Vote Your Conscience

With Hillary Clinton's announcement today, the 2008 field on the Democratic side is shaping up. You have a few frontrunners (Obama, Clinton, Edwards), some dark horses (Richardson, Dodd, Vilsack), and a few people in it for their own ego or an attempt to pull the converstion in a certain direction (Biden, Kucinich, Gravel). Clark may enter at some point, maybe a couple others.

I don't have a preference right now. But I think it's very important for everyone to understand that in 2008, electability is out the window. It simply should not come into play. The GOP brand is tanking, under the weight of a deeply unpopular President. The top choice for the GOP nomination is quickly becoming hated nationwide. McCain's support for the escalation in Iraq has led to his numbers going into free fall in all of the early primary states. A rcent LA Times poll showed that well over a third of all voters, including a substantial number of independents, were unlikely to support McCain once they discovered his cheerleading for escalation. He may well be dead in the water. Rudy Guiliani, were he to do the impossible and make it through the nominating process as a pro-gay, pro-choice conservative, would almost certainly inspire a third-party challenge. Romney doesn't know what he believes, the contradictions are so deep. Mike Huckabee is the leading choice, in my mind, to take the nomination right now, though others think it's Gingrich. Does anyone really believe the top Democrats wouldn't be favored going into that general election?

With the tragedy of Iraq looming large in the public consciousness, with more Republicans jumping ship on Iraq and putting the party line on the war into question, with even the new head of the RNC, Mel Martinez, stirring controversy for his lack of fealty to conservative issues, with the drip-drip-drip of Republican corruption (Bob Ney ended up getting more prison time than the defense OR the prosecution requested) sure to continue, and with the more damaging drip-drip-drip of Bush officials leaving the White House to tell of the dysfunction from the inside, the Republican brand is seriously damaged in the short term, and I honestly believe it's too soon to expect some kind of renewal to rise from the ashes. Sure, you can expect horrific smears of the leading Democratic candidates. (Obama attended a MADRASSAH? Please.) But this is not the stuff of rocket science; the Democrats are favored to take the White House.

Therefore, primary voters must understand this, and they must internalize the fact that ANYONE in the top or second tier that the Democrats pick will be in the driver's seat. It's time to vote our conscience, to forget whether someone WILL win and concern ourselves with what that person would do WHEN they win. That's a crucial difference. Electability didn't mean a damn thing in 2004. It deprived us of who would have been the better nominee. There is no need for that this time around. The best nominee ought to be the one who will do the finest job for the American people. You can take a flyer on the doctrinaire liberal, or believe in the fact that a black man or a white woman or a Hispanic can win the Preisdency. It's wonderfully freeing not to have to make your selection based on your warped and inadequate vision of what some swing voter in Ohio would think. Just vote your conscience. You'll feel better about it in the morning.