Morning Coffee (123)

Greetings, Coffee Drinkers.

Singing Fat Lady Proclaims It to be Over for Roosting Chickens:

Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Someone else opined that, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” Others have made comments about chickens coming home to roost. Then, there’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. More still have asserted that it was the final nail in a particular coffin.

Well today, for Hillary Clinton, that fat lady might start singing, and it might be over. Clinton’s campaign has for weeks been fueled by the notion that she has more electability than does Barack Obama, and she has survived one contest at a time. But she has faced an uphill battle, against math and inevitability. She has had to win - and win big - every contest for quite some time now and today might be the real beginning of the end. North Carolina holds its primary today (an epoch from the first in this cycle) and Clinton is expected to lose by as much as 15 points. Of course, she might stay in until next Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia. It’s even possible, but even more unlikely after today’s probable loss, that she could win the Democratic nomination. Who really knows except god and Yogi Berra (and a few hundred “superdelegates”)? I’m no expert, so I won’t predict her demise. The woman seems to have more lives than a Hindu cat, and an indomitable will so you can’t really count her out. It’s admirable, frankly. I don’t necessarily agree with the manner with which she seeks power, nor do I agree with her politics, but it sure is admirable. Would she make a better President than either of the two men still running? I suppose the voters will (or will not) decide.

Primus Primary:

All this conveniently provides me with an opportunity to gripe about our antediluvian election process. I find it remarkably odd that the Reverend Wright fiasco might do nothing to shift the chances of Obama being the Democratic nominee. I am not, in this instance, passing any particular judgment on his relationship with Wright. Instead I am pointing out that many of the people who voted for Obama in months past might not have done so had they known as much about Wright as they do now. Unfortunately for them, their votes have been cast. One may say that it’s no different than someone regretting their vote for a President, but it is because Obama is not yet President. I.e. we have a chance to prevent him from being so.

Certainly, Obama’s relationship with his pastor impacts his electability. So the Democrats may field a candidate who stands little chance of defeating John McCain, and they can’t do anything about it because he has an insurmountable delegate lead because half the nation has already held their primaries at one point or another before Wright was a household name?

I’m not about superdelegates. I do not want a bunch of party officials selecting our choices in elected officials. To me, it smacks of an aristocracy. “We know better than you mere citizens, so we’ll select some people for you to vote for.” No thanks. But I’m also not about a primary season that stretches for across six months. Campaigning is one thing. Let the voters get to know the candidates. But the disparate voting times makes some votes more meaningful than others. It might make some voters wish their states held primaries later, as they find out that the messiah for change with whom they fell in deep love has held a very close relationship with a bigoted preacher for 20 years.

I say we have a good and long campaign season. Let all the wonks talk and talk about the politicians. Let all the politicians make mistakes and faux pas. Let all those wanna-be Presidents blow through the equivalent of several small nations’ GDPs in cash campaigning for two years, and then we’ll all have us a good old fashioned democratic vote on a predetermined date. Sounds like fun to me. More exciting even.

Operation Chaos:

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Like some mad experiment by some secret government agency to control the minds of bee farmers in order to sew the seeds of the New World Order. It’s not though. It’s Rush Limbaugh’s foray into screwing with the Democratic campaigns. I wrote about it a while ago, and asked you all what you thought of it. But I never got back to you. Most of the respondents to my query opined that it was in bad taste. I agree. I’m all about doing what you can to win, or to make it harder for your prospective opponents to win, but encouraging people to switch parties to vote in primaries is despicable. Sure, Republicans haven’t much to vote for in their primary, as McCain’s “the man.” But I do not like this trend. It’s meddling. If you want to switch parties because you’ve developed an ideological difference with that party’s ideology, fair enough. But to do so simply to undermine the opposition…must we make politics even dirtier?

Limbaugh’s a moron. I’ve never liked his self-important rambling. Check out the top of his webpage. See him in his disgustingness with his smug look and expensive suit and cigar. See that gold microphone, as if he’s telling us that he’s speaking to us through an instrument of the divine. I don’t agree with Al Franken on much, but I do agree with his basic assessment of Limbaugh’s character.

In other news, I’m a fan of a few fringe celebrities (authors) that you’ve possibly never heard of. Thomas Friedman is sort of one of them, but he’s more in the mainstream than say, Victor Davis Hanson. Anyway, Freidman is one of the most perceptive people writing today, I think. Read this article if you’ve the time. In it, he talks about some topics I mentioned yesterday.

Word of the Day: Amalgam (noun): 1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling. 2. A mixture or compound of different things.

On This Day in History: Renaissance ends as Spanish and German troops sack Rome (1527). The Hindenburg, a German zeppelin, is destroyed when it catches fire near Lakehurst, New Jersey. “Oh the huge manatee.” John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque (2001). That’s hard to believe.