Is it really over? Does it matter? I don't care. The ramblings of a politcal atheist
Is it really over? Will Hillary concede to the Obama phenomenon? While I rarely watch election coverage, simply because on the major 24 hour hour news networks as they devolve into a screaming contest reminding me of the typical shows on ESPN, Clinton did not state or hint that she was conceding the race to Obama.
Only because the total number of votes of Florida and Michigan were not counted. It was decided by, as stated by a Clinton aide, a group of 30 people deciding instead of 600,000 people. Is that similar to the situation in Florida in 2000? I don't know, but I'm sure there are a lot of unhappy people in Florida and Michigan. Will Hillary continue to contest this? I don't know.
Obama, the candidate of change appears to be the DNC candidate. Change. It's strange that people claim to talk about change when in reality, nothing will really change in the day to day operations of the US government. Maybe change the perception, but so many groups have planted themselves into the facets of the government that they will never leave. There will always be lobbyists--mind you, lobbyists are not limited to the evil oil barons and child murdering big tobacco companies; there are lobbyists for all positions and groups, not just the evil rich types.
For all the talk about Obama being the next JFK, I certainly hope he isn't anywhere in the same league as JFK. JFK pushed the United States deeper into the Vietnam civil war, he had the government involved shadily in the failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's government and he nearly plunged the planet into nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis. While everyone will point out that Kruschev flinched in the face of the United States, everyone glosses over the fact that Kruschev never forgot the horrors of Stalingrad and felt that it was not worth going to war and possibly nuclear war over setting up a missile base in Cuba.
What is also forgotten is the highly illegal naval blockade of Cuba by the United States. What right did the US have to blockade Cuba? For that matter, then the Russians would have had the right to blockade US ships carrying short range nuclear missile technology to Turkey. Was it that the US was shocked that the Russians had set up missile bases in Cuba, 90 miles from Miami; yet the Americans had similar missile bases in Turkey and Western Europe, just as far away from Soviet territory as the Cuban missile bases were to Miami.
Ah, hypocrisy is so much fun.
A few more complaints, well just one.
How on earth can politcal commentators talk about Clinton's constituency as an army? Are you serious? Olberman and Chris Matthews spoke about this and one of the two alluded to Clinton's political army surrendering akin to Lee surrendering the Army of Northern Virginia in 1865. Once again, people have never read f**king history, which drives me insane since its one of those subjects that I treasure.
In 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia was a beaten force, with little food, warm weather gear, uniforms, bullets, rifles and most importantly, boots. Robert E. Lee could have prolonged the war to make life miserable for the Army of the Potomac as his superior tactical abilties have allowed him to at first plummel the superior forces of the Army of the Potomac and then later after Grant used the general tactic of "f**k, I have more men, rifles, bullets and salted pork than Lee does so I'm just going to lean on him until the Army of Northern Virginia is broken!" Brilliant! But Lee realized that continuing a lost war would be pointless and brutal. Not quite the same as Clinton losing to Obama without the actual votes of Michigan and Florida being counted by the DNC.
Needless to say too, that the concept of attaching the word of army with the political constituency of Clinton does marginalize all of the real political armies: Mao, Castro, Lenin and his Red Army, Simon Bolivar...etc etc.
I'm very tired of this election and I've watched exactly four (4) hours of election coverage since the primaries began and it was four hours too many. I'm going to go read my copy of Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao and the Origins of the Korean War and the original scroll edition of On The Road.