Soooo… the election.  8 years ago this space was rife with politics.  The ascent of Barack Hussein Obama was stunning.  We were tired of Bush.  It was clear our country had made a mistake by going into Iraq and had indeed made the world less safe.  People like me pinned their hopes and dreams on this man.  This broken man.  Different than the rest of us but really no different and idiots like me thought he could transcend the system.  Pull our country together...Hopey Changey type stuff.  Oh well.

He was not transcendent.  Even worse he galvanized the people who disagreed with him.  They were dispersed and weak and dispirited from the Bush Presidency.  But when faced with a liberal black man with a super majority they came together… an angry 20% to block vote for change and whipping up enough fear the Republicans swept that democratic majority out in 2010 and more importantly took over ⅔ of the state house just in time for the census and reapportionment cementing the divide through Gerrymandering that would make Elbridge Gerry very, very proud.

The Tea Party Rose.

The Republican Party began to be commandeered by its base.  The leadership of the party went along with the whipped up frenzy assuming they could control it and… it turned on them. Classic Republican leaders dropped like flies because they were not conservative enough.  RINOs.  Republicans in name only.

But Obama got re-elected.  

Half the country was scared by the strident right which had been whipped into a frenzy by their leaders to fear the liberal, progressive, community organizer, Kenyan, Muslim President and his ilk.

Two sides who hate and fear one another and above all despise and distrust our political system.  Blow it up and tear it down!

The Base of the Democrats rallied around Bernie Sanders pulling the Democrats further to the right.  The base of the Republicans never rallied around anyone sporting 15 or 16 candidates and it looked to be a free for all but it was never even close.  The base argued about who was purest and the entertainer, megalomaniac who understood the media hijacked the entire process with a solid base of 30% in each state who were feeling angry, disenfranchised and they wanted the guy who looked like the biggest asshole to be their bully for change.  And they got him.  In Spades.

So now we are left with a bad choice.  Hillary Clinton is an old, self dealing pol.  She and her husband were low level dealers who have maintained a legacy of self enrichment post Presidency which is unparalleled in American History.  She is not likeable but she is smart and motivated and is a product of our system.  She would be the most disliked and mistrusted candidate in history but for her competitor.  Her competitor is a self aggrandizing, narcissistic sociopath who has never done anything for another human being that he did expect to get a personal or business advantage from.  I don't know why he ran but at this point he is behaving like the proverbial dog that caught the car.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/

It is going to be a Hobbesian choice of epic proportions.

We will end up as divided as we started. I wonder how our grandchildren will judge us for the “leadership” we have raised up.  I do believe our country and our constitution will survive as it always has but we all need to think again about when we are going to stop villainizing our leaders, defunding our government and making sure that they cannot do the job we elected them to.  We will need to have courage to find a consensus and a way to move forward as more than a divided nation and find some new leadership that will not manipulate a minority within their own party to disenfranchise the good old american middle.  The disenfranchised middle is the group of people who should be railing about taking our country back.  We will see.

SUPER TUESDAY

Soooo... it is hard to write about anything but politics. The South Carolina thing, rather then being treated as a coronation of Obama seems to be seen by the media as only a pre-requisite to his candidacy staying alive. There seems to be some serious question in the medias mind that, after winning States as broad as Iowa and South Carolina, he might still not fair well on Super Tuesday. 1 day to Super Tuesday...yikes. Well, there are a lot of States up for grabs:

Super Tuesday: February 5
Alabama primaries
Alaska caucuses
Am. Samoa caucuses
Arizona primaries
Arkansas primaries
California primaries
Colorado caucuses
Connecticut primaries
Delaware primaries
Georgia primaries
Idaho caucuses
Illinois primaries
Kansas caucuses
Mass. primaries
Minnesota caucuses
Missouri primaries
Montana caucuses
New Jersey primaries
New Mexico primary
New York primaries
North Dakota caucuses Oklahoma primaries
Tennessee primaries
Utah primaries
W. Virginia convention

We are here and no one knows what is going to happen on the Democratic side. It really seems to all come down to California and Hillary is in the lead there. But as in a lot of things with our country California will lead the way and we will see if Obama’s momentum can overtake her machine and her polish. They debated again on Thursday, just the two of them and I was concerned that Obama would just get killed. Instead he held his own but make no mistake, he just held his own. Hillary is smart, well spoken and despite all evidence to the contrary has great instincts. Still, watching her makes me cringe. She cannot communicate without a petulant, smug, superior and yes bitchy, attitude. On the other hand Barack, who I love and will vote for if I get the chance, seems like a scolding parent. Still, he survived in that fight. But will he survive California?
The Republicans are done and they did the right thing. They rejected this flipper Romney in favor of the grumpy old man Mc Cain. And I could vote for him even though I think he is wrong on the war, he is right on a lot of other stuff and as soon as he wins the nomination I think he will move away from all the tax cut, right to life talk. They have dismissed Huckabee but he will live to fight another day. There is no question that he burst from irrelevance to now being the guy who delivers the nomination to Mc Cain. Good for him. Mc Cain will be hard to handle in a general election. He is, as I said, a grumpy old man. There will be a lot of talk about his age but the bottom line is, old people vote. He will be tough in the general election. He will be tough in the general election. Do not discount this guy.

I watched meet the press this morning (what a great show) and was repressed by almost everyone but the Mary Matalin/James Carville thing is particularly depressing because these is just dying that this commie Mc Cain (when did that happen?) is going to win the nomination and Carville cannot believe anyone could be challenging the coronation of his once and future boss. The encouraging thing is that there are people in the middle. There are people open to compromise and the demonization of Mc Cain for being able to reach compromises with the Democrats is ultimately what will get him the nomination and maybe even the White House.

This is a new environment compared to the last 20 years. The Republicans lost me with Newt Gingrich and the beginning of the Orwellian language choices (brilliant) made by the Republican party when they threw “The Contract With America” at us. These were the politics of the 51% which were honed by Karl Rove and left the Democrats confused and standing in the shadows scratching their asses and their heads (different hands). The idea of “your with us or your against us”....”your for no child left behind or you hate kids”... “your for tax cuts or your an anti business commie”... “your for the war or you hate America AND freedom”. We, as a country are sick of this. But that having been said we could lapse into the same thing again.
Be aware Whether you are for Barack, Mc Cain or even Clinton. These are all good people. They all sincerely want what is best for us. Each of them will face an enormous challenge, and unbelievable challenge and they will need our support and our prayers. The people who support the people who we do not support (including my brother and many of my friends) have nothing but but the best intentions for our leaders and the country. It is hope that after we finish with the primaries we can have a healthy discussion about the issues and leadership and remember in the end that we are all Americans and have a lot of work to do.