Perhaps it is reaction to all the candidate diaries, or reaction to the candidates themselves, but a restless feeling inside this grumpy old man has been thinking the unthinkable.
Maybe none of your candidates are any good.
Certainly, it is fortunate that life out there in the real United States world appears different from that on Daily Kos. Thank heavens this is so. If the electorate got sight of all the negative things said about the different Democratic candidates on here, then Democratic chances in November, 2008 would be worthless.
Don’t blame me for arriving at these conclusions.
Firstly, I read what you write on here. For most of you, two of the three leading candidates are complete rubbish. The only exception is yours. But then, two thirds disagree with you. They think yours is absolute crap.
I have never believed that the general population has that much knowledge when they cast their votes. They do so by a sort of absorbed common wisdom. Osmosis of what is around them. I have respect for it. I just hope that leakage out of Daily Kos isn’t part of what they absorb.
Yet my feelings are not simply a "sarky" response to what I read here. After all, most of you express intense dislike for Reid and Pelosi and for the Democratic and Republican members in Congress. If the polls are correct, most of the electorate agree with you.
As to your opinions about "the other Democratic candidates", by which I mean those which are not your own, maybe you are right. Let’s look at the evidence.
I am puzzled by something. Head anyone of the Democrats up against named Republican contenders and if they lead them in the polls, it is by an almost statistically non-significant margin. That is, if the head to head match does, in fact, show them leading their opponents at all.
How come? Ask the electorate the general question if they would prefer a Democratic president to a Republican president in 2008 they overwhelming seem to support a Democratic president.
Why the difference between the electorate responses to individual candidates and the concept of the Democratic Party as a whole? You tell me it is because Clinton is false and machiavellian, Obana is full of rhetoric but empty of hard policy – a sort of Britney Spears "celeb" of the political field – and Edwards is... well, just Mr 17% of Democratic voters (which translates into an even smaller percentage of all voters). Yet, whilst filling the recommended diary list with these comments, you congratulate yourselves on having a much superior batch to the Republicans, despite the fact that the latter show up well in those head-to-head polls.
Do I believe you, situated as I am three thousand miles away and just listening to you? After all, the most unpopular president in recent and longer term history is the incumbent in the White House. He suffers not just the lamest of lame duck experiences of any president but brings to it his very own a brand of deceit, incompetence and untruthfulness.
You should be smashing these guys with any of your candidates. You should be cheerleading them on to a landslide victory of historic proportions. Instead of which the polls tell me that they are not that strong and, hey, you tell me that as well.
If you think differently, you had better tell me or does your dislike of Clinton and Pelosi or whoever prevent you from doing so? If you think all three candidates will lead the United States to a much, much better place you had better start telling me and telling your electorate, because at the moment you are not, nor are the polls.