Furious Democrat Rants Like A Wild Man!

In my comments, my very good friend, Donna, says, regarding Wes Clark having my vote:

Mine too..? It's wierd we all voted for Wes Clark in the primaries.

Wes had my vote--gosh, shut up, shut up, shut up! He had my vote at hello!

Oops, sorry. That was Anna's vote he had at hello.

Just kidding you there, Anna!

But I didn't vote for Wes Clark in the primaries.

In fact, I've never voted for anyone in the primaries.

And do you know why? Is it because I'm too lazy to get out and vote? Is it because I don't care? Is it because I'm ten and can't stop making "master baiter" jokes?

No!

It's because, in my entire grown up life, in all the years since I was old enough to vote--going back to Reagan--there has never, ever been more than one Democratic candidate left by the time my state's primary elections have rolled around.

Never.

And I don't live in an itty, bitty state way in the middle of nowhere.

I live in a great big state, with a whole lot of swing voters, which has a whole lot of delegates, and which has the whole spectrum of voters. My state has big cities, afflicted by urban blight and poverty. My state has agriculture. My state has immigrant workers. My state has manufacturing and strong unions. My state has finance and insurance industries, and even high tech. It's got hunters and fishers, and environmentalists, and some of the biggest and most presitgious universities in the country.

My state has two Republican Senators and a Democratic governor. My state has liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.

My state is the ideal state to have a primary. It is America. You could not invent a state better than my state to see how a candidate might do in a nation wide election.

And no one, not one single person, in my state has ever cast one single meaningful primary vote.

The primary system in this country is absolutely senseless. Idiotic. Particularly for Democrats. We begin in agrarian Iowa, a conservative state, with a caucus system no one even understands. Then we go to conservative New Hampshire, a tiny New England state, which is the most conservative New England state, the only one Democrats are likely to lose. Then, having gotten no feel for how the party or the nation feels about our candidates, we go to South Carolina, a state the Democrats never win, for crying out loud.

And we fucking wind up with Dukakis and Mondale, and people the nation wide Democratic party don't want. And people who can't possibly win the presidential election.

Christ, Clinton only won the Democratic nomination because he refused to quit in the early primaries that told him he couldn't be the Democratic nominee. If Clinton had quit, in '92, we might have run Paul Simon or who the hell can even remember who else?

I know it's up to the states to determine when their primaries are, but, for the love of this great nation, how about we Democrats demand our primaries be conducted in a fucking sensible way?

How about we ask the people of New York, and California, and Florida, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania who they'd like to see on the goddam ticket?

No offense to the wonderful people of Iowa or New Hampshire--you'll have your vote--but, Jesus Christ, has Iowa or New Hampshire ever decided the damn presidential election??? Do the people of Iowa or New Hampshire really represent the Democratic party? Or even the swing voters?

I like John Kerry. I think he'll make a fine president. I think he's so head and shoulders above George W. Bush in intelligence, competence, acheivments, honesty, capability, and values that it's almost hilarious to put these two guys in the same room together. I whole-heartedly support Kerry for president.

And, yet, I don't know any Democrats who wanted John Kerry to be the Democratic nominee. I don't know any who favored him over Wes Clark or John Edwards, or Howard Dean. None.

The Republican party has grown rotten. No vision for America, no vision for the future. Nthing at all to say except we should try to turn back the clock and recreate a nation and a time that never, ever existed.

Nothing represented it's pointlessness like the attempt to run Mike Ditka against Barack Obama--if you've got nothing to say, or what you have to say is so repugnant that average Americans would be appalled at it, have celebrity distract the voters from your empty, ugly message.

Under the GOP, our government is a free for all, grabbing what you can while the grabbing is good. And with the "liberal" corporate media's good blessings, by the time the rubes have figured out that they've been robbed and abused, shit, you'll be long gone. Comfortable retired, with a generous pension, in Crawford, Texas, with a taxpayer provided contingent of Secret Service agents to keep out the angry rabble.

And our Democratic party suffers from the same corruption--the big money, the corporate control, the party machinery. Christ, to win two terms, Clinton had to drag the Democratic party so far to the right that Joe Lieberman seemed like an acceptable Vice Presidential candiate. But, for all it's problems, it's a world better than this awful, pointless thing the Republican party has turned into.

But if this country ever wants to really right itself, to really run candidates of the people--aside from massive campaign finance reform--it needs to address the sorry, stupid, pointless primary system.

It's just fucking stupid. And it has, without fail, in my lifetime, deprived the majority of Democrats from voicing their choice for the Democratic nominee.

Which is supposed to be the point of the whole primaries in the first stupid place.

Here endeth the rant.

Comments

[Ellen]

How did they ever come up with the pecking order for the primaries? Did you ever figure that one out? That sounds interesting. It really is a worthless system as it stands.

[dosali]

That was a lovely rant. When you reorganize the system remember that
Wes Clark won Oklahoma. There may be more Republicans here but the Democrats are above average.

[ricky]

With the exception of your incredibly over-rated Sooners, I love Oklahoma.

Bartcop lives there, after all. And, you, as well.

[dosali]

Don't you dare Ricky! I've been so good, all this time you've been whining about your Nittany Lions, not to rub your nose in the fact that we have the greatest football team, and Coach! I mean, come on, leave it already. What else have we got?

[Roxanne]

I'm orginally from a state which has no impact on the primaries and no impact on the general election because it is on the West Coast and the whole thing is done by the time Californians leave work to vote. Like your state, it's a big ass state, and it's the 5th largest economic engine on Earth. But, no impact on elections.

Now I live in the District. They let us vote, but our votes are meaningless. We have no real representation in Congress. Yet, we pay plenty of taxes. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

[ricky]

Donna, when you're a fan of a team that goes 3-9 no one can rub your nose in it. Your nose is already in it.

I do like your coach. And, of course, I enjoy seeing the Sooners beat those Longhorns. But the other thing about being a fan of a 3-9 team is, you're in no mood to be generous to anyone else, except for poor Notre Dame which is looking just as lousy as PSU.

If Penn State wins ten games this year, I'll have nice things to say about everyone.

Except Miami, of course.

And, Ohio State.

And probably Michigan, too.