Is it Over Already?

For those of us political junkies in the world this is a special time of the year. It's sort of like pennant fever for baseball fans as we watch the presidential campaign unfold before us (with understandable terror at the chosen policies of Democratic and Republican candidates for libertarians).

However media pundits, the same folks who told us that Dean was only a few inconvenient elections away from being the nominee, are now saying that it's already a two person race. Gregg Easterbrook's blog in the New Republic on line is typical of what I've been reading and hearing in the post-New Hampshire press.

Not so fast. A few things to remember. First, this is a Democratic party highly fractured and angry that Bush is essentially a Republican Clinton without the telegenic speeches. Some of them want to vent their spleens by voting for Howard Dean regardless of whether or not he can win. They aren't going to go away, and if Dean's scream meant anything other than the viable end to his campaign it also meant that he had no sane intention of dropping out.

Second, more then a few Democratic voters may have pause when it comes to deciding John Kerry is all that electable. So he's a war hero SO WAS GEORGE MCGOVERN! My how the Democrats have short memories. Here's an interesting site pushing Kerry's candidacy because he's"Overall the most progressive candidate we have running." The author basically uses some of the widely available scores assigned by various interest groups to place members of Congress on an ideological scale. Note that despite the popular conception that Kucinich is the left wing nut in this race, Kerry out-liberals all the candidates in most categories including the all important animal rights category

Should Democrats be worried about running John Kerry against George Bush? Yep. Should libertarians be worried about choosing between Bush and Kerry. Ugh.