posted 2007/10/29 at 16:11
Fun little reality check for you: we're still more than a year away from Election Day 2008. (Election Day 2007 is coming up soon here, and I'm finally getting well-versed on the local and state things I'll be voting for next week.) You would think that people would remember back to four years ago and how it seemed like Howard Dean was a lock for the Democratic nomination, and not keep rushing to judgment over the leads Clinton and Giuliani currently have, but hey, maybe a year of having those two all over the place might actually help make the general public as sick of the two of them as I am now. (Speaking of Dean, a couple of weeks ago I took one of those "What is your political orientation" memes, and the picture they chose for "true liberal" was Dean's. Um, yeah, newsflash: Dean was a balanced-budget hawk who frequently got top ratings from the NRA during his years as Vermont's governor. All of Dean's bluster about being from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" was a half-truth at best.)
It's bad enough that nearly all of the left-wing Websites I visit have already gone into "Hillary doesn't represent our best interests but she'll be better than the Republican candidate so don't you dare vote Green" mode. What is really making me sick right now, though, is the fact that as long as we're still in something resembling a primary (as much as the press and its corporate masters are trying to turn everything into Clinton vs. Giuliani now), most of these left-leaning Websites are giving more press and praise to Ron Paul than to Dennis Kucinich. I'm not saying that I don't understand wanting to highlight Paul and the things that he stands for, but by putting Paul under so bright of a spotlight and scarcely mentioning Kucinich (if he's mentioned at all), it's like a tacit admission on the part of Democrats that they have lost complete sight of their identity, promoting someone who has gone on record as saying he would like to do away with UNICEF over someone who actually espouses true liberalism, the things that once made the Democratic party a great party and which have been stripped away by fifteen years of Clintons and the DLC.
I would like to think that somehow 2008 will be the year that finally breaks the two-party system. I'd like to think that people will get so fed up of Clinton and Giuliani that at long last the Religious Right defects over to the Constitutionalists (where they're a much better fit), Libertarians abandon the GOP in greater droves over the fiscal irresponsibilities of the current administration, the Greens regain the strength they built up in the 2000 election and then some, and the Socialists finally get some real press and escape from the shadow of misinformation that's been hanging over their heads thanks to the "better dead than red" crowd. Given all the various forces out there that are conspiring to force everyone into black-or-white, good-or-evil, Republican-or-Democrat choices, though, I fear that I've got another year of oversimplified drivel awaiting me as I look for intelligent political discussion both on the Internet and on what few political television shows I can manage to stomach from now until November of next year.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon