the two youngest candidates are obama [1961] and huckabee [1955]
at 70 something with a seven year stint as a p.o.w we might almost
say that mccain is in remarkable health for a man of his age, and type
and degree of military service. he clearly never made a propaganda
broadcast for the north vietnamese, and he did back g.w bush's "surge"
to the degree that his campaign's fortunes rose and fell with the press
releases from the pentagon as to its ultimate efficacy. the mccain of the
year 2000 who took such a drubbing in south carolina seems to have
learned from his earlier run and is now going towards the finish line
with few guilt complexes over how he's having all these delegates being
hogtied up for him. does this make the democrats more honest now that
each time the party gets the results from the diebold machines and/or
all paper-trace~able more traditional means of voting, that the democrats
divvy up the political pie as to the numbers just so? we know that the
mere creation of super~delegates is a nod to yesteryear's cigar chompers!!!
i sense that once people had said obama's convention speech was truely
a "cross of gold" speech, someone actually meant for him to be where
he is at, now. well long after fritz mondale and ms. geraldine ferraro
got smuckers jam smucked by ronnie reagan and george h.w bush, we
see ms. hillary RODHAM clinton as being his fiercest stiffest competator
now that johnny edwards has boWWWed out to a discrete kingmaker
position, this populist of the hour who like barack obama now covets
the "great commoner" label given to the legendary praerie populist
from nebraska, the late william jennings bryan. this fellow who may have
had an election snatched from him by an influx of quite legal political
monies in 1896, yet lets only softly opinion the upper figure... 16 million
for the campaign kitty, rather than the lower one of three million. so there
we have it. huckabee is now the great commoner's political heir in
that his views on politics and religion dovetail with the old fellow who
went to tennesee, yet he lacks as strident an antiwar stance. the tariff
ideas of bill mckinley and william jennings bryan are ideas that ron paul
has brought back into our political dialogue, and like kucinich, ron paul wants
our troops to be home. edwards has a hint of the great commoner in his
ability to rail at the corporate interests, and obama right now is like a
morph of frederick douglas, booker t. washington and the same said
william jennings bryan in his ability to galvanize a support base. ms. hillary
on the stump~speakings seems like as if we debate an eleanor roosevelt
good point about her ability to speechify. she's a tad less magnetic. obama
has the ability to reach out to people on a superficial level to the degree
that they get swept up into the passions of the moment. in the history
books to win the election of 1896, bill mckinley sat on a porch, let the railroads
transport republicans to canton ohio via discount tickets, and held back
from debating the great commoner on the same stage or stump! literally
the great commoner railed against eastern monies and talked from stumps!
its anti-climactic to meantion harold stasson, the golden boy from minnesota
who was yesteryear's perennial candidate. i keep on thinking even if either
ms. hillary rodham clinton or mr. john mccain becomes our next president,
barack obama has a VERY strong chance of being our POTUS before the year 2020!
