come November continuing a family tradition of one term Bushes.
They could find themselves up the creek.
One can only hope. Okay!
Sing: Rove, Rove, Rove your boat, gently up the stream (without a
paddle)- -Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, life is but a dream.
Or at least, wishful thinking. |
