Finally, finally, finally, dear God, finally. The caucuses (cauci?) are tonight, and the whole Demapublican circus will leave Iowa, and nobody will give a rat's ass about the state again.
As you may have guessed, I won't be participating.
Oh, of course, by staying home, I'm shirking my duties as a citizen, not taking part in the process of democracy, blah, blah. Fine. I say, anyone who does participate is undermining democracy. None of these losers are addressing the concerns of real people, and by offering them support, however half-hearted, we're only encouraging them.
And the front-runners for the Democratic ticket are the sorriest lot you'll ever see. Clinton, Obama, Edwards--the more they try to clarify the differences between them, the more alike they seem. Vague promises to change policy towards Iraq, tentative efforts to kinda sorta provide decent health care for all, whispered suggestions that somehow things will get better again--but no actual, workable policy, and certainly no breathtaking, inspiring visions of the future.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Lyndon Johnson, but dammit, the Voting Rights Act, the Great Society--he promised great things, and by God made them happen. The current crop of nominees are so scared of the Republican attack machine that they cling to safe centrist positions, and the only one of the bunch with the balls to do what's right, Dennis Kucinich, is openly mocked by the rest.
(True story: I got a call two weeks ago from some anonymous Edwards volunteer asking me if I'd made up my mind who to support. I said if forced to choose, I'd go with Kucinich, and she actually laughed at me and assured me he didn't have a chance. Kind of a strange tactic; it didn't change my opinion about Kucinich, but boy did it lower my opinion of Edwards. I don't care that he has Tim Robbins--seriously, Tim, why?--and Bonnie Raitt on his side, nothing will make me forget the sheer ugliness of that moment.)
The fact that the Democrats all seem to have sprung from the same policy-wonk pod is even more disheartening when you consider the diversity of voices found under the Republican tent. As much as I despise Huckabee's Keep-out-the-wetbacks vilify-the-faggots smite-the-infidels rhetoric, he's certainly nothing like Giuliani, who is wholly separate from McCain, who has nothing in common with a nutjob Libertarian like Ron Paul. Yet they're all (well, maybe not Paul) allowed their time in the sun by the party machine, possibly because the Republicans, in a rare moment of vulnerability, genuinely have no idea what to do.
So if there's a populist groundswell for one of these guys, the party might step in and anoint him, make him over into whatever they want him to be, make Huckabee slightly less openly racist or Giuliani somewhat less smug. But the Democratic machine wouldn't need to step in to polish the rough edges of Clinton, Obama or Edwards because they're already defanged, and frankly not worthy of the votes of any sentient beings.
Literally, as I wrote this, someone buzzed my doorbell. I went down to the lobby to find a phalanx of Edwards reps accompanied by a camera crew. They gave me the standard rap, and when I explained my disenchantment with the process, they predictably turned against me, bragging about how much more they care about democracy than I do, since they were willing to brave the cold just to go out there and knock on doors and...whatever.
All I could see were people patting themselves on the back for supporting mediocrity.
