IF I Had.............
Pretending must be some sort of protection for sanity. I think all of us must pretend sometimes, and if the truth be known, most of the time. I read a poll recently in which only 13 percent of Republicans thought global warming was a serious problem. Wow! Pretending perfected. There are ever expanding areas on the globe where the population density is so great that natural resources----including the soil, the air, the trees, the fish, and raw materials of various ilk----are so depleted that most of the inhabitants, when not killing off each other to gain access to anything worth having still left, live lives of hopeless, often homeless desperation. Still, no major political or religious leader remotely suggest any form of population control. Wow! These are just two examples of advanced Pretending.
But here I want to engage on some less harmful pretending. I will pretend that maybe I know half of what I think I know, that I see some vague clearness of the big picture, that politics is in some measure predictable, that I could possibly be objective enough or sapient enough to predict the mental state of politicians or those minority of adult citizens who vote. In the absence of any Barbara Walters lining me up for an interview, I will interview myself---I guess for the record. Kindly don't ask, "What record"? Maybe it is outside your limited world. I am already pretending.
QUESTION: Who will win the democratic nomination? ANS: Obama if he leads in the delegate count going into the convention. Those delegates holding elective office will not dare overturn the popular vote results. It would be political suicide next time they run for re-election.
QUESTION; Will the convention overturn the Party's earlier decision not to count the delegates from Florida and MIchigan? ANS: Same answer, if this is done to overturn the popular vote results it would be political suicide. If the Obama supporters are anything, they are energized and totally in the mind set for revenge. Of course logically you cannot make one set of rules and then at the end change the rules. No comment on what percent of the time in life anything is done logically.
QUESTION: Can McCain win the election against Clinton or Obama? ANSWER: If issues mean anything, the answer is No. But if issues meant anything George Bush would never have won a second term. 80% of Americans in polls say they oppose the Iraq War and want it ended. McCain endorses surging up the the war, stated we could be there for the next 100 years. Most Americans say the economy is the most important issue to them (the personal greed factor) and McCain said he doesn't really know much about economics and planned to read a Greenspan book to catch up. Most Americans in polls say they don't approve of tax cuts to the rich and want them rescinded. McCain supports continuing them. In general most Americans seem against the Bush policies on almost every front. Off hand I can't think of any area better off because of Bush policies. McCain, like most Republicans, has supported Bush on most of these unpopular issues. So, on paper, it would be impossible. But George Bush won a second term. The logically impossible can obviously be possible in politics.
QUESTION: Who would be the best candidate against McCain? This is seemingly easy. Hilliary has a small army of people who have hated her for years. It is an irrational emotional thing, not that any of us, certainly not me, are capable of such a thing. Obama drew a record number of voters into the democratic party, many people who hadn't voted in years. There is no reason to think this ability of his would cease come the general election. The last two elections were close. This increased turnout by democrats would seem an unbeatable difference this time. Obama is the more inspirational, the better speaker, and starts any debate with better positions to defend than McCain. McCain was a very good soldier, a solid military man who endorses military might to solve conflicts, and a decent middle of the road sort of politician. The mentality McCain and Obama bring to the issues is mostly one of stark contrast. With Obama in the race this time the election would represent a real choice. Votes will really matter this time, both to this country and the rest of the world. But lurching in the background will always be the race issue. What percent of voters will simply be threatened by the prospect of a blk President? And Latino voters are really conflicted. They compete with blacks for a piece of the pie; it is not easy for them to want a competitor for the pie to become President. But still, the short history of Obama in politics has been really amazing. He doesn't get any greater percentage of the black vote than most other democrats get. He wins, and always has won because of the white vote. Obama did not get to be the Democratic candidate for Senator in Illinois because of the black vote, he got it because he carried white downstate Illinois. His victories in Iowa, Maine, etc. are not any show of power of blks to win an election. All of this tends to favor Obama trouncing McCain. The campaign appearances of Obama in a Presidential election are likely to be huge emotional rallies, and people tend to align themselves with those kind of movements, they want to be on the winning side.
QUESTION: Will either Hilliary or Barack be a Vice-Presidential candidate? ANS: No. Neither one will feel comfortable in that role, although Hilliary is at least conceivable accepting that. Obama is young. The reality is that the next President will not be able to solve enough problems fast enough to be the cure-all any of the candidates pretend they are. Thus Obama would be more likely to resign from the Senate, concentrate on community organizing and be conveniently waiting in the wing for the next election. In some respects Obama is in a win-win situation. For Hilliary or McCain it is kind of Now or Never. For Obama it is kind of Now or Next Time.
QUESTION: Is there a chance somebody might shoot Obama? There is a chance somebody might shoot any Presidential candidate. Only President Bush has a strong enough protective force to pretty much prevent his being shot. But after he is not President, Bush probably has a greater chance of being shot than Obama. Bush certainly holds the world record right now for the most enemies across the globe. Will Obama get killed? We live in an out of control world in which violence begets violence and sadly, the US has been the leader in this regard. When the once most respected country in the world adopts violence as a means to solve conflict, the violence, unlike his economic gifts to the wealthy, really does trickle down. If there has been any overpowering theme of the Bush Administration it has been the endorsement of violence to achieve success. This mentality cannot be overturned over night. It is possible that Obama could be the victim of the very mentality he fights against.
Well, enough. What will be will be. The evolutionary process moves ever on. It is always Mother Nature, operating via the laws of nature created by the Creator of the Process, which prevails. When we are not pretending ourselves to death, the reality is none of us will get out of the world alive---in fact birth itself could be viewed as the beginning of a fatal 'disease' with no cure, with assorted temporary reprieves along the way.
