Let begin the General Election Primary!

Democratic primary candidates should now campaign against the Republican Party turning this period into the General Election Primary. For the remainder of the Democratic primary campaign, starting right now, both Democratic candidates should turn and immediately train their fire on the presumptive Republican nominee.

In addition to the essential brilliance of such a plan, the General Election Primary resolves a number of practical problems, and may provide a blueprint for future primary contests.

How would this work?

Starting immediately, both Clinton and Obama should begin to contest the general election. Each Democratic candidate will ignore the other Democratic candidate, and each will campaign solely against the Republican platform, that party's presumptive nominee, his positions and ideas, and his legislative and oratorical history.

There are scores of benefits for Democrats from a General Election Primary.

Democrats can stop the internecine struggles. The Democratic candidates will stop sniping at each other. This change alone will lift the entire party. New cause for compromise may even be birthed here. The growing ire between the two camps has caused one camp to question the other campaign's legitimacy, with reciprocity in the question the of fitness of the first. Both are false questions. Democrats can move on, so they must.

The two campaigns will cease to provide made to order sound bites for the opposition general election commercials. Enough snapshots have been produced already to be sure. I do not take this issue terribly seriously. Most pundits agree, however, that it is a pretty common practice, and this year will be no different. Democrats can do better, so they must.

The Republican nominee is currently basically getting a free ride. Many pundits think that candidate is fairly squandering an opportunity by closely linking himself with the evangelical right and the neo-cons. Maybe. But this period is equally an opportunity squandered for Democrats, inasmuch as the overwhelming majority of voters from all political stripes have rejected the approaches of both of those groups as guiding principles. Highlighting the policy linkages of the presumptive Republican nominee and keeping him off-balance would be an incalculably much better use of the Democratic candidates' time and money than a continued discussion of the nearly non-existent policy differences between them. Democrats can be more effective, so they must.

Very importantly, the General Election Primary provides the voracious and bored -- and thus dangerous - media with something more substantive and interesting to cover.

One of the main problems in the current Democratic primary -- illustrated on The Daily Show's nightly video collage -- is that the 24 hour media cycle is bored. NOTHING happens all day. The OReilly-Olberman Twins are more dangerous when they are bored, if that is possible. The O-Twins actively misinterpret everything and NOTHING when they are not bored. They fabricate outright about NOTHING when they are bored. I like Keith Olberman and his Miami Vice-style "news" production much better when he is not also engaged in his dramatic teary-eyed Sally Struthers "The Children!" imitation, or his hollow and hallowed "How Could You?" euro-indigation.

Currently, a bored but ambitious reporter somewhere gleans and actively strips from its context some trivial one-phrase quotation about NOTHING from the news-free black hole. The MSNBC-NYT-CNN-WP-FOX-LAT-NBC-ABC-PBS ©Newsglomerate then reports slash repeats that context-free NOTHING ad nauseum over the next 48 hours, or until the next too-clever columnist diverts their ferret-sized attention span to the next phrase. A General Election Primary will provide the media a surfeit of appropriate material. As an editorial note, I love watching talking heads. I do not find it productive for the Democrats right now. Democrats can provide more substance, so they must.

Most importantly, the entire electorate will get to experience and evaluate the strategies and approaches, the inventiveness, the creativeness, and the effectiveness each Democratic candidate can muster against the Republican candidate. What an invaluable bit of data to have! Consider the General Election Primary an internship, with real on-the-campaign-trail training for the general election. All hiring-managers would revel to review a potential employee's work for three months before hiring him, but the factors arrayed against that option in business are many. In this case, however, the candidates will be doing exactly the same job as they are now for the same pay, but facing a new, more salient, and more legitimate target. Consider further the fantastic positive impact of two big guns pounding incessantly on the opposing machine. Democrats can innovate, so they must.

It is my observation that Obama is a great speaker on great issues. He is relatively less effective with wonk-speak. Clinton, on the other hand, does not inspire in the same manner with grand themes of hope and inspiration, but she is very effective at wonk-speak. Democrats should look forward to an experience mixing these ingredients in a simultaneous general race with the presumptive Republican nominee. Democrats can evaluate, so they must.

Begin the General Election Primary!

Democrats
    can
        compete
            with
    the opposition,
        so
            they must.

Questions of Loyalty

Is loyalty over-rated? George W. Bush has certainly abused the concept.

Loyalty is but a carpenter's hammer for Machiavelli, most politicians, and many business associates. It is required for framing a house, but dispensable once you move in.

What about the lack of loyalty? If loyalty itself is problematic, then betraying loyalty should have no meaning beyond the span of short-term memory, no tangible or intangible benefit in public life, no impact on the collective conscience, and no inherent individual moral or spiritual value - positive or negative.

Maybe it is a form of poison. Perhaps loyalty is only reverse revenge.

Something inside me is greatly disturbed by this interpretation. It would not please me to wake up and determine my allegiances anew each day. Success built on such a fault-line ridden foundation would not be success at all.

Maybe I should grow up.

Maybe
I
do not
want to.

Do the Michigan and Florida Primaries...

merely constitute those bumps in the road one so often encounters?

Is the absence of action in Michigan and Florida in fact paralysis? Is it simply doing nothing when doing almost anything would be better? Or is it some sort of strategy?

Is this situation an illness to which one randomly succumbs the day before vacation? Or self-sabotage?

Obama has not favored any particular resolution; pundits suggest he may enjoy at least short term benefit from the status quo. Clinton would appear to benefit from a re-vote, and seems to favors one.

It is hard to believe that this lapse will be consequence free for either candidate.

Democrats have to wonder why Howard Dean is the chair of anything. He either favors Obama or has no stature. Certainly the latter is true. Maybe both. What happened to his "fifty state" strategy? Democrats should hope they do not pay dearly in the general election for his many glaring inadequacies.

The argument in favor of a required "democratic" distribution of super delegates has proved to be specious and hollow. There can be no mandate for super delegates to adhere to the popular vote if Democrats cannot craft a solution to allow a popular vote in Michigan and Florida.

The Democratic Party would benefit greatly from a rapid resolution to the stalemate inherent in this primary: The stalemate that is become this primary. Near-term closure would be widely welcomed, regardless of the candidate chosen. This episode does not bring closure any closer.

Democrats will not benefit from the status quo in Michigan and Florida. They should try not to post their own eviction notice in those states before the general election.

I Learned Something about Myself 4.0

I never get in a line I can go around.

Most people hesitate, or even stop. I find that curious.

Some hesitate out of perceived politeness. Others out of mere hesitation. Still others because they do not know the way around.

I accelerate.

Do not judge me inconsiderate or rude.

A line is but an arrow pointing the way to those who can interpret the signs.

Going around is natural to me. I have always wanted to be in front.

Maybe
     I
          will
               save
                    you
          a space.

Joey stepped up, ...

...and he raised his hand and said, "We're not those kind of men
It's peace and quiet that we need to go back to work again".
Bob Dylan, Joey

I seem to have really angered some "Obama supporter" friends of mine because I argue in favor of Hillary. One has halted correspondence. Apparently the alienation of friends is becoming the rule in this contest.

According to exit polling in the Texas primary, 91 percent of Clinton supporters said they would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee; 87 percent of Obama fans said they would be dissatisfied with Clinton. Nationally, a quarter of those who back Clinton say they'd vote for John McCain if Obama won the nomination (while just 10 percent of Obama supporters would do the same if he lost).
Newsweek

I am shamed.

What is the real underlying cause of this fracture between two camps with policy differences so minor that they require a thorough reading of footnotes, appendixes and columnists even to understand them. The lamest explanations begin with "everybody knows...", but that phrase prefaces every diagnosis I encounter regarding the apparent antipathy between the Clinton and Obama camps.

Here is my message to Obama supporters: Get over yourselves.

Here is my message to Clinton supporters: Get over yourselves.

Here is my message to Democrats: One of the candidates will win. Maybe yours. Maybe not. One of the candidates will get second place and lose. Maybe yours. Maybe not. We will probably know before the convention. Maybe not.

Either way -- if your candidate wins or if yours does not win -- Democrats will be represented by a solid and fully vetted candidate in the general election. The Democratic candidate will win the election in November if average Democrats do not act like children, spiteful jilted lovers, or third world petty dictators.

Or like OReilly and Olberman.

This competition is not over. Neither candidate has won. Neither has lost. When that moment comes, electoral success will depend on average Democrats to follow the example of Joey, when he stepped up,

and he raised his hand and said, "We're not those kind of men
It's peace and quiet that we need to go back to work again".

What if, eight years later...

We were facing a different choice?

What if, eight years ago, Karl Rove and Co. had used their considerable talent to steer the Republicans toward a candidate who was engaged, competent, clear thinking, hard working and, to be concise, George W. Bush's complete opposite?

What if Karl and the Republicans had fostered an era wherein the creative names they assigned to their legislative efforts reflected the actual content?

What if Karl and the Republicans had selected a candidate capable of understanding that content, let alone discussing or actually contributing to it?

What if Karl and the Republicans had been able to decouple their policy goals from the trademark slash and burn incompetence of the Bush-II Administration.

Is there an alternate universe wherein the Iraq war was competently executed, even more so the choice whether to enter it at all? Is there an alternate universe wherein Republicans effectively managed the economy for families of all socio-economic strata? Is there an alternate universe wherein all domestic and foreign policy was basically competently managed with only the occasional blunder, instead of blunderously managed with only the rarest example of competence - usually expressed as a resignation?

There is an enormous contradiction in the fact that the ueber competent Karl Rove and Co. ended up with such an incompetent standard bearer to lead the implementation of their ideas. Is there an alternate universe wherein the potential value of the Republican platform is successfully transformed into policy? I do not agree with many of their ideas, but an honest and competently orchestrated implementation would have been a fairer test.

Is overcoming this history the primary challenge for McCain? Or is its continuation his promise?

In fact, what does a successful implementation of the modern Republican ideal look like? Bush-II? Bush-I? Reagan? Nixon?

On second thought,
never mind.

I Learned Something about Myself 3.0

Recent conversations with friends have caused me to realize something that I could not earlier have so clearly articulated.

I want Hillary Clinton to win.

I want her to beat Obama.

I want her to become the next President, Madam POTUS.

But I do not want you Obama fans to be mad at me because I want that.

You know, when we race, we race to win, and we race to the finish line. We do not stop before.

One does not race for some greater good against someone who is running for himself. It is not a good bet. Sometimes it works, though.

I do not think she should quit.

If you quit, you lose. It is a fact.

I have won a lot of races from much further behind.

You know I have. You have seen it.

We Hillary fans are still in this.

I don't want you to be angry with me about that, either.

If Obama wins, then he is my guy. Absolutely, man, all the way. It will be more fun than we have had in years kickin' these guys' butts out of Washington. Like a fantastical and wonderful dream that is in all the papers. O-BA-MA! Yes. If he wins.

We must strive always to have a civil discussion, but it sometimes becomes uncivil.

Even so, we choose not to quit.

I would not choose that. You know I would not choose that.

Mostly, I do not want you to be mad at me about my choice to race all the way to the finish line for something I believe. You know I do not have another choice inside me.

Go Hillary!