With St John annointed as the Republican nominee and Clinton and Obama preparing for the endgame of their nomination struggle, I offer some thoughts. After the California primary, I made a crack about Obamaton's to SurfSweetie. In her usual wise fashion, she corrected me saying that in a short time we are going to all have to gather together to defeat the Republican nominee, and that we should keep that thought foremost in our minds during the primaries. I cannot say that I agreed with her at the time, the Obama crowd just seemed so over the top that it screamed for derision (Caveat here, I am an Edwards supporter and neither Obama and Clinton are progressive enough for me but I will support both with money and work and I will vote for either).
Once again she was right. Over the last few weeks, I have noticed an increasing amount of vitriol directed at each other by both camps. In my opinion, more from the Obama side, but kicked up on both sides nonetheless. We have six weeks before the next primary. The party needs to put pressure on both camps to chill. They need to spend their time attacking McCain/Bush. The candidates need to tell their supporters to chill. The need is too great to squander by destroying our eventual candidate. Now I am not saying that either should get out of the race. In fact, I believe that having the Primary go into June is a good thing for the party. The press focus on the horse-race and all of the oxygen that it will suck out of McCains impoverished campaign, is a good thing. Some argue that having the candidates duke it out until June will hurt their chances, I couldn't disagree more. The primary is the anvil upon which the spine of the general campaign is forged. and what a spine they will need. Digby notes that:
It remains my opinion that the Democrats will win this election handily. National security is no longer the most salient political issue (the Cry Wolf syndrome may have finally kicked in) and the economy is going into crisis mode. Bush and the social conservatives went too far and have been (temporarily) discredited. I do not feel that we are in any great danger of losing. (My biggest concerns are what is going to happen once we win it, not whether we will win it.)
That's not to say that the Republicans aren't going to wage a fight. They are likely to wage a truly nasty one, since they know they aren't likely to win and so have nothing to lose. John McCain will never run for president again --- he might as well go out in a blaze of glory doing as much damage to the new Democratic president as he can. (It's how they win by losing --- create so much noise and dissonance that the Democrat can't govern.)
The nominee will need to be a street fighter. They will need to kick serious tail ass on Republicans, and within their caucus. We don't need some polite guy to allow the Republicans to 1) steal the election like in 2000 or 2004 or 2) to allow the remaining Republicans in Congress to prevent the changes that our nation needs to grow and prosper.
