If they were so enamored of electing of breaking the racial barrier, they could have opted instead to break the gender barrier and voted for Hillary.

I am firm believer in the Democratic process, but it does have its drawbacks. Because the majority of this country are idiots, the rest of us have to share in the penalty. They voted for "rhetoric" and the chance to elect the first black man to the office of the president, never mind that this one had zero in the way of personal accomplishment to indicate he might make a good president.

"Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state...

I was saying this BEFORE the election!! "What did he accomplish as a Senator? Why is a JUNIOR senator getting all this attention? Does anyone actually KNOW anything more about him?" All fell on deaf ears. How y'all feeling about the hopey-changey thing NOW?

Anyone who was paying attention would have noticed how his Senate opponent's sealed divorce records were leaked. Hillary had a similar sort of credibility problem with those Rose Law Firm billing records, if I recall correctly. There is zero chance I'd vote for either of them, ever.

You might be OK with demonstrably unethical people in power. I demand better.

And those on the opposite side raising the issues of Obama's lack of everything necessary to actually run a country were not just ignored; they were attacked as racist.
"Run, Hillary, Run?" A woman whose place in history is due to her marriage? The cattle futures baroness of Little Rock? Those people are still high on something.

She's very smart, and very tough, and is probably smarter than Bill.

And yet, she is a woman devoid of meaningful achievements. As First Lady of Arkansas she was tasked with reforming education in the state and failed. We all know what happened to Hillarycare. Can you name a single piece of important legislation she sponsored in her eight years in the Senate? And now, American foreign policy is in a shambles.

Hillary is a woman of no accomplishments, only a succession of job titles.

@Westen

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out.

...

What an asshat. That's right, the president on the day of his inauguration should attack half of the country and pose as a third world dictator.

The rest of his article is just an attempt to promote, yet another, reframing of the narrative of Obama's failure. In Westen's version everything is the fault of the soulless conservatives and the scared sheeple. Progs are just too noble, moderate, and kind hearted for their own good. And Obama was destined to be the new Black FDR, because that's the way that the universe works.

Whatever.

> Bill Clinton has tremendous charisma, and
> that probably has a great deal to do with
> why he was elected.

It's indisputably true that she wouldn't be where she is if she hadn't ridden his coattails.

But it seems obvious that without her mirthless grit to come home to every night, a famously distractible man like Clinton wasn't likely to have gotten that far, either.

> I would have gone for her over Obama or McCain.

How DARE you!

Take it back! Take it back!

Virginia Postrel's take was better.

I didn't say I LIKE Hillary or want her to be president. But, she'd be preferable to Obama or McCain. "None of the above" is my actual choice

Well, at this point I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Obama. But there's nothing in her history to convince me she'd be a better president than McCain. Mind you, I doubt McCain would have been a very good president, just better than the alternatives (both).

Neither of the major party candidates in the 2008 election had ever run anything in their lives. And Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr, was no better in the executive experience department.

McCain closest brush with actual executive experience was being a squadron commander in the US Navy. While that means that he had Navy leadership training, a squadron commander carries out orders and implements policies, rather than issuing orders and initiating policy. His sole private sector experience was in public relations for his father-in-law's beverage distributorship.

Obama was a community organizer, a lawyer who never went for a partnership, a college lecturer who never went for tenure, a state senator who voted "present" a record 130 times, and a US senator who never sponsored any significant legislation or deviated from the party line.

The vice presidential candidates weren't much better.

Joe Biden has been a senator or a senator's aide all his life. He's never been anything else. While that does put him in the middle of the legislative process, it doesn't give him any experience actually running an organization.

Sarah Palin had the only executive experience of any of the candidates. She was mayor of Wasilla for two terms, the chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and governor of Alaska for, at that point, half a term. While, by all accounts a capable and well-liked governor, half a term is probably not enough preparation for the rigors of the presidency.

Until voters (and parties) start treating presidential elections like job interviews and not popularity contests, we're going to see more Obamas.

One of the amazing things about this has been how, when you point out the wonders of Hope! and CHANGE!!(Gitmo still open, still in the war, economy, etc.) liberals/socialists either slip and confess to some 'disappointment', or blame Bush and the evil Stupid Party or conservative types; kind of like the end of a Scooby Doo espisode("I'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling bleeps!")

I wish the average person realized that his life is at stake when he votes for politicians.

The US was not prosperous because of fairy dust or historical inevitability. It was prosperous because of good policies. We are becoming rapidly less prosperous as those good policies are replaced by wishful thinking.

Say that your health is at stake and you are choosing a surgeon. Do you want the woman, or black man, or someone who lookes like you, or the person with the easiest manner, charm, best voice, or funniest jokes?

No, you want the surgeon with the most knowledge and best record of accomplishment. In fact, the best surgeons often are brusque and a bit detached, from spending so much time learning and going from task to task. They don't spend much time drinking at the local bar sharpening their social skills.

They don't have the luxury of taking a look and then putting off the real work for another day.

"I didn't say I LIKE Hillary or want her to be president. But, she'd be preferable to Obama or McCain. 'None of the above' is my actual choice"

Exactly my position since the 2008 primaries. Back in 2008, most of my friends wanted to remove my head for it. Now most of them agree with me.

We didn't have any good choices in 2008. The question was which candidate would suck the least overall.

Nothing against Gail in particular... UNLESS IT APPLIES PERFECTLY WELL... But I detect, in my late-afternoon-California / middle-evening-seaboard internet wanderings, a newfound eagerness to cite "politics" as a real problem.

Which is probably easier than confessing that you voted like a fool (such that generations might suffer).

Sorry for the markup error.

Long-assed Monday, y'know? How much of YOUR retirement wealth vanished today?

I am firm believer in the Democratic process

Unfortunate capitalization there Patrick...

Would Hillary really be any improvement over Obama? The nanny-state socialist who wrote "It Takes A Village"? (Well, I say "wrote", I really mean "vomited out onto a couple of reams of paper").

The best thing about Obama is that an awful lot of the things he said he would do haven't happened. Lack of executive experience is the greatest thing about him.

Crid, I like how you slammed how I voted...without actually knowing how (or for that matter, if) I voted. All I did was agree with Amy that all of our choices sucked, and that Hillary would have been preferable to Obama (which isn't saying much).

I did not vote for Obama. I have been saying exactly the same thing about him since he entered the Democratic primary race -- on this website and elsewhere. I thought he was the worst possible choice, and tossed him out very, very early on.

For whom did you vote? Would he have saved the day here?

> All I did was agree with Amy that all of
> our choices sucked, and that Hillary would
> have been preferable to Obama

Says you.

I think Obama's incompetence is essentially robotic: He's a product of the Chicago Machine wrapped in a humanoid casing, with trimmings coherent to a style, as Amy's noted, that's tremendously popular with the kids these days. As we saw last week, the man is essentially incapable of leadership by principle or decency or even need. The market recovered today, but yesterday alone diminished him deeply in the trusting hearts of many, who realized that despite their vanquished 401Ks, their impoverished government could only burden their senior years, and not ennoble them.

See my comments about Hillary, above. She doesn't bother with the fleshlike accoutrements: She's just roaring anima, a spirit impatient with all other spirits. She meant to do that, whatever it was. If she needs to sing Fleetwood Mac at the convention to make the idiots happy, she'll do it. Pantsuits, philandering husband, grieving for her father while her troubled health care plans for ALL OTHER AMERICANS are shredded... Whatever. (In October 2008, Obama visited his dying grandmother for one last evening at the hospital, then left her to get on with it.) A seat on the board of Wal-Mart could never tamp her mockery of consumerism... Not when she thinks there's a vote to be had. To imagine of a viper of her cunning in the Big Chair is Unlike the coddled Obama, she knows other people are real, she just doesn't care.

I voted for Obama in February 2008. I'm ashamed, but I had no choice, even if the gesture was futile. I sleep deeply. In the morning, I stand by my choice.

I can't even find the Paglia quote I'm looking for —the one about how she squandered her shot at health care reform almost twenty years ago— so this will have to do:

Hillary's career has been intricately intertwined with a heady plutocracy of lawyers, bureaucrats and special interest groups who encouraged her delusion that she and her coterie could quickly and unilaterally reform the nation's health care system. High I.Q. and despotic instincts are a dangerous combination in a democracy.

And for the record: Hillary's not from New York, or from Arkansas. She's from Chicago, too. The rich part.

Bad edit. Sorry. I feel bad.

You saw where I was going, right?

Anyone still in here? Other's agree with you, per this Drudge item.

And you're all tragically, tragically wrong. And I think that's kind of a sad commentary.