Election Day Blues

I know, we haven't even lost yet and I'm already in a bad mood. The polls and the media's insistence on making them sound definitive--the Dems should give up already is the clear message. The worst part of this is that too many have already given up. Why can't our beloved President talk plainly to people about the economy? Is it too much for him to agree with Clinton, Carville and Begala about the supreme importance of the economy--that which affects everyone?

Also: I concede that Harry Reid is both occupied out in Nevada and not exactly God's gift to public speaking but where is Nancy Pelosi? Why isn't she travelling about instead of seemingly accepting the negative image the GOP has worked very hard to pin on her? And all the other Dems--especially those who are lucky enough not to be running this year. What a sorry bunch.

Bill Clinton, God save him, is the only stalwart out there day after day doing his damnedest to save the Democratic Party. We need some people who are proud to be Democrats, proud to be looking out for working people, happy to take on Wall St., the corporations, Roberts, Scalia and Alito. We don't need Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and their ilk who helped get us into this mess.

People have a right to be angry when the Dems act just like Republicans--even worse, when they take the lead in bailing out Wall St. I remember one disgusting New York lawyer with whom I had to sit at dinner who was proclaiming in '04 how much experience in foreign policy the GOP had in comparison. So where did all that experience get us?

We have had a succession of disasters that have befallen would-be real leaders of the Dems. Clinton was all right because he knew how to win and survive. But at heart he is at best a centrist or center-rightist. He would not take on Wall St. as it helped push us into the morass. When Robert Kennedy perhaps jumped aboard the antiwar wagon late, he gave us the glimpse of what could have been. John Edwards had a bit of that--too bad he was worse than Clinton in not being able to keep his zipper zipped.

Obama had promise but it appears both he and his advisers lack real belief in our cause. Having been skeptical of Hillary Clinton for years--since I saw her in action at an American Bar Association convention years ago--I realized during her ill-fated campaign that she really had the guts to fight hard and stick it out. She too made cause with the warmakers in Iraq but I think she might have turned out to be an RFK in recognizing how we need to cut our losses in Afghanistan, where we cannot produce anything approximating victory.