Does the next president need to be computer savvy in order to better understand the lives of Americans? The NY Times asked that question and received many opinions.

Speaking on the economy, presidental hopeful Barack Obama said: “We did not arrive at the doorstep of our current economic crisis by some accident of history. This was not an inevitable part of the business cycle that was beyond our power to avoid. It was the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long," seven and a half years (Broder, The New York Times, 2008).

Frank Rich of The New York Times, writing about Hillary Clinton's campaign, and their lack of a Plan-B post Super Tuesday, and comparing the campaign to the Bush Administration's Iraq War post-invasion planning (or lack of it), wrote

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s [slumping campaign] this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

Senator Clinton says, Rich wrote, she's experienced, a hard worker, and that she'll be ready to lead on the first day of her presidency. Well if that's the case, Rich asked, why then does Clinton have a campaign organization that has--in the last 11 primaries and caucuses--been out-hustled by the staff of the "lightweight showboat"?

In the Democratic Primary, the last two candidates, Obama and Clinton, represent the left of the political spectrum. Supposedly. In an article by Christopher Hayes in The Nation, he writes that the last two candidates standing are not discussing issues important to progressives. According to Hayes, what the two candidates are not discussing include

calling for the nation to renounce its decades-old imperial posture or to end the prison-industrial complex; neither is saying that America's suburbs and car culture are not sustainable modes of living in an era of expensive oil and global warming or pointing out that the "war on drugs" has been a moral disaster and strategic failure, with casualties borne most violently and destructively by society's most marginalized and--a word you won't be hearing from either candidate--oppressed.

Hayes makes valid and important points. Hayes, in short, is letting us know that Obama and Clinton are really not liberal enough. Similar to what McCain and Romney are battling out to see who is or isn't conservative.

2008



There is no doubt that election season is one of my favorite sporting season. 2008 is going to be (I hope) an exciting, extraordinary election season. It's been a very long time since a non-incumbent (pres or v.p.) has run for office (I think it might have been 1968 when L.B.J. decided not to run).

After the Iowa caucus, Change might be the big, keyword for election 2008. The two winners, Obama and Huckabee, are not your traditional, establishment, party candidates. I hope this election is a competitive one, and most importantly it is fair and transparent.