Democratic and Liberal political analysis and commentary

I listened to all the Sunday morning talk shows today. Besides the usual back-and-forth banter about when Senator Clinton should get out of the race, there was a great comment by a reporter on Meet the Press. He mentioned that McCain is so closely identified with the failures of the George W. Bush presidency, that fewer republicans than ever were even IDENTIFYING themselves as republicans on polling calls! Nevermind that the democrats have registered more voters by a large ratio than republicans in the latest round of primaries and caucuses. Democrats now outnumber republicans and no-party voters more now than any other time in history.

More ominous news from the front line:

While progressives are mobilizing Americans in record numbers, the "conservative standard bearer" – John McCain is still struggling to get support within his own party. 20% of republicans in Indiana went out and voted AGAINST their candidate for president, perhaps another sign that Americans want change and not more of the same old policies and old politics.

·      In Indiana, more than 20% of those who voted in the republican primary voted for someone other than McCain. 

·      In North Carolina, McCain only got 73% of the republican vote.

·      In Pennsylvania last month, 27% of those who voted republican, voted for someone other than McCain.

·      Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul continue to gather support – although Huckabee and Romney have endorsed McCain and are actively campaigning for him.

·      A recent survey showed that 22% of those who supported the conservative candidate for president in 2004 say they will vote for a progressive candidate for president this year.

Well, as they say, it isn't over until the Fat Lady sings.

I believe the Fat Lady has donned her gown, done her makeup, reviewed her lines, drank some warm tea, and is now on stage doing her scales.

For those of you who don't quite follow, the metaphor I'm using represents Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign. After watching news coverage of her defeat in North Carolina and barely-there victory in Indiana, I believe her battle is lost. I'm sad, because Senator Clinton is a wonderful person, and would have made a terrific president. As I've said many times before, she's smart, she's articulate and thoughtful...all the things that we would want in a president, plus the fact that she's female. That was a big reason I chose to support her in the first place.

But now, with the writing on the wall, and a Fat Lady warming up in the wings, I believe that her inability to raise more money will eventually catch up with her, and she will fold. I give her a couple of weeks, at most.

Thank you, Senator Clinton, for taking more than a year out of your life to show my daughters and women all over the planet how to stick to a dream and do it all with style and grace.

I was reading Thomas Friedman this morning, as I often do. First, just let me say, the man is brilliant.

What he had to say just gave me the shivers. Because it's true.

America is not as great as it used to be. We're living on borrowed everything. Borrowed money. Borrowed good will based on our former reputation.

Friedman has been traveling around this country, and others. His sense is that America has fallen behind in technology, infrastructure spending, and in research. We're losing the talent game, that's for sure. Who would want to work in a genetics lab built just after WW2, with a bunch of old white guys in Washington watching your every move, when you could work in a brand new one with limitless possibilities somewhere else?

My favorite part of this article:

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

Indeed. Americans are dying to make a difference.

I'm sitting here blogging from my favorite Des Moines, Iowa breakfast/free wi fi place, The Gateway Market. I ran into a couple of good friends of mine who are Obama supporters. I reminded them that Obama people need to quit being so negative against Sen. Hillary Clinton and start showing some respect.

When I "confronted" him, the guy was speechless. He had that smug "but, but, we're right and she's wrong" look that many Obamicans have. His wife looked at me sheepishly and said, "I plan to be a party girl." Good for her.

Here's the deal, Democrats. We're all on the same train together. One car of the train is going be the lead car going into the convention. We don't know if that leader will be Obama or Clinton yet. Whoever it is, we'll all just have to suck it up and get on board. Would you rather be on the "straight talk express" with John McCain? No, I didn't think you were that dumb.

Ok then, everybody breathe. Practice, in...out...in...out. Good job.

Each of our democratic candidates have their own strengths and weaknesses that they bring to the race. One is not better than the other, just different. Breathe in, breathe out.

Repeat after me.

I (state your name), will be supporting the nominee of my party, whether it is Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. I don't want to see my country go through four or eight more years of a republican presidency. I know what kind of permanent damage this would cause my country.

After the nominee is chosen, I will not be apathetic and sulk if my candidate is not chosen. I will organize my precinct, donate money and help get out the vote. I will register new voters and drive people to the polls.

When the race is over, I will fully support the new democratic president.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Private First Class Monica Brown was awarded the silver star for bravery in combat, and then removed from her Afghanistan unit for...being a woman.

KHOST, Afghanistan -- Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the soft pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle.

Not only was she asked to join this mission, she did her job bravely and without regard to her own personal safety. If that's not acting like a man, I don't know what is.

Bottom line, women can do these jobs, and we should let them if the want to do it.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are both suggesting that a gas tax holiday is just what the American people need to get through the summer.

I say that is the most short-sighted, stupid thing I have ever heard.

First of all, if the American people have sticker shock now, can you imagine how loud the howling will be when the tax is reinstated? What then? Call for its permanent repeal right before the election? I see no end to it.

Aside from not having a comprehensive energy policy (that's not written by the big oil companies themselves), rolling back gas taxes is the worst thing that could happen. Not having that revenue would put us farther into debt, and not solve any of the current infrastructure problems in the meantime. It also means that oil companies and OPEC would have more wiggle room to bump up prices.

Now here's a name we haven't heard in quite some time. Senator Chris Dodd is finally waking up from his long slumber on the campaign trail to discover something that any American with a pulse already know: Credit cards companies are making a killing at the expense of the American people.

Credit card companies are crying foul, claiming that these restriction on their unbridled greed will make it harder for people to get credit cards. You mean that I won't be able to pick credit cards off of trees like I do now? Oh, well, then that might be good for everyone. Having to actually qualify for a card and prove that you know how to use it might be helpful as well!

Since "suggestions" from the Senate banking committee haven't been taken seriously by credit card companies in the past, I guess we'll just have to open up a well-deserved can of Whoop-Ass on them. They deserve it. Credit card debt is playing a significant role in the inability of most Americans to keep current on their bills.

They say everything is bigger and better in Texas. I guess that includes the size of the list of people who were wrongly accused of rape and murder in the 1980's, sentenced to prison and left to rot. The only problem is, a lot of these men, mostly African American, are innocent. INNOCENT.

This man, for example. His name is James Lee Woodard. He sat in jail for supposedly murdering his girlfriend. For 27 years. And he was proven innocent using a simple DNA test.

It seems that there was a rogue DA in Dallas in the 1980's who put a bunch of black men behind bars just for the hell of it. If there is a reason to never have a death penalty, the story of James Lee Woodard should stop us all cold and make us realize that innocent people really do get sent to prison. And most of them are black.

My donkey is feeling very sad today about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow the state of Indiana to require photo id at polling places. This law not only flies in the face of reason, but reeks of classism and racism.

First of all, there is practically no voter fraud in Indiana, and nationwide there's a bigger problem with not getting voting machines to work than people who aren't supposed to be voting going to the polls.

The Court found that it was not an undue burden on the poor and disabled to obtain photo ID. I think it would be interesting to take away the Supreme Court's driver's licenses and make them get a new one, using only a bus pass. The day before the election...an hour before the DMV closes.

What strikes me a the biggest crock of all is that those uptight little old ladies who run the polling places, who are intimidating as hell to newcomers as it is, will now be lording over people who will show up to vote for the first time, have left their ID at home, and go away disappointed and discouraged, maybe never to return again.

In what must have been one of the most difficult moments in his political life, Barack Obama finally denounced his former pastor in a stinging rebuke that was long overdue.

I think about how hard it would have been for me to give such a speech to my former pastor. I remember listening to his sermon and disagreeing with him on many occasions, but his sermons stuck to the Bible and his interpretation of Jesus' message, not politics or racial remarks. If fact, he went out of his way to avoid hot button issues around election time, and threw away anti-abortion political flyers if he saw them in the back of the church.

I find myself thinking, what could've made me walk out of the church my kids were baptized in? Certainly not one offensive sermon, and possibly not two. But year after year of imflamatory, bigoted rhetoric? Absolutely. And my former pastor (now retired) would definitely not go on a media tour to prove me wrong.