Presidential Politics Noted

I thought I'd take a moment to at least comment on politics. I am very happy, and relieved, that Barack Obama has clinched the democratic party nomination for president. Relieved because I'm tired of watching democrats campaign against each other - it's time to get after John McCain. And while the campaign seemed to generate an awful lot of ugly and stupid identity politics down the stretch, it's hard not to be a bit thrilled at the fact that a Black man stands the best chance of being elected president in a few months. And if he hadn't won, a woman would have been nominated, and this year, like Obama, would have to be considered the favorite. The fact that the US has had one president in its history who was not a white protestant man is disgraceful. Hell, we're 20 years behind Pakistan!

Anyway: on the subject of presidential primaries, 40 years ago today, Robert Kennedy was shot. American history has not trended upwards from that point. Political history at least - Nixon to Reagan to Bush have taken the good parts of government out at the knees through the years, while pushing us toward authoritarianism and militarism. It would be nice to see that trend turned. Clinton tried, but did in in the teeth of nasty resistance, and with an annoying tendency to run to the middle... Now - the republicans have run the country into the ground, in ways pretty much anyone can see. And the trends of cultural history have fairly definitively gone against them, as they have been going for the last century of so... There is a chance here, the first in a while, probably, to do more than hold off the most appalling tendencies of the right - there is a chance to actually move the country forward. Do things every other rich country does - health care, decent train systems. Free college tuition! (Though it might be too much for many American's to grasp that getting people educated without burying them in debt might have benefits even to their employers....)