WhatsAPundit

Somebody out there gets it.

First, an example of one of the people who doesn't get it:

Kerry won't run for president in '08.

Actually, that's not bad news for the Republic, but it is bad news for those of us who loved to rip into the bloviating botoxed bipolar bhraman from Boston.

Not that the remaining list of likely candidates isn't still a target-rich environment: With Biden, Gore, and Edwards on the left, and Hagel, Pataki, and Gingrich on the right, there's more than enough pomposity in various shades of vacuity waiting to be skewered.

(I have to admit to a soft spot for Gingrich. He's obviously a smart man; but if it was simply "smart" that counted, Nixon and Clinton would go down in history as great Presidents....)

Godspeed, Mr. Kerry. Look on the bright side; you might actually have won the last election if you hadn't decided to run on your schizophrenic Vietnam record. As is, you're just a footnote instead of a cautionary tale.

If you excite .1% (which I think you'll agree is a tiny fraction) of the eligible voters in the United States, you've tapped into the resources of 220,000 people. If a significant fraction of those are technologically sophisticated (forget their ability to function in society otherwise) you get a mighty strong presence in this intertube thingy. Hence the perpetually skewed internet polls.

Ronulans screwing up the Pajama Media polls.)

What you don't get is much in the way of traction with the 99.9% who, when confronted by some really odoriferous statements and views, tend to tune the loon out.

Ron Paul has gotten attention from old media because he's this cycle's Republican Freak. (Remember Pat Robertson? How about Pat Buchanan?) The fact that he's also drawn the support of members of the population who each know at least four words of Klingon and aren't afraid to use them, just adds spice to the dish.

(Or sauce for the goose, as Spock might say.)

Note: I left the original version of this post as a comment on Roger L. Simon's blog. I've edited it a bit, but not much.

Me, not the PhantomWife, with whom I had a rare political conversation this morning.

No, the Presidential race this year is muddled. I mean, forget that my fourth favorite Republican is going to be the nominee. (The first three were Rudy, Fred Thompson, and Romney in that order.)

On the Democrats side it will be either the Screecher or the Holey Man.

I mean, with Obama, there really doesn't seem to be any there there, other than naked ambition and the willingness to say something with utter conviction to one crowd while backchannelling to the Good Old Boys that it's just talk.

And then there's Hillary, and I just totally lost what the difference would be.....

Oh, wait, the difference would be that she's putatively heard Bill talking in his sleep, and she took notes or something, so she's at least taken the Presidency 101 course vicariously. Obama didn't even CLEP it.

Whatever.

So to Karol's commenter Shawn who said...

Just you? I'm seeing a clash between politics as usual and a new politics based on hopeful change.

...I would recommend he listen real close to the lyrics to Baba O'Riley before getting too invested in the hopeful change thing. Especially if the agent of said change happens to have cut his teeth in Chicago politics.

I mean, jeeeezus. How gullible can an electorate get?

On the other hand, both of them strike me as less stupid than a bucket of bricks, so the Democrats will be fielding their best challenger since 1992, one way or the other.

So I guess this is a better-than-average cycle for this Republic, heaven help us.

At the beginning of this Election Cycle (i.e. when the last poll closed in each district on < a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_general_elections,_2006" target="next">November 7, 2006), I wouldn't have given much of a chance that any Republican other than Giuliani could be elected President in 2008. And when Rudy (and Fred Thompson, once he started floating the idea) both flamed out, I figured whoever did win (McCain, Romney, or Huckabee) was toast.

Well.

What I've always figured was Hillary! would win a squeaker. Nothing on the Republican side to inspire any but the base to get out and vote. Most of the rest of the 50% who wouldn't vote for her even if Malcolm X was the only other choice would just sit it out. She'd get her base plus Independents who liked the idea of a competent woman as President and voila, a low turnout and another co-Presidency.

Well, the Democratic Primary race has become a choice between a candidate for whom 50% of the electorate wouldn't vote if Malcolm X were the only other choice, and Malcolm X.

Yes, that's unfair to Obama, but he did worse than whiff badly at a great opportunity to hit one out of the park. (He could have fundamentally changed American politics by defining exactly how he differed from the old racialist politics of Sharpton et. al.) Instead he hit a monster pop-up that let people see exactly how much sympathy and respect he had for the racialists, and how little he was willing to do to actually change anything.

So the mainstream media is chanting "back back back" while the outfield, second baseman, and short stop (blogs, Hillary!, and McCain) are camped underneath in short centerfield. Somebody's going to field that airball (most likely Hillary!, in the form of finessing the delegates at the Democratic National Convention) and Mighty Obama will be out.

Meanwhile, the only real thing Clinton had going for her was her air of inevitability, and the associated assumption of competence, Well, kiss that goodbye, and say hello to all the reminders of exactly why so many people dislike her so thoroughly.

My predicting ability has been lousy re: the Republican primaries, so I'm not as confident in this prediction as I might have been hadn't I been so far in the tank for Rudy, but I don't see how McCain loses in November.

Assuming, of course, he makes it that far. Damn, the man looks old. Nothing wrong with that (Reagan was no spring chicken when he took office, and he made it through eight years, but then again, he didn't spend time in the Hanoi Hilton) but the Presidency is a hard, hard job. McCain's VP pick is going to be very, very important. (And if it's Huckabee, I'll vote for either Malcolm X or the Shrew.)

Gah, what options.

"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."

— The banner quote at Barak Obama's official campaign site.

There are a lot of people who would love to find a politician they can believe in, who truly cares more about principle than principality. A lot of those people are sharp and sophisticated. But Barak just isn't the guy they should buy into.

For what it's worth, I thought when the controversy broke over Obama's long-term pastor the not-quite-right Reverend Wright that it was more a sign of a politician not knowing when to ditch a problematic association than a sign of fealty to anything coming from that pulpit. Being a member of that church gave Obama credibility with his early constituency, and I always assumed it was simply cold calculation that put Barak in those pews.

Nothing I've heard since makes me think any differently.

Still, I liked Obama. He struck me as a smart, articulate political operator who might actually shake things up in Washington. His down-the-line progressive/liberal voting record didn't bother me too much because frankly the Presidency isn't really an Imperial office, and the amount of damage he could do in setting policy from above would be severely limited by his ability to move things (or not) through Congress.

I believe in gridlock, and think it a good thing.

What Obama brought (I thought) was an outsider's perspective to the whole game, impressive native intelligence, and a truckload of charisma. The Obamanicas were not a bug in my mind (unlike the troglodytes who were trolling for Ron Paul) but a feature; the office of the Presidency may not be Imperial, but it is certainly show biz, and both Reagan and Clinton did good by forcing people to respect the position even if they disagreed with the current occupant.

A pair of bookend incidents has changed my mind.

First, something that made a stir, but didn't change the game much. An Obama advisor apparently back-channeled to Canada that Obama wasn't serious about screwing around with NAFTA. A lot of explanations were tossed out by the Obama campaign, Canada tried to make nice-nice, and for the most part it had been forgotten.

Then the Wright controversy comes along, and Barak's "brilliant" speech explaining why it's okay for some people to preach "God Damn America" because you know they don't really mean it. Or something. And those who do have some history, you dig?

That speech was Obama's biggest blunder up until now. A non-apology apology is almost always worse than saying nothing at all, even if the press reports are loudly effusive though a bit muffled because the reporters are so deeply into kissing tuchus. The love goes away. The quotes don't.

Then comes Bitter Gate. Or Cling Gate. Whatever you want to call it. Have to repeat the quote:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

That's pretty breathtaking. Not since college has someone been more up-front in calling me and my family not-too-smart, morally damaged, pathetic god-bothering gun-loving rednecks.

So yeah, my estimates of Barak's native intelligence took a nosedive, considering a big win in Pennsylvania keeps Hillary! in the race, and that the quote is going to lose a lot of states for Obama in November, assuming he actually gets there.

But then I read this little factoid from Bill Bradley at Pajamas Media:

And from the standpoint of Obama campaign figures, the material was gotten under false pretenses. One top Obama hand speaks of the campaign and candidate being blindsided. Fowler was a supporter, a contributor, an activist, a blogger, not a reporter. With the event closed to the press, Obama spoke with less care than he would have otherwise had he known a reporter, of any sort, was in attendance. [Emphasis added.]

Everybody has been talking like Obama "misspoke". Obama claims it himself. Excuse me, no. He was speaking to ultra-rich San Franciscans from whom he wished to raise money. It was a "Save the Whales" speech, only instead of large marine mammals, Obama wanted these patrons to contribute to the salvation of the Great White Rednecks. Which obviously contribute less to the cultural zeitgeist than do humpback whales, but one must respect all of Gaia's creatures, no matter how vile.

There's are words for a person who will say anything to any crowd, as long as that person thinks the crowds don't overlap. Inspirational ain't in the list. Neither are "ethical", "reliable", "honest", etc. For that matter, in the modern world where cell phones can shoot video and little old sycophantic ladies have blogs, "smart" can no longer be applied either.

So maybe Obama can still bring show-biz glamour to the Office of the Presidency. I don't know; I honestly don't think he can get there now, considering he's bitch-slapped most of middle America. I just feel sorry for the folks who can't let go of the dream of a politician who isn't a Grade A Bastard.