We're Angry, Uneducated and Unhealthy-- Now What?

Jeff Jarvis said something that got my fur up: Only Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan had an irrefutable point. 'We've got a totally irrational system of nominating our president,' he said.

It's refutable. Obama looked at how the nominating process was laid out and then built an organization and strategy to win on the terms of the system, rather than close his eyes and try to hit the target and then blame the game for his loss as Clinton and her supporters are doing.

Which kind of president would you rather have -- one who accepts the world as it is and then maps out a way to win, or one that grouses at how irrational it is?

Yeah it's irrational that all the oil is in the Middle East. Now what?

Yeah it's irrational that Bush started a crazy war and that the country's education and health care systems are inadequate to compete in a global economy. Now what?

Our infrastructure is crumbling, our products aren't competitive, we're uneducated, unhealthy, angry and to make matters worse our houses aren't worth shit. Now what?

I want a president who welcomes the chaos and then figures out how we can be smart about the hand we've been dealt. Not one that whines and complains about how irrational the world is.

I can't wait until the Clinton Democrats accept that their time has passed and the world their way worked in has passed too, and let's get on with it.

Comments

[tbone99]

"Which kind of president would you rather have -- one who accepts the world as it is and then maps out a way to win, or one that grouses at how irrational it is?"

Please explain Rev Wright then

.Any candidate with that as savvy as you claim could have seen that train wreck a mile away.

[tbone99]

BTW, I refer to the media scandal as the train wreck, not Rev Wright .

[Rescisco]

Actually, the nominating system (not perfect and it never is) works just fine. What complicated it somewhat in '08 is that no single front runner emerged and was able to deliver the knockout blow early. It became a two candidate race to the finish. That has happened before. The Obama-Clinton battle (an attractive unknown and an equally attractive all too well known) went on and on and on primarily because the voters wanted it to. Both candidates had strong loyalties among their followers (a positive) and neither had the capacity to take control of the process and put the other away (a negative?). That may reflect strength or weakness, and I am not sure which is the case here. But this is what the voters wrought as the two person contest went accross the country. I would have preferred a different outcome (Biden or Dodd), but hey, I respect the will of the people. It is what it is. We ended up with two pretty decent options and, now, an excellent nominee.

[AxelDC]

Obama won despite the primary system. If the primaries had been more rational, he would have won handily. Look at California: He now leads there by 13 points, but he lost by 10. Half the votes were cast before February 1st. He even won the votes cast on Feb 5th by 5, but lost by ten because the voting began with the New Year.

If the Feb. 5th primaries had been more spread out, he could have used his advantages to win CA, MA, and NJ, where he leads today. He could have reduced her margin in NY to less than 10 points. He would have about 200 more delegates than now and the race would be long over.

Hopefully, he will be running unopposed in 2012, so fix it now so that 2016 will not be such a nightmare, and get rid of the oligarchs. They are an embarrassment to the party.

[Sabella1]

Obama is focused on the future of Americans..

Hillary is focused on Hillary..

Let's get on with it, indeed!

[Bramptonian]

Well said!!

[Hollyse]

What is behind the scenes, those major deals, the corruptions and private holdings We the People aren't privy to nor have we ever been privy to know? All three candidates are POLITICIANS, basically corporate heads to themselves, CEO's of any structure they touch. Patent Bureau CEO's take our ideas while manipulating the system for stealing ideas and inventions a very profitable sharing or should I have said taking another man's prosperity. NONE of the three presidential candidates should be president by mere admition of what they've put the American public through throughout their campaigning. If all three cared they would have approached the system differently never permitting a rouge voting process that should have been in the works to correct before announcing their intention of running for the presidency. Passing the problem to someone else is what our political heads are about. Perhaps what's coming is a McCain-Hillary ticket. She's not been far removed from McCain's home plate considering her 'bipartisan' lifestyle getting her to be a senator in the first place. So if there's a possibility McCain was elected president and for some reasoning he couldn't serve there's Hillary as VP. The idea doesn't fall too far from her own tree considering the fruit was dropped about Obama if he were ever president. Remember the WINNERS always write history.

[DMW1]

Short and sweet. I wish the same could be said of Hillary's campaign...

[Oldtimer]

Short and to the point -well done!

[Danigirl65]

Dave - thank you for this post. Never has so much been said in so few words. GOOD JOB!!!

[mlaiuppa]

Here, here.

I want a smart, reality-based President that is all for problem solving instead of finger-pointed and blaming. I WANT an elitist for President.

[MissDaphne]

Amen. Seeing what is and figuring out how to make stuff work within a damaged system is far superior to complaining how bad things are.
Let's move on!

[oldpotsmuggler]

I like some of what I see from Obama, and some of it dismays me greatly. All in all, though, I've focused on what I hope to be the potential, and have been in favor of his campaign for a number of months.

That having been said, I'll certainly breath a sigh of relief if he openly declares "if the campaign had been about the popular vote, I would have won it that way instead of the way that I did. It does, however distress me that we did not choose a more democratic way to go about this, and I'll do my best to see that things get fixed for next time."

(As an aside I will say, though many lack the maturity to understand the point, that Sen. Obama speaks for more favorably about his opponent than any number of his supporters do.)

[goldstategirl]

she's not winning the popular vote though...so what would your point be?

funny no Clinton folks had a problem with Bill Clinton winning caucuses or what have you...these are crazy excuses which when researched, don't wash.

[oldpotsmuggler]

http://abcnews.go.com/politics

Clinton ahead by 320,000 votes.

[Ides]

Obama's still ahead in the popular vote by about 400,000 votes.

[Yohomegirl]

Straight up! Obama 08! He deals with and in reality, how refreshing!

[AgathaX]

Rules only seem irrational when you're not interested in understanding why they are as they are. Each rule is the result of compromise­--probably many compromises. If you were there when the rule was being debated, the outcome wouldn't seem strange at all. That is the stuff of governing. In standing on the sidelines and whining about the rules, Clinton is pretending like she's a newcomer to politics who hasn't the slightest idea how these crazy rules came into being. That is, she pretends to be ignorant [at least that is the best case scenario], while encouraging ignorance in her supporters. It is despicable on her part and sad on theirs. The encouraging part is that her campaign of ignorance has failed. She tried to play the demagogue, and, thankfully, wasn't very good at it. I don't know to what extent Obama will succede, but I know he will never encourage ignorance.

[xhibi]

Dave, it's not even that. Clinton never complained about the unfairness of election system until she started to loose the race. Even in the many times she mentioned her husband's victories during his primaries, she never alluded that when Bill won the race, the caucuses where undemocratic, or all that nonsense.

It's perfectly fine to have a debate about those issues, but not by a candidate in the middle of a race, when he or she realizes it's loosing on the single metric that counts; the delegates.

[Piatt]

Her supporters on the DNC helped set up the system under the assumption that she'd win it all on
February 5th. It's ironic that the same people who set up the system are now shilling about how unfair it is.