Measuring how bad things really are
By Craig Carter
Sunday, May 11, 2008 2:26 AM PDT
My fellow hippie-freak free-love liberals wring their hands in angst and wonder aloud if the contentious campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is hurting the Democratic Party’s chances for winning the White House this November. This is because my fellow hippie-freak free-love liberals watch too much news analysis on television. My fellow hippie-freak free-love liberals need to take a chill pill.
Contentiousness is a good thing in politics. It’s how the laundry, both dirty and clean, gets aired. Sure, it’s a messy process, but you know the old saying about omelets requiring the cracking of eggs. Unfortunately, it often results with one candidate or another getting egg on their face, but that’s the price you pay for wanting the altogether stink job of president of the United States.
Furthermore, what my fellow hippie-freak free-love liberals fail to realize is the fact the contentious campaign between Clinton and Obama is dominating the press, and as Paris Hilton and her fellow celebrity sleaze balls have taught us, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. John McCain has to set his hair on fire, get caught in a motel room with a hooker and/or a goat or get Vice President Cheney to shoot him in the face to get a fraction of the free air time the Democrats are getting. It’s a perfect time for the Democrats’ message to be aired. And they get to do it for free. Free is always the best price you can get.
The contentious campaign is also good for both Clinton and Obama because whomever it is that finally winds up with the nomination is going to be battle-tested. And I get the feeling the Republicans have a doozy of a campaign in store for either Obama or Clinton. Scoff if you will, but if you think it’s contentious now, just wait and see what happens when it’s Republican vs. Democrat rather than Democrat vs. Democrat. Given the fact that McCain is going to have the record of one of the least popular presidents in history to avoid and embrace at once, there are going to be a lot of people, most notably the Karl Rove crowd, with their penchant for dirty tricks and outright lies, that are going to try to make the election about anything but the failed policies of the past eight years.
“Yes, Craig,” the hand-wringing hippie-freak free-love liberals reply. “But if you look at the polls, you see McCain is slightly ahead of either Obama or Clinton.”
The key word there, hippie-freak free-love liberals is “slightly.” Given the supposed disarray in the Democratic Party, common sense would dictate McCain’s lead in the polls should be huge right now. Besides, the only people who are going to remember these polls six months from now are those of us with no friends and no real lives, who get paid to write and speak about all this nonsense.
As I said before, when the campaign finally comes down to Republican v. Democrat, McCain is going to have the altogether unenviable task of having to embrace all of the horribly unpopular Bush policies while trying to paint himself as an agent of change. This is why Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean always has that Cheshire Cat smile on his face when he appears on the political windbag shows.
He knows his party is raising much more money than the Republicans, and his candidates are getting much more press than the Republicans (without the party having to spend a dime, I might add), and, most importantly, when it all comes out in the wash this fall, the Republicans will be seen as what needs to be changed. So find something else to wring your hands in angst over, hippie-freak free-love liberals. Sometimes bad isn’t anywhere near as bad as you think it is.
Craig Carter, an Ontario resident, writes a bi-weekly column for the Argus Observer. Comments or questions for Mr. Carter can be directed to: Craig Carter, Argus Observer Newsroom; 1160 S.W. Fourth St., Ontario OR, 97914.
