Where's Your Bumper Sticker?

Well, the Democratic primary is finally over, and in commemoration I replaced the John Edwards sticker on my car (although I will continue to drink my tea out of my John Edwards mug and wear my John Edwards T-shirt).


More significantly, I finally maxed out my primary election contribution to Obama, although I haven't yet decided whether or not to give him money for the general election campaign; at this point, he's competing with MoveOn and the national congressional and senatorial campaigns for my wallet.

Loyal readers will know that I am not the most fervent Obama supporter. Oh, I think he would make a wonderful president, but I think Hillary Clinton would have been just fine, and my preference was for John Edwards anyway. I just think he's a weak candidate in an election we have to win (Stevens - 88; Ginsburg - 75; Souter - 68). He has the oratorical skill and the tremendous charisma, but he has trouble connecting with "ordinary" Americans (read: speak zero foreign languages, don't eat arugula, watch NASCAR, ... what does it mean that people like me aren't considered ordinary Americans?). He has the issue-that-shall-not-be-named. Most tellingly, he was unable to close out Hillary Clinton, who actually won the last three months of the campaign, which is simply not supposed to happen. Once there is a front-runner, everyone is supposed to jump on the bandwagon; they even jumped on John Kerry's bandwagon simply because he won Iowa, and there was a losing cause if I ever saw one. Instead, on Tuesday after Tuesday, the Obama campaign managed to snatch prolonged agony from the jaws of victory.

Now of course there is the drama of whether or not to make Hillary Clinton the vice-presidential nominee. On which I come down on the side of ... I don't know. Most people I know are emphatically against the idea, saying he needs a nice white man, preferably a governor, preferably with military experience, preferably from the South or the Midwest or the West, preferably with foreign policy credentials ... But there is a case to be made that this year, given the massive Democratic advantage handed to us by President Bush, Iraq, and the recession, all we need to do is to shore up our base and get out the vote, and choosing Clinton would come close to guaranteeing that every natural Democratic voter will vote Democratic.

In the end, it probably doesn't matter. While the Republicans cleverly managed to avoid nominating a nasty, paranoid megalomaniac who separated from his wife by press conference, a pathological flip-flopper who ran as a liberal in Massachusetts and an arch-conservative everywhere else, a lazy second-rate actor, and a man who claims to believe the earth is six thousand years old, they were left with a man with no charisma and no ability to raise money and not even the ability to deliver a joke line, and they are now forcing him to kowtow to the lunatic fringe of their own party, having decisively squandered a three-month advantage in the nominating process. So my prediction is a race that is unprecedented in its mindless inanity, ending with a 52-48 Obama victory.

But just in case, MoveOn is giving away free bumper stickers. So get yours now.