Back of the Envelope

So the primary season has gone on forever. It seems like we've been talking about who the presidential nominees would be since 2006. I'm afraid that my interest in the whole process started to wane around mid-2007, and I've only been paying minimal attention since then. It looks like we'll get either Obama or Clinton on the Democratic side, and McCain appears to have the Republican nomination all but cinched up. The problem is that I don't really like any of the candidates. Hillary is, well, Hillary, and frankly, I could do without another four years of a Clinton or a Bush in the White House. Obama talks a lot about unity, but as he has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, I don't think he means compromise by that. Usually when someone highly partisan talks about unity, they mean that everyone else should stop arguing with them and do what they say. And finally, there's McCain. Ugh. He's not quite Republican in Name Only, but he's close. The famed maverick gave us McCain-Feingold, the travesty of a civil liberties violation which bears his name. He also sounds more like a Democrat than some Democrats when it comes to global warming, terrorist interrogations, and stem cell research. There is one big issue where I agree with him, and that's the war. Hillary and Obama both intend to withdraw from Iraq in short order, without much concern for whether the nation collapses in our wake. Regardless of your view on whether we should have gone there in the first place, that's irresponsible, and McCain at least realizes that. And despite his spottiness on how we should deal with the terrorists we have captured, he at least agrees that we should continue to capture them. So, while I don't like my choices, I have to say that there's really only one choice.

However, I suspect that the Republicans are looking at defeat this year. It may be that a Democratic convention meltdown would cause a lot of Democrats to sit this one out, but barring that, I don't really foresee a Republican victory.