I gotta say it comes as no small personal relief that I am an expat and hence for me US electoral politics is nothing other than a spectator sport. In the clock cuckoo land of US political culture, where neo-liberal centrists like Clinton and Obama are painted as stealth socialists by right-wing nutjobs (whose command over the public airwaves is out of proportion to their actual constituency, to be sure), how does one existentially cope? I can't imagine the desultory chore of being a left-liberal/progressive whose support for Clinton or Obama comes from the "lesser evilist" perspective. You're forced to spend 90% of your time and energy defending the indefensible profiles of your standard bearers from the outrageous innuendo of the talk radio cranks. Loony conspiracist/nativist/protectionist anti- globalism commands 100 times the audience of your left-liberal "fair traders" (as any casual tour of the weird realms of the internet will show). It's enough to drive one to chronic stamp-collecting.
It will be interesting to see how Obama responds to the right-wing baiting, though. If he is the closet progressive fantasized by so many, just waiting to seize the moment once he has galvanized a sufficient following, then hypothetically he would react by saying, "yes, I AM for x, y, z... so fucking what? these positions have popular support... these positions speak to the interests of ordinary Americans, not some cooked-up liberal elite... etc." But I wouldn't count on it! _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/