Amazing

Girl, 17, killed by train while
talking on cell phone. Spokesman
says it appears to be an accident.

Well…I was wrong again. It seems that every time I try to give the voting public the intelligence to make responsible decisions they let me down. It’s amazing. Someone could make a fortune just betting against my predictions. I said Richard Nixon could not be elected President. He was a sleazy paranoid fellow who made his reputation doing Joe McCarthy’s dirty business and later had to resign the Presidency. He was, of course, elected. I said Ronald Reagan could never be elected President. He was a not very exceptional “B” movie actor with no political experience who had also ratted on people to the McCarthy hearings. He was, of course elected, was an absolutely terrible President but is revered by many Americans for reasons that totally escape me. I said George W. Bush could not be elected. He was known to be a failure at everything he had done, had dodged his duty in the Air Force, claimed that god spoke directly to him, and had no foreign policy experience and was of questionable intelligence. He was elected and re-elected (sort of).

Now we have Hillary Clinton who admitted she lied about sniper fire. Who we know lied about her non-support of NAFTA, who a majority of Americans believed was dishonest, was known to have been running a negative campaign, pretended to be a whiskey drinking, beer guzzling, bowling good old down home girl (rather than the elitist she obviously is), and so on. I really believed the voters of Pennsylvania would see through these lies and deceits and vote for Obama. They didn’t. Once again I was wrong. P.T. Barnum was obviously right, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” I should have listened to that wise man long ago.

Then there is Obama. I guess one of his major problems is that he tells the truth. That seems to be a genuine no-no for an American politician. It is well known that Obama’s position on most everything is virtually identical to Clinton’s, they both admit it. Has Obama lied? Has he been deceitiful? Has he not honestly tried to confront whatever garbage has been thrown at him? Are they not going to throw more and more at him from now on? You bet they are. And a lot of it is going to boil down to (I hate to say it) race.

So what can happen from here on out? Clinton is still behind in delegates and the popular vote. It is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for her to catch up in either category (although it is still theoretically possible). Unless for some inexplicable reason all of the remaining superdelegates should suddenly go for her the best she can hope for is to take Obama all the way to the convention where it will become deadlocked. If that happens there is no reason to suppose that the convention will just hand the nomination to her. In fact, she may be setting the stage for someone else to emerge as the candidate – Al Gore, for example. He says he doesn’t want to run, etc., and perhaps he doesn’t, but if his party tells him how badly he is needed could he say no? I believe Bill and Hillary are living in a fantasy world if they think they can truly win the nomination. I think Obama will probably win in the end. But Hillary may have crippled him so badly by then, and the democratic party along with him, they may actually lose to the worst Republican candidate for a long time, who is dedicated to four more years of Bush’s disastrous policies. Bill and Hillary might think this will set the stage for Hillary to run in 2012. I can’t see what else they can have in mind. But like I said at the beginning – I seem to be always wrong. Going by the experience of the last thirty years or so, it seems to be that the more dishonest a politician is the more the public likes him or her.

LKBIQ:
“George Washington had a vision for this country. Was it three days of uninterrupted shopping?”
Jeff Melvoin