I've not watched the video, I will when I get home from work.
I've pretty muched ignored the primary race but no one captures my imagination or heart.
I hate Hillary and the Clinton team of kneecappers.
I'm not that wowed by Obama even though I saw him live here in town once. He's just ok with me.
And, to a much lesser extent than the Clintons, I hold a grudge against Edwards from 2004 because he was Kerry's running mate who I feel was merely a placeholder who was meant to lose to Bush in the neo-con/DLC plan to "take over the world" (don't get me started).
I'm planning on voting for Kucinich in the primary here and let the cards fall where they lay because for all intents and purposes, I've pretty much lost faith in the system and the American public (who, for the most part, I really view as sheep who actually believe the talking heads on the news who tell them things like "Edwards is out").
From what I can tell, everyone is scared to vote for their own self-interests, loves, hearts, intuition, whatever you want to call it because they have been convinced that there is some unfathomable "center" out there that everyone must convince to vote for or else the Party won't win. (As if that fucking matters)
Everyone is obsessed with worrying about appealing to everyone in some way or another and not voting for what is right or what they themselves want.
The American People are convinced that all elections are solely about maneuvering, polls, manipulation, and most importantly above all: Strategy.
Already on the blogs, DailyKos especially, they are dedicating themselves to supporting whoever is the candidate even if it is Hillary Clinton who most on that board agree worked hard behind the scenes to see DailyKos' (not Markos') Esteemed Champion (and mine), Howard Dean, pigeonholed and destroyed in order to make way for their hand-picked patsy, John Kerry.
In Markos' book, Crashing The Gate, he points to people like Paul Begala and James Carville as the people who are ruining the Democratic Party. Constantly, on the blog, the Democratic Leadership Council is pointed at as what is especially WRONG with the Democratic Party.
Again and again during the 2006 elections, myself and many local Memphis bloggers were constantly derided and boo'ed for pointing out that DLC-darling, Harold Ford Jr's plethora of faults, misteps and out and out insults to the Democratic Party. The reason was constantly shouted at us that he had a D behind his name and so was infinitely better than Corker who had the unfathomably disgusting R behind his name.
They were obsessed with trying to paint Ford as some kind of liberal in disguise. Offering excuses like "it's part of his strategy to act like a Replublican" as if that was a panacea for his atrocities.
So, that led to my not posting there very much any more because it had become a haven for wannabes who railed against the crimes and excesses of political consultants all the while dreaming of the day they could charge millions of dollars to give candidates advice that is the antithesis of what Americans really want.
What Americans want seems so very clear to me when they aren't afraid of what others might think about the political savvy-ness. Americans will tell me constantly that they want a person that can give them some kind of idea why the candidate wants to do something when they take office and can give at least an outline of how the candidate is going to pay for it without dancing around the answers or giving non-answers or trying to talk for a long time to keep someone else from having enough time to outline what they want to do.
Americans want someone who will look in the camera and give them solid, honest answers and make them feel like they're not winking at someone when the little red light goes off.
Until just a night or two ago, I had ignored the candidates because I didn't have any reason to watch them; but I happened to come in from work in the middle of my wife watching the CNN debate and rather than go to the computer and not see or talk to my wife before she toddled off to bed, I sat down and had dinner and watched the debate.
It was everything I knew it would be. I had nothing but disdain for Hillary. I was disappointed that Obama kept trying to get a laugh. And John Edwards was sort of there and Blitzer tried to ignore him.
And then Hillary and Obama started swinging their bats at each other and I hate that crap; therefore by default I listened to Edwards more, of course.
By all accounts, he won the debate because he talked about issues and didn't degrade himself much. In my opinion, he's a much better choice than either Hillary or Obama and if he picks up a state between now and the TN primary (I doubt he will) I may try to help him out and throw him my vote.
There was a line that kept being said after the debate when they would mention that Edwards won the debate. It was something along the lines of "Edwards was declared the winner of the debate but [a predominance] of those voters said that they would vote for Obama because 'he has a better chance of winning'."
What the hell does that mean?
In the end, I think that Hillary will be the nominee. Her whole plan with Bill has been leading to this time. I doubt they would leave it up to the voters.
If there is no stealing of the primary elections, I would guess that Edwards has no chance because with the way the game has been setup, a Dem is going to win no matter what and so Dems, being who they are and gullible like that, are not going to pass up the chance to install someone amazingly different from all the white men who have gone before. They'll opt for a woman or a black man but hopefully, they will choose between those two rather than opt for the lesser of two evils.
