Monday, February 04, 2008

Super Tuesday Rockin' Eve: Tales of Luggage Old and New

Speaking Democratically in tomorrow's Megalomart of voting known as "Super Tuesday" will it be the Devil we know, or the Devil we only know as an idea at this point?

Given the panoply of states with primaries and caucusi (new plural o' caucus?) and how Barack Obama has tightened things up in several states it will most probably be a mix of Devil's old and new.

I'm spending tonight perusing the vast array of Internet punditry, polling and pledges of support, and it's pretty clear that if Super Tuesday was a blogosphere-only event Obama would have 7 trillion delegates to Clinton's 11.

But, shocking as it may be to some, there's a few people out there who don't have blogs...who don't even read them. And yes, we're hoping that with advances in medicine this horrible affliction can be overcome. But while reading the 199,784th blogger tonight who has pledged her/his support for Obama I wonder about those others amongst us.
  • Who will vote/attend caucusi? How many "normal" (i.e. non-blogger political junkies) people will vote/attend? Or does voting/attending a primary immediately make one "abnormal" in a country where we can't get half the registered voters to ever show up?
  • How many Democrats in New Mexico have received call after call after call after live call after recorded message after live call from "Hillary For President"?
  • How many of those receiving such a litany of calls are saying to themselves: "you know, I was on the fence about Hillary until that 7th call I got, and now I'm thinking....yeah...Hillary!"
  • How many of those receiving all these calls no longer have a phone because they threw it out the window into the snow, then went out into the snow and stomped on it until the phone and snow were mingled in a icy panoply of plastic and wires?
  • How many Democrats who aren't obsessively reading blogs and watching unwatchable pundits actually know Obama or Clinton's position on anything? Is Barack a single-payer guy or just a universal health care person? What week/year/decade/century will Hillary pull our troops out of Iraq?
  • After the New Hampshire polling fiasco why does anybody pay attention to these things anymore? Why didn't anybody pay attention to them before anyway?
So I have to admit, I'm finally hooked into Election '08, and really I have Barack Obama and his campaign to thank for that. Clinton in a fait accompli series of meaningless primaries would have been as exciting as a toothache.

Right now I'm trying to look within my soul and molars to determine whether I think the idea of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for President '08 is in itself as exciting as a toothache.

Part of me is stoked that she stands a darn good chance of being President. Another, perhaps larger, part of me sees a Clinton Presidency as something like being at the airport baggage claim waiting for your bag and watching somebody else's same old suitcase go round and round and round the carousel, while your bag never appears.

I just don't know if Hillary Clinton is my bag.

But who cares what I think because, as I've mentioned about eighty times before, I'm a registered Green (i.e. independent) and won't be participating in tomorrow's caucus. I'm absolutely sure that I will happily vote for whichever Devil comes out of the Democratic Super Tuesday and beyond with the nomination. I just have to say I share the blogosphere's love affair with the idea of Barack Obama.

And I wish I could see Hillary Clinton as something other than an old suitcase owned by somebody else. I'll keep working on that. Or maybe, just maybe, Mobamamentum will make that unnecessary and I will instead be faced with the need to actually know something about Obama beyond the mere idea of him.

3 comments:

Maggie said...

I hear ya, Scot. We're going to have an open thread on m-pyre as the results come in tonight... Chime in if you're not at an insular lefty-blogger political junkie gathering! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Shame on you for calling Hillary an "Old Bag". Blogs are what they are, but the real telling thing is that when Richardson and Edwards bowed out, it was Obama that has gotten the push. By not endorsing Hillary, they seem to be saying vote for Obama.

Kelsey Atherton said...

The idea of Obama is fascinating in the way that John Anderson or Eugene McCarthy must have been - he is not the old guard, he is no ones baggage, and he has a certain youth appeal. Of course, that's not the reason the blogosphere loves him; they love him because he understands the internet, and bloggers want the same rules on the playground for as long as possible. I mean, if the election were held on the internet, the race would be between Barack Obama and Ron Paul, with no one else even coming close.

But I'll flatter myself and say that I am one of those blogs babbling about this, so my opinion doesn't really need to be restated. Enjoy the election from your detached vantage point; I'll enjoy it from Bourbon Street.