October 28, 2003
Electability
A friend of mine recently asked me if any of the current Democrats running for President has a chance of beating George W. Bush. My reply:
I would agree that the Democratic fight for the White House is an uphill battle. You seem to be asking “Who can win?” rather than “Who is the best person for the job?” It’s a fair question. Right now I would guess many left-leaners would happily trade Bob Dole for GWB. But we’ll confine ourselves to the Democrats. No matter what we think of them pro or con, we can cross off CMB, Sharpton and Dennis K. As for the others, Edwards isn’t going anywhere. Leiberman is basically a Republican and stopped connecting with the base of the Democratic party in January of 2000. Kerry has spent the last six months waiting for Dean to mess up. His vote on Iraq will keep haunting him as long as things are going badly there. Clark is not happening… something could change but he came out of the gate with much fanfare and hasn’t been heard from since… Gephardt…well I don’t know what to say about Gephardt. I like him. He’s gotta lotta potential…. of course, so do I… and it is unlikely that I will be elected POTUS.
At this point I believe Dean is the clear favorite for the nomination. Yeah, he isn’t perfect. He’s not great on TV yet (he will get better I think). Do I agree with everything he says and does? Of course not. But, compared to the other campaigns his is significantly better organized and funded and it has remarkable energy. Dean’s campaign has used the internet to build a network like no campaign has ever done before. He is building a team of people that are investing themselves in the political process. That team is numbering the tens and hundreds of thousands and still growing. All those people also equals a huge number of individual donors. People that have given multiple times already and are still way below the $2000 limit. (The other big Dems raise mainly large donations from a much smaller group of people, just like GWB…. Dean taps wealthy Dems, but much smaller fish as well.) I’ve given Dean’s campaign two $25 donations totaling $50. Not much, but it’s $50 more than I have ever donated to a political campaign in the past, and I can keep giving as he progresses. Dean is basically a social moderate to liberal and a fiscal moderate to conservative. That suits me. I’m not really making my point very well, which is that despite what you hear in the press, I think Dean is the only Democrat that has a chance. And I think his chances get better every day.
October 06, 2003
Burrito Realization
Me: You know, eating a burrito is a bit different than eating other things that are more spread out over the plate.
H: (looks up)
Me: I mean, you get to see it all packaged up as this sort of large mass… then you eat it and you have an exact idea of the size of what you just ate…
H: (thinking: my husband is a freak)
Me: (surprisingly excited by my rather mundane thoughts about burrito eating) It's like I just had an epiphany about burritos, but without the spiritual tone that “epiphany” suggests… what would you call that kind of realization?
H: a realization.
Me: yeah, I guess so.