The first draft of an editorial I'm writing.

[Lautremont]

It's for a small community paper which once used to take sides politically, but hasn't now for many years. Little did they know what they were getting when they hired me as editor!

I haven't got a title yet, but here it is for your enjoyment/hatred:


I’ve been very much enjoying the circus that is the Democratic primary race. Well, perhaps “enjoy” is the wrong word. Watching the crazy ups-and-downs is at once frustrating and a sick sort of fun, in equal measure, like watching a bar fight between drunks too plastered to stand up let alone land a good punch.

The Republicans, of course, have made their choice, though it’s hardly one they’re all happy with. John McCain is loathed by the extreme right for his tendency to treat immigrants as human beings and his lack of absolute support for the ludicrous tax cuts that have sent the US economy spiraling down into oblivion. By most rational people, he is disliked because he seems little more than a superannuated continuation of the disastrous Bush presidency. As someone who seems happy to not only continue sinking blood and treasure into a reckless, stupid and deeply unpopular war, but to cheerfully start another as soon as he can, McCain would appear to be virtually unelectable in the general election.

But at least he no longer has to worry about opposing candidates in his own party. The Democrats, at this writing in any case, have whittled away all the candidates who dared to represent any real change and have found themselves stuck with a pair of Goliaths, identical in all respects but the physical, who are wasting energy, resources and support by bashing away at one another in their relentless efforts to secure the nomination of their party. McCain, as sad, tired and aggressively clueless as he is, can just sit back, relax, and take notes on which blows land and how much damage they do.

In this post-Bush atmosphere and with this patently Bushian candidate, the Republicans will need a virtual miracle to pull off a victory this November; the Democrats, in the meantime, are trying their best to provide one. The Hillary Clinton camp is working the hardest at this, manufacturing or enhancing pitiful scandals intended to give her rival, Barack Obama, the aspect of a gangster, an apostate, a reverse-racist or a boogeyman. So much energy is devoted to this that Clinton, who, while lacking amiability, progressive philosophies, humility and shame, was at least thought to possess a brain, has allowed her campaign to be one of the clumsiest ever run. She is doing neither her party nor herself, nor the peoples of American and the world, any favours by her incompetence.

Barack Obama, in the meantime, has risen above this swampland by only the barest of margins. His own campaign has been slicker and sharper than Clinton’s, but he is still dogged by a strange cadre of former mentors, mostly men of the cloth, whose greatest talent seems to be saying exactly that which would hurt their protégé most in his quest for the Presidency. Obama has managed to deflect some of this flak; some he has simply absorbed with a shrug. His campaign reeks of disinterest in issues facing women and downright intolerance for the LGBT community.
So this campaign race, while providing a good deal of dramatic entertainment, is also quite depressing. Expecting a genuinely progressive candidate is expecting too much, we are told – the people can only absorb so much change at a time. Blaming it on the voters is a quaint notion at this point, however; since the Florida debacle in 2000 and the manipulations exposed in Ohio and elsewhere in 2004, it is no longer the sign of a conspiracy-minded crank to acknowledge that there are much more powerful forces than voters at work in any major US election. The trick now is not just to win, but to win by such a huge margin that vote-rigging efforts are overridden.

The longer the two Democratic pugilists keep swinging, the greater chance they stand of chance of rendering each other’s margin of victory against McCain negligible come November. Republicans, saddled with their own imperfect and beatable candidate, are in the meantime trying to sabotage the Democratic process by registering as Democrats and voting for the Democratic candidate whom they feel is the most baggage-laden and beatable; who, at the moment, is Clinton. (This cowardly tactic is being spearheaded by the loathsome radio host Rush Limbaugh.) The best chance Obama or Clinton will have in the general election will be to remind voters of the buyer’s remorse they felt after pulling the lever for Bush (or otherwise allowing him to lead their country), and affirming that the McCain offers little more than the same. But their chances would be greatly improved if they could wrap up this primary fight now, tomorrow, or better still yesterday, and move on to the fight against McCain. It will not, sadly, be a greatly improved situation with Clinton or Obama in the White House, but it will at least (one hopes) not be much worse, and that tiny margin alone makes the battle critical.

[stellanoir]

1. This i depressing and not at all how I feel.

I've never seen a candidate like Obama in my lifetime.

Having the executive branch of government governed by two families scarcely is representative of the diverse land that I love.

Time for a change.