Wait, what blog is this? WTF is this shit?

So here we have the Democratic National Convention, that quadrennial shitshow where the Dems get together and nominate someone who'll probably lose. (The Republican convention is pretty much the same, except their guy usually wins, and they seem much, much angrier. In fact, Republicans in general always seem pissed off. But that's another post.) I didn't watch Hillary's speech last night, but from what I gather, she pretty much said "Since you can't vote for me, might as well vote for this guy." Some Hillary supporters, apparently, are either going to not vote or vote for McCain, which is pretty much the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Meanwhile, the #1 bestselling book in the country is currently The Obama Nation, a vile compendium of half-truths and outright lies compiled by the same professional libelist who Swift-Boated John Kerry out of a 2004 win (along with the help of the Diebold Corporation). Given the fact that 45 percent of Americans apparently believe that God created humans 10,000 years ago, it's not an exceptionally tough sell to convince people that Obama's a Muslim or hates America or whatever.

Look, I don't think Obama's the ideal Democratic candidate. The way Bush totally fucked up this country in the past 8 years, any off-the-shelf Democrat should have a cakewalk to the presidency. The fact that O's basically tied with McCain right now points up the fact that he hasn't really connected with most Americans. Part of it is undoubtedly the fact that he's black. Part of it is the air of elitism that hangs over him, and part of it is certainly the campaign of misinformation that will only accelerate as the election gets closer. Personally, I think the Democrats could have found a better candidate. I like and respect Obama, but I'm still not completely convinced that he's going to make a great president. Of course, it wouldn't take much to beat the current one.

I'm a pessimist by nature, so I think, at this point, McCain will probably win, in a somewhat close election. Unless Obama can find some way to connect with people better than he has so far. This article in Newsweek dramatically illustrates how good he is at connecting with people one-on-one. Since he can't personally meet everyone face-to-face, I hope his campaign figures out some way to communicate that ability to connect on a large scale. Or we're even more fucked than we are now.

OK, that's enough of the heavy. We'll now return to our regularly-scheduled diet of drinking, baseball, and fucking not smoking.