The November Election

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Date Line May 8, 2008

OK, I will be the first to say it – in print. There are limited possibilities as an outcome of the November election.

Obama will be nominated and elected President. Hillary will have several choices:
1. She can be Vice-President. That is, assuming her petty nonsense has not lead to Obama, possibly wisely, not wanting to be associated with her. Of course, Obama might decide he wants a popular attack dog on the ticket – in which case Hilary has it locked.
2. Hilary can assume she will run in 2012. But that assumes one of two things: a) that Obama will fail, and that the people will break with the tradition of granting the Oval Office to the party whose leadership did not fail; or b) that Obama dies in office – in which case the office will probably go to his Vice President in 2012 and 2016. If (a) it is clear that Hilary will never achieve the Oval Office, and her failure to be on an Obama ticket reflects that she was never serious in her quest; if (b) Hilary will be 74 years old.
3. Hilary can expect to gain the 2016 nomination from an incumbent Vice President when she is 70.

Clearly, Hilary is either going to be Vice President in the Obama administration, or she is out of the game and must admit – or let history deduce – her political ambitions were, in reality, a myth and hoax. Senator Clinton is likely the new Senator Kennedy, having symbolically, driven herself off that bridge.

As for McCain? The race he is going to run will be about his Vice President, and the views or positions of that Vice President. The election will not be about a man from a career military family. It might be about a possibly unstable personality – an individual who is possibly suffering from PTSD as a result of six years in a Vietnam tiger cage. It certainly will be about a man who wishes to condemn tens of thousands of America’s youth to disabilities; a man who wishes to spend the next hundred years wasting the wealth and talent of America; a man who clearly is willing to continue the deficit – debt supported – extravagances associated with Reagan, Bush and Bush.

But more import, it will be about the Vice President. It will be about America electing a man whose age – regardless of the longevity of his mother – implies, almost dictates, that he will die in office before his first term is completed.

Of course, it is possible that Hilary is betting on a McCain victory. It is possible that she assumes he will complete his first term – and that it will be marked by deficits and economic collapse – thus she may well be assuming that she will be the one to lead the other party which succeeds to replace a failed administration. But here too, she assumes that Obama will lose by such an extraordinary margin that any hope of a rerun will be crushed. A lot of assumptions.

We have a reality. The Democrats will take the Whitehouse because the American people, for all the right-wing rhetoric, really do want this nation to survive. The American people – at least a majority of those who will vote – really want an end to GOP Borrow and Spend voodoo economics. The American people do not wish to see their lifestyles reduced to third world status; and they do not wish to see their children maimed, or killed, in the crossfire associated with fourteen hundred years of Shiite-Sunni hostilities over whose line is heir to the Prophet.

More important, there are Americans – possibly an electoral majority – who want America to have safe and clean energy; a majority which understand that oil is running out and that protecting what little we have is a matter of national defense. A majority who know that those who have oil can maintain a modern army and air force; a majority which understand that we cannot buy from the enemy – no mare than Hitler could buy fuel when those he attacked decided to turn off the pumps.

November will be interesting. The issues will be interesting. And the biggest issue – that which will determine the continuation of this nation – will be whether or not the media can ask more probative questions that “why don’t you wear a flag on your lapel”, or “why don’t you challenge the rhetoric of a preacher, when your opponent is so quiet about his significantly more inflammatory “white” preacher?”

Yep – the future of the nation rests on the color of a necktie, or the type of jewelry worn, or not warn. It rests on the ability of people to misrepresent the words of a scripture that they willfully, and proudly, violate while they make a living out of killing others.
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Of course, the majority might decide race and gender trump the survival of America. In that case, let them have that which they wish for themselves and their posterity – they can begin by converting to Islam and then move on to learning to speak Chinese.
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