Your Candidate Sucks.

Really? Did Hillary Clinton actually try to attack Barack Obama for cozying up to the nuclear industry in the Exelon case, when her chief strategist Mark Penn just took $230,000 from said company? Did that actually happen?

And is the Obama campaign, as well as supporters like MoveOn, really talking about the need for superdelegates to respect the "will of the people" when clearly they're talking about respecting the will of getting Obama into office?

And are both sides giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to these same superdelegates, and somehow do people find it exceptional that politicians help other politicians with campaign cash?

(By the way, most superdelegates win state-based DNC races and don't get a smidge, even a little bit, of campaign cash. They're party activists who represent state-based activists, and they're the ones who elected Howard Dean to the chairmanship against the will of the establishment. Anyone who thinks superdelegates are going to in any way decide the nominee at the convention is out of their fucking mind. There is no way they will rip four years' worth of party building asunder and actively participate in their own destruction. The winner of this nomination will be the winner of the votes in the primaries, period. Anything else is idle speculation, and the media gooses it to actively set the Party against itself. Thanks a lot for buying into it, online community!)

My initial decision to back John Edwards (and to an extent, Chris Dodd) looks better with each passing day. They're flawed, though, too. EVERYONE in politics is flawed. The only candidate that's going to fit your perfect model is, well, you. Otherwise, you're going to have to settle for an imperfect human being. And if you don't like it, do something about it. The man in the arena and all that.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

As I've been saying for weeks now, the candidate itself ultimately doesn't matter as much as the progressive movement's ability to be engaged in the process. The engagement and participation on FISA has yielded better results thus far than anyone thought possible. Yes, FISA itself is a step back from the Constitutional provisions of the Fourth Amendment. But the Constitution doesn't really apply to noncitizens - that'd be the "foreign" part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And so the FISA provisions, put in place under President Carter, responsibly strike the balance between intelligence gathering and civil liberties protections. And they were utterly trashed by a rogue President and a pliant Congress, and regular people fought back, and did more to stop what is actually an establishment wave toward giving up liberties and sanctioning lawbreaking than I ever thought possible.

All of this nonsense about character flaws and which candidate has the most earmarks (right, because the defense budget isn't one giant frackin' earmark that John McCain mainlines personally to his defense buddies in Arizona) and who's playing what identity card is really exhausting. This is about policy, but when the policies are similar, it's about who is going to invite a people-powered coalition to help in the prospect of changing the country from the bottom up. The individual flawed politician who excites and inspires that coalition is kind of immaterial. And those who are so desperate to score a point or two so they can cheer and high-five to the other 100 or so online friends in their corner are engaging in behavior I rolled my eyes at in junior high school. It bears no resemblance to the real world, where these particular flawed politicians are actually broadly popular. But it sure gives the Republican oppo research shops a lot to work with. Thanks, blogosphere!

UPDATE: And thanks, campaign surrogates! Joe Wilson's recycling a smear from right-wing blogs, almost verbatim, to attack Obama. Good work!

(apologies to Thers for ripping off the title)