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Now, the weird thing in all this is what a dismal candidate John McCain is. He's extremely unappealing both physically and in spoken word. He'll handle himself reasonably competently on the trail, but there's a serious charisma deficit there. He's boring and he's stale and that can't be wished away. There's a truth to this that comes out when he makes victory speeches and when he debates. He's just not that compelling. Particularly stripped of his own "straight talk" mandate, which was the only compelling persona he's ever managed to adapt. But that's in the past.
He's also a serious danger to the country, not that this will have anything to do with his electability. I know people who have worked for him and the man has a straight up uncontrollable temper. He terrifies me. He's not even close to stable enough to be the leader of our country. So this, along with the potential continuation of the terrible damage the republicans have done to the country over the last eight years makes the stakes extremely high, as usual...
There's no question that tonight was an important night in the campaign. Hillary legitimately could have lost in Ohio or Texas or both. And if any of this had come to pass, this would be over.
But it didn't.
Now there's definitely some of the normal steroidal caca being talked on the tellie. Pennsylvania is the very similar to Ohio??? Are you BLEEPING serious? This statement is so stupid, everyone on CNN espousing it should have the stupid smacked out of their mouths.
This is not coming from someone running with some fanciful anti-talking head notion. I am speaking to you as someone who has studied the demographics of these two states in a professional, election-related capacity, and let me tell you, their statement is utter nonsense. ONE PORTION of Ohio is similar to *A* PORTION of Pennsylvania. That's it. Now first of all, Ohio has no representative part of its state. It's a mishmash of areas that look like the areas they border across state boundaries, all placed around a gooey slightly more conservative than the Ohio average center. But if there is an area that really doesn't resemble the state in both election returns and demographic components, it's that one part that looks like Western Pennsylvania. So aiming to take the results of Ohio and translate them to Pennsylvania is a fool's game.
I think there is an element in which this is good that Barack is being tested. We DO need to know how he is going to respond when faced with a pointed challenge- hell, HE needs to know how he's going to respond to this sort of situation if he's going to have the necessary legs for the general campaign.
But these results do occasion a reexamination of our two candidates. I just don't see how she's electable. I also have to confess that I totally don't get what is inspiring about her unless you are a woman and you find her being a womanness inspiring. Which I get, that just can't carry someone to victory. What else does she have that is truly hers and is unique that will make her anything other than a losing Democratic retread? Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm all ears. But she's still a woman and a Clinton, and that's a brutally hard sell. You also can't run a Clinton campaign without the charm of a Bill at the prow as your figurehead. I really believe that's a loser.
Now the wildcard is that McCain is also a particularly lousy candidate, as I note above.
Now with Barack we may have a real problem. As I've been trying to say in my discussion of Ohio, people need to not get carried away in realizing that we're talking about Ohio and Texas here. I want to believe that Ohio is a state that properly approached will be a great state someday, but right now, it's not. Ohio and Texas are two politically disfunctional states, where bad ideas and bad politics have carried the day for way too many years. They were crucial wins for Hillary, but I don't think they are as representative as results from a broad patchwork of states around the entire country. But I think there is a real chance that this country is not ready to elect a black man. I'm far from shocked that we seem to have seen some of this as a ghost in the numbers tonight.
He also may, indeed, be too callow, and this is why putting him to a testing point as he has been put to now has some positive aspects. But we're going to see if he's more than a pretty face and a pretty speech in these next weeks.
I don't see how Hillary can be a winner. I *do* see how Obama can be a winner, but there are aspects he brings to the table that may make him a candidate who can't win either. Ohio and Texas ARE precisely representative of the type of states that can bring some serious prejudice to bear in their politics. And if he can't handle a stock in trade assault of the type Hillary has unleashed, he isn't going to be a winner in November.
Again, the wildcard is McCain's inherent faultiness.
A general election between McCain and Hillary would, in my opinion, be a battle between two cartoonishly uncharismatic candidates. Would a battle between McCain and Obama be a battle between the unfit to lead and the not ready to lead? I don't know yet.
If I believed Hillary could win, I would be more able to accept a knife and lawyer victory by her for the nomination, which is the only nomination victory I think she would be able to win. I don't think any other is available to her. But I don't. I don't think we can win without a candidate who can change the face of a general campaign by changing the traditional Democrat-Republican breakdown. I don't think we can win the GE without a candidate who inspires. I've hoped that Obama has it within him to be a candidate who can do that while also presenting the essential characteristics of a winning candidate (just bringing some new voters to the table, just changing the breakdown of the voting, without being able to win the down and dirty fighting of a campaign is still a loser and a non viable option)- I think we are about to find out what he is made of.
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