said the Spider to the Fly….*

So the Republican’s Savior plans on launching “…an unconventional campaign using blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations….” The liberal blogosphere should be salivating at the prospect. The cabal currently running the Republican Party is adept at deceit and misdirection, behaviors that can be productive with visual and verbal hucksterism, but which work far less well in written form. Progressive liberalism rules the Internet. People like you, lambert, will have him for lunch.

Now if we can just get the Dems to nominate an electable ticket….

* poem by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), published in 1829

Possibly, bringiton. Not this blog alone, but there are several thousand of us, and collectively I really do think that we have an impact.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I can’t remember exactly the point that I had...

Which is pretty much my summary of impression he gives when working without a script. From a damn good writer. And a big desk of dark wood in a book-lined office with much leather furniture, all symbols so manly they should shine with oozed-out seminal fluids.

Out there on stage naked? Eh, not so impressive. Sorta grandpa-on-a-grumpy-day. We all love our grandpas but know to stay out of his sight on Grumpy Days. And we would probably not vote for Grandpa for president.

And [shakes tiny fist at bringiton]--you wretch, you beat me to the "come into my parlor" line. While Thompson is going to be a joy to slice 'n' dice in just the manner you prescribe, the real treat is going to be if Newtie G jumps into the pool. I'd call dibs on extracting character-revealing snippets from "his" [cough*don'trememberhisghostwriter'sname*cough] alt-hist Civil War books except that that would require me to actually read them.

At least Harry Turtledove can actually write, and knows the subject well enough to do not just alt-hist CivWar but an actual series of parodies wherein the war is redone as a swords 'n' unicorns fantasy.

Now if Harry Turtledove threatens to get into the Republican primary field I'd say we've got a real problem on our hands. If somebody'd like to put the rumor into play just for fun I want credit (tm)

are the Republican contenders, media bias or no, and what with the incompetence and mendacity of BushCo now widely recognized the White House should be ripe for the picking and the margins in Congress should increase.

The pessimist in me, however, is more than a little worried about the Democratic Party’s tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This is a country still in the grip of deep-seated bigotry, of many sorts. Misogyny and racism are rampant, and not just among middle-aged white men.

Sad to say, but neither Obama nor Clinton are electable – wish it were not so, but it is. If this election cycle were less critical I’d say let ‘em run just to move the line of reason a bit further down the road towards rationality. But unfortunately we’ve got some huge problems to sort out, some massive injustices to reverse, and at least one and maybe more SCOTUS appointments to deal with. Another 4 (or years of Republican Presidency and we will be well and truly screwed regardless of which party is majority in Congress. To turn this country around and get it moving in the right direction we will need to have control of both Houses of Congress AND the White House, for 8 years at least.

So my point is, we need to focus on one thing and one thing only and that is winning politically in ‘08, House, Senate & Presidency, and do whatever that takes including (1) keeping control of our temper and not publically raging at them when our current Congressional leadership fails to do the impossible, and (2) refrain from nominating an unelectable symbol for President.

History both recent and long past strongly suggests that these are significant challenges for the progressive/liberal electorate, more for, ahem, some of us than for others. When election night ’08 is over I pray we will not have found that once again our worst enemy is us.

Xan, I accept your tiny fist shake as a salute and thank you for it, long time since I’ve beaten anyone to anything.

Piffle.

We elected a retard - doesn't that lower the bar of electablility a bit?

(apologies to Chris Rock)

"The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention." - Molly Ivins

The real questions are whether the wingers will shoot him on the campaign trail--after all, shooting Rabin worked out very well for the right in Israel--and whether, if elected, he'll be allowed to take office.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I vote we all start referring to him as Treason Thompson