What does Hillary want?
Freudian analysis?




Hillary, of course, wants to be President of the United States of America. Maybe if she'd not spent eight years in the White House with that guy she's with, whose dubious financial dealings might cause him some trouble in the vetting process, and between them a load of baggage that makes Rose Bukater's in Titanic look like an overnight bag...

And even if she'd accept vice-president, her speech last night didn't give Obama anyway to save face with his own supporters, nor hers. So today, 2o Congressmen and eight senators called Hillary and said: get out, and let us commit to him.

So the news is blazing that she intends to make some kind of announcement, on Friday and maybe even Saturday, in which she'll suspend her campaign and endorse Obama. We'll see.

Let her go back to the Senate and be the kind of senator she can be when she's not distracted by running for President.

"It Is Impossible To Have Progress Without A Conscience."
Robert Rauschenberg dead--The sordid sad mess of current politics


Still life with dancers: "One of the seminal figures of modern art, visual artist Robert Rauschenberg was resident designer for Merce Cunningham Dance Company for ten years. His piece Minutiae was his first stage design for the company and was created in 1954 as the set for the Cunningham-Cage dance performance."
Via: Melbournefestival.com

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, 82, one of the few protean makers of art this nation has produced, died Monday at this home in Captiva, Florida.

The expected death of an old man is not a tragedy, but one is reminded that the generation of the Deperession and World War II --and Rauschenberg went through both -- is packing up and leaving, like those scenes of departing trains in the old movies, where the person remaining on the platform runs alongside in the steam, trying to glimpse the lover's/spouse's face one last time.

"One of the last, there is no art anymore today, just repetition, pose, people posing as artists," commented Fisch, from Germany, on the New York Times page announcing Rauschenberg's death. I dunno, Fisch, I think there is art today, but the gallery system can function like the music industry, which is to say the entertainment industry, which is to say that the young are both product and consumer. It's a damned difficult, wearying and even wretched business, and it is a business, and Rauschenberg came along at a time when something new was being sought. Not just new, but an altering of fundamentals. And he was versatile. And his talents were important.

Rauschenberg was part of not just art history, but contemporary culture, from Black Mountain College to Merce Cunningham and John Cage to designing a Talking Heads album cover. Eulogized the Times' Michael Kimmelmann, "A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked."

Unlike the Abstract Expressionist painters who painted the world in pieces, he took pieces of the world and put it back together through his Combines. If a painting is to be about the real world, it must be made out of the real world, he said. He lived long enough to go from being a kind of Peck's Bad Boy of art to an institution. That's a curious path to travel.

I'm still not sure how I feel about his white canvases that were more about how they were viewed than what was stretched in the frame. Or how his Combines, often built of flimsy, deteriorating materials, can stand up to art of the ages. Or even they are meant to. Rauschenberg spent much of his life in the shadow of nuclear annihiliation, which, as Gunter Grass once put it, renders ridiculous the baroque notion of timelesseness. If it's all going to end in a pfffftph!, what's the point of making art that's supposed to be eternal? But I'm not resolving that issue here.

From the Times: “I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

The Chariot Race

Speaking of irresistible possibilities that can't be ignored, today the voters of West Virginia are supposed to vote in astonishing numbers for Hillary Rodham Clinton because...beause she's not Barack Hussein Obama. Thinking about this political mishigas makes me tired. I see no good coming out of any of it. Even if Barack wins, which, to me, would be better than any other outcome given the brute realities with which we are saddled. The appalling mess of our politics is a bit like a Rauschenberg Combine, all pasted together borrowed images and found objects, the meaning of which seems, at times, ambiguous.

In awful desperation she has so much as said that the Democratic party has to nominate her because non-white people are unelectable -- forgetting for a moment that Barack Obama is as much white as he is black.

As James Howard Kunstler puts it, in rather purjorative terms, as directed to West Virginia and Kentucky:

"The spectacle of Hillary's un-making has been pretty horrible to witness, the efforts to stage her as a lumpenprole Nascar mom drinking boilermakers while celebrating her latest hunting exploits. (How worried is Hillary about making her mortgage payments, or filling her gas tank?)

Naturally, the final act of this nauseating play takes place in Hillbilly Heaven, the states of West Virginia and Kentucky, where Hillary expects to make a big "statement" about exactly whom voters will go for. She'll win big and the effort will symbolically disgrace her.

...Whatever America's fate may be in these very trying times of peak oil and climate change, a consensus seems to have formed that we can't afford to leave the same old cast of characters running things."

Thing is, I don't think she is going to get symbolically disgraced. You can read his whole post here.

But, though members of the billion-eyed audience have probably already seen it, I happened across James Wolcott's current Vanity Fair column about the political to-ing and fro-ing in the Democratic blogosphere being symbolic of the rift in the party, offline. In "When Democrats Go Post-Al" he compares this dueling for the party's nomination, which wasn't suppose to go like this, as the final grueling stretch of the culminating chariot race in Ben-Hur.

As James Branch Cabell wrote, if it were not all so heart breaking, it would be side splitting. And Wolcott did make me laugh aloud in parts though, it was rueful.

He addresses the two versions of the candidates: "Hillary’s candidacy promised to make things better; Obama’s to make us better: outward improvement versus inward transformation. With Hillary, you would earn your merit badges; with Obama, your wings. Hillary’s candidacy was warmed-over meat loaf—comfort food for those too old or fearful to Dream."

And concluding:

"Democrats have pulled their punches for so long that they know only how to hit themselves in the face, earning the reputation for masochism that gives Dick Cheney a good chuckle each night at bedtime as he’s being packed in ice."

For the juicy meat in the middle, go here.

Getting Played
Politics as just another content provider for reality news teleivsion


TV Cello (1971) by Nam Jun Paik (1932-2006) Performer Charlotte Moorman (1931-1993).

While walking yesterday evening through the unexpected warm spring evening of March in Richmond-in-Virginia, a city bus passed by and I observed a placard attached to the side that queried, "WHICH HDTV IS BEST FOR YOU?" and arrows pointing to opposite ends of the question, and two different prices, due to the various attachments and whizbangs that come on these devices.

And I thought about this in a political sense. We are getting asked basically to choose which HDTV is best for us, whether or not we want an HDTV. The Dueling Democrats competing for convention delegates are two versions of the same appliance, though one may have a sharper picture, or clearer sound.

Today, state Democrats cast votes that are described by the vidiot box's talking heads in eye-bulging, vein-pulsing excitement as "crucial" and "defining." My guess is the needle isn't going to really move much: billion eyed audience, you read it here, that my guess is neither Clinton nor Obama will seal the deal today. Clinton, bloodied but unbowed as they say, will be able to spin whatever happens as a victory because it isn't a total defeat, and Obama can make one of his patented stem-winder speeches to get people stomping their feet and chanting his slogan of the week, and say he won because Clinton didn't take everything. And on we'll go to Pennsylvania or Lower Slobovia or whatever's next.

What would amuse me, in a schadenfreude sense, is if somehow Huckabee managed to thwart McCaine from getting all the delegates he needs in this one fell swoop.

Then again, I see this as emboldening the enemies of the U.S. Constitution. I'll tell you in brief why.

The other night, I was at a dinner party. A bright, articulate cosmopolitan mother of three was there and describing her adventures in southern Missouri, where she went with her family to procure a service dog trained to detect the falling blood sugar of one of her children afflicted by diabetes. The kicker to this is that a religious group trains these rare dogs and an applicant must attend services at this particular institution of faith and endure harangues from the pulpit.

Her description of the the spittle-projecting, screaming minister denouncing McCain and Obama, using these Internet lies to besmirch the Illinois senator, and saying that after Obama wins--a foregone conclusion to this preacher in Missouri--then the country will be such a wreck, a good Christian soldier like Huckabee will be needed to set things right, and the golden era of a U.S. theocracy can descend upon the land. These are people who think The Handmaid's Tale isn't a dystopian novel, but how things should work.

My tour of the Deep South these past few weeks demonstrated to me, albiet in an anecotal way, a genuine suspicion of the front running candidates--no matter their political stripe. Still, there is a solid evangelical political consitituency in the nation that has hijacked the process by making religion a candidate's validiation point. Never mind that our greatest presidents were either never asked or weren't over-board in their religious faiths. When Billy Graham started hanging out with Richard Nixon, we started having problems.

Today's true believers are re-writing history to suit them, and they tie everything to abortion and cutting welfare and policing the morals of the culture. There never was a golden age of U.S values, except on 1950s television, or in rural provincial back waters where women and minorities were second class citizens and almost invisible.

So that it comes down to is: it's a 50-50 political environment; a pathetic zero sum game where even the most idealistic must sell themselves out just to get their message out, even as they make critical compromises to do so.

We should ask why Obama, for example, hasn't said almost nothing about getting mercenary forces like Blackwater out of Iraq. He's made passing mention to why the United States is building the largest embassy ever in its history in Baghdad, which you can read about here and here. We're not leaving anytime soon. [Image via Bruce Gagnon at Space4peace].


Nor has much at all been said about killing off these Brobdingnagian anti-missile defense projects that include this leviathan radar array called SBX attached to a former Russian oil rig platform, so large that in deployment the thing couldn't go through the Panama Canal.

The current administration's spending on missile defense ballooned to $11 billion -- far outstripping energy research funding--and could grow to $19 billion. That's billion with a "b" for you readers at home.

And what of the recent report that some 2.3 million people in the United States are behind bars -- more than any other nation on earth? Why do we tolerate this? Says the Washington Post, quoting a Pew research document, "One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group." And, "Although studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect may be less influential than changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents and the proportion of young people in the population."

I don't hear the Dems talking with any consistency about these pertinent subjects (among many others), about these colossal waste of funds, exclusive of the Iraq debacle. Nor has either one of the candidates leveled with the U.S. citizenry and said in point blank fashion: You have to ask yourselves, is it worth cheap gas for your motor vehicle to send your husband, father, uncle, wife, daughter, neice off to some desert nation perhaps never to return, or come back maimed and mangled and mental? If it is, then fine. That's what we'll do. But know what you're asking for; don't delude yourself with 9/11 rhetoric and patriotic fervor.

So, OK. I'm in Obama's camp. For the novelty of his candidacy, I think, and maybe because of some of that hope he dispenses like ketchup at the Hardee's. But in the end, if he does manage to wrestle this nomination process from two of the most tenacious political street fighters in recent times, he'll have much to answer for. The Clinton campaign has started running the Republican campaign for them considering how Hillary said she and McCain were the most experienced and deserved to be president.

If Hillary stays in the race, and for seven weeks continues to muck up the environment prior to Pennsylvania, while McCain and Bush are able to bad mouth and Obama all day long, then what's the point to any Democratic campaign at all? I return to the Democratic voting Republican ladies standing in my line during the Virginia primary: some Republicans are voting Democrat in essence just to play with our heads.

And Obama is inheriting a catastrophe, and there are many, many millions who want to see him fail and who'll work with determined and deliberate zealous energy to undermine him during every single moment of his public life. I don't want Obama to be this generation's Jimmy Carter, I really don't. Perhaps Obama is a "posing conservative." But maybe that's the way he could ever hope to get elected in this shambling makeshift republic.

And if it is McCain v. Obama, and they conduct every nasty maneuver brewing in the infernal cauldron of Rove's dirty tricks kitchen, and Obama loses, then we get what we deserve. The political process is a farce, but if Obama is trounced, then it becomes tragedy. Problem is, we who cannot expatriate to foreign climes will have to endure what follows, just as we've had to endure the past eight long years, and watch the country just slide away.

If you've just not gotten our fill of Obamadness, a Richmond blogger at West of Shockoe provdes one stop swooning. It's better than listening to the blithering and blathering on television.

This I gleaned from Wonkette.



Here is His Hopeness at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo 2008. The comments to Wonkette's snarky descriptions are more interesting, as they tend to be in opposition to each other. Some say this is like Dukakis and the tank. I don't see it; Obama isn't displaying his national defense prowess, or lack thereof, by posing as though operating farm equipment.

Two polar opposite remarks:

by PopoZao at 02:55 PM
@TheRainWhisperer: Because for 9 out of 10 Americans (the ones who don't vote in a primary but do vote in a general election) Barry Hussein Idi Amin Obama is more alien than a Martian.

I think the Democratic Primary process has created the false impression that Barry has widespread appeal.

Poor McCain sounds like he is in complete disbelief that Barry is the best the Democrats have to offer up to him every time Barry's name is mentioned. I can't wait to see his self-righteous ass get whupped by McCain. Barry acts like his santorum doesn't stink as bad as the rest of ours but it does!

by ultramk at 03:01 PM
The thing that gets me, is that even sitting on a goddamn tractor, the dude still looks like the president.

You know, aside from the speeches, and the sincerity and all that shit, the dude is straight out of central-fucking-casting. He's presidentier-than-presidenty: he's the presidentiest. He's clay-oven-baked-president-covered-in-tangy-president-sauce-served-with-a-side-of-hot-mesquite-grilled-president.

This, from Lance Mannion, a pragmatic view of a Clinton loss tonight and what it'll mean for Obama. It's a Blame The Media argument; similar in theme to the one I'm making with the title and image at the top of this post:

Clinton is going to lose

Big day tomorrow. Vote early, vote often.

Based on what I've been reading I predict Hillary Clinton's going to lose.

She'll probably wind up pocketing the most delegates but she's going to lose.

The Media will see to it.

It's unlikely she'll get out and out beaten across the board, but she'll still lose. She'll lose by not beating Obama across the board or she'll lose by not winning in every big state or she'll lose by not winning by a large enough margin in the states she's supposed to win or by not coming close enough in the states she's expected to lose or she'll lose by not getting the votes of the right demographic or she'll lose by not getting enough votes in the demographics that were going to vote for her anyway or she'll lose because not enough people tell the exit pollsters on their way out how excited they were to cast their vote for her.

Whatever, however.

She's going to lose.

She's going to lose because they're going to say she did and they'll say it because they want her to.

This is not sour grapes. This is the way it's been going on for fifteen years now. And those of you who think that this is a good reason not to support her, so we can get away from this, those of you who think that Obama will somehow be able, through the sheer force of his personality or the beauty of his rhetoric or the wonderfulness that is him or through the plain fact that he is not a Clinton need to consider this very real possibility:

The reason he's a media darling now is because he's not a Clinton. He gives them a way to dump on the Clintons while congratulating themselves on how cool and post-partisan they are.

If and when Hillary's beaten and Obama's the nominee he becomes the Democrat running for President.

And you watch.

If the Republican running against him is John McCain then every single move Obama makes will be the wrong one.

Everything he says will be a lie.

Every time he appears to win he will lose.

Exasperation: If you vote, and a superdelegate matters more, what's the point? I dunno. I voted anyway.



Project VoteSmart, via Brian on Myspace.

• Item: I've never voted in a Virginia primary. I'm 46. I stood in the long Bush v. Gore lines. Back years ago, I cast my first ballot for...(drum role) John Anderson. Once, I even voted for Ross Perot. The reasoning then was, he'd get in and provide a needed shock to the system. I remember the late great Barbara Jordan getting asked about whether Perot would make a good president and she paused for several long moments and said in her precise and authoritative voice, "I think the United States could survive a Perot presidency." And so I voted for him, with great misgivings. Oh, Barbara Jordan. We could use her around again. If you look at her keynote address before the 1976 Democratic National Convention, there's some Obamian glimmerings in there, in this excerpt:

"Even as I stand here and admit that we have made mistakes I still believe that as the people of America sit in judgment on each party, they will recognize that our mistakes were mistakes of the heart. They'll recognize that.

And now we must look to the future. Let us heed the voice of the people and recognize their common sense. If we do not, we not only blaspheme our political heritage, we ignore the common ties that bind all Americans.

Many fear the future, Many are distrustful of their leaders, and believe that their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work wants. To satisfy private interests.

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

If that happens, who then will speak for America?

Who then will speak for the common good?"

Item: This morning, I was standing in line in the elementary school gym that is my precinct. The arrangement of people was out the door at quarter of nine. Here, the quiet majesty of one-person one-vote proceeded at a methodical pace. The registrars checked addresses and used a ruler to keep their vision straight while looking down long columns of type.

Unlike during a general election--and this even varies per precinct here in Richmond as I've learned--there was a Democratic queue on the, um, left end of the table, and a Republican queue on the right.

On occasion, the precinct manager would announce that if anybody was voting Republican, they could come forward, as there was no waiting. Nobody budged.

A few high heeled ladies ahead of me inquired of the manager, though, as they were Republicans voting Democrat, would they need to go over to the Republican end of the table. And the manager didn't know, "You'll have to ask the registrar."

Turned out, you declared your attention to the ladies with the register books. "I'm voting Democratic," I announced.

I marched over to my touch-screen box and made my choice. I joined the mass Obamasm.

And I'm preparing myself for disappointment. This is the nature of my adult political life. I vote for losers, and my winners foul stuff up. My memory is quite clear about seeing Bill Clinton giving his acceptance speech on the television at the Trolley Restaurant on West Main Street -- it's now the Six Burner . And there was young Bill, basking in his victory, and television was on and people quite interested in what he had to say--and a black man, standing and watching, pointed at the television and remarked, "You better not fuck up, is all I got to say."

Yup.

• Item: At my office today, someone had drawn devil's horns and a beard on Hillary's picture on the newspaper's front page.

• Item: The meaning and methods of superdelegates.

From Ben Smith, of Politico:

February 12, 2008
Read More: Delegates

Politico delegate count

My colleagues Avi Zenilman and Josie Hearn have put together an exhaustive, easy-to-use chart of superdelegates and their alleagiances.

Their current count is Hillary 230, Obama 138.5.

One interesting point, which is visible in the chart: Clinton has a lead of three among senators, a lead of 13 among House members, and they're tied among governors. So her real margin comes from the relatively anonymous DNC members, among whom she leads 125 to 57.5.

And some of the comments, also illuminating. The added emphasis is mine.


Posted By: Cathy | February 12, 2008 at 03:35 PM

"...her real margin comes from the relatively anonymous DNC members...." This doesn't surprise me, now that I've read the stories of Bill Clinton calling these lowly, anonymous superdelegates personally, and Chelsea Clinton taking them to lunch (!!) I mean, that's a lot of pressure! How do you say, "No, I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I'm not ready to support your wife?" This whole situation really hacks me off, though.

Posted By: ReasonedAnalysis | February 12, 2008 at 03:35 PM

Most of the state-wide DNC members surely endorse early during the "inevitable" stage of Hillary's campaign. It would have been politically expedient for them to endorse rather than to remain mostly anonymous to the Clinton machinery/presumed administration. ...But now, I think it's safe to assume that MANY of those votes by DNC members are subject to change if political winds start to change.

Posted By: Jade7243 | February 12, 2008 at 03:40 PM

I think this focus on "automatic" delegates is getting a bit out of hand from both sides. Let's get through March and see where the pledged delegate count is and then we can talk about "automatic" delegates. I don't get why either side counts these people in their overall totals, b/c they are fluid and can change their mind one a moments' notice.

It's clear that Politico's count of "super" "ueber" "automatic" "special" or however you want to characterize them are different from NBC's, CBS's, ABC's NYT's, WaPo's and right on down the line. Let's agree to not count any of these people until we get a heckuva lot closer to the Convention. They can change their minds at the drop of a hat -- or loss of a state. Where they stand today may not be where a lot of these people, whose "support" is based on poltical fortunes, stand tomorrow. They are fickle. You may see Clinton's "lead" gone like "dust in the wind."

Posted By: dumbfounded | February 12, 2008 at 03:46 PM

What is this, a basketball game or the struggle for which ideas are going to rule America's future?

The superdelegate counts are going to shift everyday to some extent. That's because the Democrats have foolishly tied their fate to the traditional smoke-filled room politics of yesterday. The leaders, especially Dean, haven't yet settled the MI and FL mess, which stirs needless debates and contentiousness while providing the Republicans a grounds for showing the country that a party not able to reasonably handle its own primary process isn't ready to lead the country.

The Democrats are in deep over the heads; the vote on the telecommunications act proves that. It's been two years and no end to the war. Instead of counting mercurial superdelegate votes it would be far wiser to monitor how disaffected voters are with the party overall. See: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18349197/the_chicken_doves. That's right the Democrats have become Chickendoves, and that's in the view of liberal commentators.

Out on the campaign trail they're pitching change, but in Congress they're voting moderate or right. You think one presidential candidate is going to change that. Obama's right about this: The direction of the country's in the people's hands. And with that in mind, it's not in very good hands. Where's the outrage, the protests, the unrest regarding the immoral and illegal Iraq War? Gates just came out and said, in effect, that the surge level of troops is going to be continued past July. Yet hardly a peep.

No wonder Feingold didn't run.

He saw the writing on the wall. He saw that the selfish masses are more concerned about their own slice of the pie - better healthcare - than they are about the national welfare. Why? Because they fail to see that an improved national welfare will lead to improved individual welfare.

This isn't liberal politics. This isn't a devotion to the collective whole and the compassion that Democrats have shown for decades. This isn't the party of peace but the party of appeasement. Since Bill Clinton it became the Third Way party, happy to go along with moderate and right wing ideas. Who's anybody kidding about change?

Since '06 how much change have the Democrats sought? Conyers and Kucinich aimed for impeachment, but virtually no takers. But Clinton was impeached for a BJ. How pathetic. How derelict can the party get? Torture? OK. Spying on phone and email messages? OK. Continuing the surge? OK. Threatening Iran? OK. Pouring trillions into the "War on Terror" yet not catching bin Laden? OK. Selling fear? OK. Hey when the masses have exhausted themselves in this ridiculous race and are too tired in Nov. to vote, we'll know why. The Democrats aren't providing much of a reason to get up off our asses.

I Want The West Wing; Not The Same Old Thing
Richmond's Obamagasm --- But what if none of this matters?

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and even Ralph Nader were in the 804
this past weekend. [Image via Reuters and the Spiegel Magazine site.]

Barack, HillnBill, all this and Chinese New Year's, too.

This was one of those moments when Richmond appeared to be in the middle of something Important. The Jefferson Jackson event (that's as in past presidents Thomas and Andrew, not Jefferson Davis or "Stonewall" Jackson) at the Virginia Commonwealth University's Siegel Center on Saturday night brought to the podium Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Hussein Obama.

I've been so caught up in rummaging about in events of 1909 that I didn't realize that we groundlings could've paid $35 and heard them both speak. The seats were in the rafters, but that would've been OK to get a glimpse at History In The Making.

Meanwhile, there was a tangential connection to this political season's visitation to Broad Street. Both camps had sought venues within walking distance of the speechifying. The Obama contingent set up a big screen TV to track the primary action, and the JJ dinner. They were smart to also feature the rollicking No BS Brass Band and the toe-tapping wayback-stylings of a group whose name I couldn't ever get straight-- Above Depression or Beyond Depression -- fronted by the wonderful Margaret Fleischman.

Unbeknownst to me, Bill Clinton spoke for about 45 minutes down at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. I was aware, however, that Hillary had chosen to use the Firehouse for a gathering with about 50 supporters. Carol Piersol, with whom I co-founded the place with three others 15 years ago, called at work on Friday to give me the news. Would I be interested in coming down Saturday afternoon to hang some of our framed pictures for the sake of appearances?

But our indispensable Melissa G. got to business right away; put together gift bags and contacted installation/sculptor artist David Turner to install his show that's supposed to go up for Henry Moss. Tad Burrell and Stephen Harris assisted in getting the place straightened up; Saturday afternoon I picked up debris of various kinds in the less than pristine rear parking courtyard behind the Firehouse. Hillary was getting brought in from the alley.

The security people wanted minimal staff, meaning Carol got to meet Hillary, and me and Amie couldn't, nor, to be honest, could any other members of the Firehouse organization. This wasn't a social occasion for HRC, but a business one. She needed to make a sales pitch to these people.

When returning home from my little effort at the Firehouse I came upon a friend stopped in his old Alfa Romeo at an intersection. The day was pristine and perfect for riding around in a convertible sports car, and he gave me a lift. I burbled about my Hillary news and this good man, an self-employed business person who operates a garage that specializes in maintaining and repairing oddball and vintage automobiles, shook his head. Since John Edwards is out of the race, he doesn't know who he can vote for.

I have to agree with Bill Maher, too, that at their most recent debate, Obama and Hillary looked like a local television station's weekend news anchor duo.

One Firehouse comrade who ambled in after HRC's departure, whom we met on the sidewalk, kind of summed up the evening's mood. He glanced at the activity at The Camel. "I'd rather be here, anyway," he said, and gestured behind him, "That's the past, this is the future. And this demographic is a bit more to my liking." The Obamian United Colors of Benetton wasn't similar to the Firehouse gathering, reported our friend. They were ladies of a certain age, who were rallying around HRC's banner to prevent further drooping. "I didn't know there were that many wealthy Democratic women in Richmond," he said. "But I guess they came from all over the state."

We stood and watched Obama's speech broadcast on the large screen and this was quite enjoyable. Around me, all kinds of folks, their heads chin-raised to see, their expressions eager and energized, clung to his words. There was applause and cheering and chanting of "Yes we can!" Amie was impressed because of all these political speeches we've heard of late, Obama's was the only one in which art and music got a mention. Not just a passing nod, but given with a sense of importance to cultural fabric. So much is heard of statistics and wages earned and billions spent, so this was noticeable.

And as he spoke, the screen ticker announced that his campaign had on this day emerged victorious in Washington, Nebraska (!) and Louisiana. This generated greater excitement and no movie could've added such additional drama. But among the faifthful gathered came much furtive discussion about the numbers and meanings of "super delegates." The mandarin mystique of these greater-than-equal delegates is the embodiment of the many ways the Democrats manufacture to shoot themselves in the head as a party. And the existence of such creatures is about as undemocratic as you can get.

But speaking of the audacity of hope: amid these Obama disciples I bumped into an old friend of mine, Jim, from the Richmond Review days, who wore with pride his Hillary Clinton button. He was circled by several women who were urging him to see the matter their way. This encounter exhibits the difficulty of being a Democrat this February; the supporters of one candidate don't want to disrespect the supporters of the other. So there are these urgent and for the most part good-natured conversations in which the subject comes around to: which of the two is better qualified to go at it against McCain, and with voting margins so narrow in many national contests?

I think Jim is a contrarian, though he claimed to me his display was genuine: the whole "experience" thing. Oh, sigh. Like I told him, my desire is for a different set of problems, and not Clintonian baggage piled up in front of the White House entrance like Rose Dewitt Bukater's in Titanic. No, not all of that baggage is Hillary's but it is Clintonian, and that alone was enough to almost sink a ship of state.

A number of those in the audience, and others whom I'd run into during this weekend, heard Ralph Nader speak at "The Biggest Picture" environmental film festival at the Byrd Theatre. (I was sorry to miss The Milagro Beanfield War, and Sonia Braga as a greasemonkey in denim. I remember seeing this at the theater when it was new, and me more so, too).

Those who heard Nader seemed to like him, and as as one told me, with a shrug, "He didn't sound leftist -- he just made sense."

I admit to a certain affinity for Nader and his pugnaciousness though I'm not over the role, how little or not, he played in the Gore v. Bush match up. In Style Weekly he explained, "To those who blame him for Bush, Nader has countered that Gore lost a number of states he should’ve won (such as Tennessee), that social scientists have proved his pushing Gore to the left actually won him more votes and that Gore would have won Florida if not for illegal voter removals perpetrated by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris (“Either we’re all spoilers of one another … or none of us are,” Nader has said)."

But I think of Nader while reflecting upon standing there with the Obama crowd and feeling their energy and wishing and hoping such emotions would prove infectious. Political journo/blogger Matt Taibbi--whose sardonic cynicism I couldn't live with and write at the same time, which is why I'm not in Rolling Stone--has made the observation that both Obama and Clinton are just "posturing conservatives" though he prefers the Kenyan-Kansan over the other.

Riding home Taibbi's view, one comes to the conclusion that there is no there there at the center of U.S. politics. What occurs in these wretched campaigns is as meaningless as porn. Perhaps the process would better serve the public if the candidates wore NASCAR jackets featuring the logos of the corporations and sponsorships, with size of the badges commensurate to the amount given. Then none of them could hide who is supplying the gas to keep their private jets and media pool vehicles gassed up and ready to go. Let's just get the bad news out there for everyone to see. I mean this is why Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul aren't going to make much headway. And the oxygen got sucked out of the air John Edwards was trying to breathe.

Richmond has a few Paulists. They've slathered the traffic poles with their "WHO IS RON PAUL?" flyers, and at every public event there seems to be someone raising up a Paulist sign, and I see his name in windows of Fan District apartment buildings. I am friends with a fellow, a lawyer, who was in the U.S. Libertarian party organization when Paul was involved, and my friend got to know him, not well, but enough to see that he was an OK guy. He's no more kooky than anybody else who claims he or she wants the job of President of the United States.

People say they want change-- but really?

The U.S. electorate is, in many cases and with exceptions, docile. We aren't about third candidates. That's just too much work. We aren't marching for revolution -- we've already had one, and George Washington won.

Not much foundation-shifting change is possible because of how the system is rigged. Our founders liked democracy just so far -- the electoral college and the Senate are constant reminders that the national framers feared full participation by the masses at least in equal amount to their hatred of tyrannical whimsy. They tried to set up a system to last in the long term by protecting us from ourselves. They couldn't have foreseen, though, how the rise of mega-corporations and the handmaiden of rampant capitalism would create a nation where 12 different packagings of the same goop with which to wash your hair makes people believe they have real choices.

Our elections, in particular since the time of television, are about rewrapping similar ingredients to pass them off as something different. And 98 percent of incumbent politicians in national and state elections get re-elected. The gerrymandering and reapportionment of districts is one part of the equation to blame; private money and public apathy are the other key components.

How ridiculous is it that in a nation of 300 millions that are choices for nation's figurative leadership comes down to two people. So, yes, I want to cheer and whistle and stomp my feet as my heart lifts to Obama's rhetoric. Except, even if he believes what he says--and I think he probably is convinced in most of his highflown "hope mongering" -- Obama is a mere man, and there's one of him, and he's jumping into the eye of the maelstrom that is Washington D.C. Well, he's got a seat at the edge already. And he wants to stay because he's persuaded of his possessing better methods.

And, tonight, the Democratic voters of Maine...Maine....think so, too.

In Carytown this afternoon, a group of metal-faced, spiky haired 20 somethings were clustering around an Obama campaigner and I overheard one say to the Man from Obama, "We were listening to Hillary last night and it was all God God Jesus God in the first 10 minutes, so we're Obama all the way now."

The young man makes a point. These days, U.S. politicians must refer to the deity or the heavenly hosts with such frequency that you'd think our elections process was on the verge of some ecstatic climax.

So Tuesday is the Crabcake Primaries, Virginia, D.C., and Maryland, and here in Virginia, we don't have to register by party, so, I'm going to amble down to the nearby elementary school to press the button; because, yes, I can.

P.S. I hope eighth blackbird gets all their Grammys tonight. Looks like they've won Best Chamber Music Performance for Strange Imaginary Animals. I don't know if they give a Grammy for Best Playing of A Card Table, but they're winners, in my book.

And Barack won a Grammy for his spoken word rendition of his book.