SlowpokeBlog

It occurred to me yesterday, before Hillary's victories in Ohio and Texas, that it may not be the worst thing in the world for the Democratic race to drag on. After all, once it ends, the Republican slime machine will have center stage. The more time they have, the higher their mounds of grub-infested BS can grow.

You can't blame Hillary for staying in as long as she has even a remote chance; she owes that to her supporters. On the other hand, it will be problematic if she seriously starts jockeying to have the Florida and Michigan delegates added to her column, since the other candidates weren't on the ballot. (As most of you know, those states held their primaries early, in violation of the DNC rules. The DNC made the debatable decision to disenfranchise those states.)

I know the conventional wisdom about Ralph Nader these days is that he's irrelevant, but it bothers me that he's taking a lot of perfectly reasonable, mainstream ideas and selling them as Old Rumpled Fringe Candidate^® Brand. The medium is the message, Ralph! I know the major candidates aren't talking about some issues -- possibly because they'd be destroyed if they did -- but associating those issues with a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a 1978 wood-paneled Plymouth stationwagon powered by french fry grease isn't going to help shape the public consciousness for the better.