No John the stakes are quite high in this election; you seem to have that Olympian distance of someone sitting it out. But it's easy to be motivated by Obama's candidacy as long as you don't want Iran incinerated, Afghani civilians killed and devastated in mass numbers, the suspension of habeas corpus, fines imposed upon people who already can't afford health insurance, continuing economic warfare against Cuba, and disrespect for undocumented people who happen to do the hardest work while being denied the right to drivers' licenses (which doesn't make any driver safer).
And it's easy to be motivated about Obama because unlike Nader whose politics are better in many ways (for example on the questions of Palestine and single payer health care) Obama actually could win and throw a wrench in the war machine which the putatively feminist Hilary Clinton would keep running (I guess bellicosity is a good response to gender bias; given his open support of diplomacy Obama will be attacked as soft by the patriarchal aggressive John 'bomb, bomb Iran'McCain).
I can't become passionate about Green candidacies whose only predictable effect is splitting the vote to the advantage of a Republican.
People are belitting the importance of an Obama victory by talking about the few kids who have fainted and the reflections of Ryan Phillipe who was good but not as inspired as Benicio del Toro in that shoot it out movie. Who is del Toro supporting? If you know, respond offlist.
Abu Hartal
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! _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/