Summer wishes, winter dreams

This week, we had two developments in the presidential race that deserve a comment:  the end of the first full term of the Alito Supreme Court, and the quarterly fundraising reports of the Democratic presidential candidates.  The Alito court is the main reason I can never forgive anybody who voted for Ralph Nader.  Elections matter.  Bush won because of Nader voters, and is now the president.  Presidents appoint judges, and Bush did exactly what he said he would do during both campaigns: appoint judges like Antonin Scalia. And these Bush appointees, Roberts and Alito, are young.  The oldest justices are liberal John Paul Stevens and the current “swing” vote, David Kennedy.  The next president will probably appoint their successors.  That’s why you don’t use general elections to send messages, push a single issue, protest, or try to reinvent the two-party system.  That’s what primaries are for.  Presidential elections are about choosing the best of two candidates

 .   The “money poll” published this weekend shows Barak Obama in first place, Hillary close behind, then Edwards and Richardson farther back in a second tier, and everyone else far behind them.  Obama should have the resources to challenge Clinton in the huge primary Feb. 5, after Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.  Hillary's ability to keep her aura of inevitability will depend on how she does in the early states.

 Edwards and Richardson might get a shot if they surprise people in any early primary, or win a few states on Feb. 5.  Obama must do well in the early three and carry several states on Super-Duper Tuesday. 

 Otherwise, I’ll have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary, whom I still can’t forgive for the smug, arrogant way she screwed up health care reform in 1993 and ’94.  She knocked it off the political table until this year, and the problem has gotten much worse in the meantime.  I also don’t like the way she calculates everything she says before she says it.  Lately she’s calculating a sense of humor to stop people from thinking she’s a cold, humorless wonk. 

I don’t usually comment on the presidential election so early in the game, or even pay much attention to the media coverage, because the polls don’t mean much yet, and the talking heads who say they know really don’t.  They just read the polls, talk to each other, and talk to campaign and party officials.  David Broder of the Washington Post is one of the few national political reporters whose primary tools are shoe leather, the telephone, longstanding relationships with opinion leaders, and a pencil and paper.  He also identifies and starts new relationships with new opinion leaders.  You can tell he’s doing his job well because liberals and conservatives are sure he is biased against them.  That’s because he thinks for himself and draws his own conclusions. I pay attention to him.              

In 2000 and 2004, most media accepted in full the Republican narrative about the Democratic candidate.  Instead of investigating the right wing’s Swiftboat claims about John Kerry, they just asked him for his “answer.”  The 30-second commercial somebody paid to show once wound up being repeated for free, as fact, in the news.  That’s a lazy way to help the country choose its president. 

Barbara Walters asked Kerry if it was true that he threw away his Vietnam medal, and asked his wife if she had ever seen it.  Did it occur to anyone to ask the Republicans why it was anybody’s business whether Kerry threw away something that belonged to him, that he earned by getting shot at – and where are Bush and Cheney’s medals?  Why did the so-called liberal media not leave these obvious questions unasked? 

I was interviewed recently by an out-of-state reporter who decided I was a Democrat-leaning Independent.  In the ‘80s, I was a Republican-leaning Independent.  This year, I think the only way to start reversing the damage the Republicans, not just Bush, have done since 2001 is to vote them all out and not let them back until they earn it.  I also think any Democrat running this year is better than any Republican running this year.  I don’t think any nominee, current candidate, or candidate to be named later will change my mind about that this year.