Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why he voted for Obama in the primary (he did it by absentee ballot). His reasoning:

I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice�. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create room and space for real change.

Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important, something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this country, in this time: how to hearten people. Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.

In listening to the libs around the water cooler, it sounds like many of them will probably end up voting for Obama. They think he has a chance to be a generational candidate — someone who will bring new voters into the process. If this ends up a contest between Obama and McCain (and it’s pretty clear McCain is going to be the Republican choice, since Mitt has packed it in), this election has the potential to go down as one of those watershed elections in American history, something that hasn’t happened since my guy, Ronald Reagan. I could stand a bit of watershed at this point in time.

That said, as Patrick notes, there are worse things than Hillary Clinton. Many of the Hillary supporters are stating that she isn’t getting much of a fair shake in the media, which clearly seems to loathe her and which also has a swoon going on for Obama. This is a fair complaint, but it’s also worth noting that life isn’t fair, and that little fact has worked for Clinton in the past; I don’t doubt she could have had a fine political career if she’d never met Bill Clinton, but the fact she did has worked considerably to her benefit to date. Now she has to deal with the downside of all that.

And yes, that does work in Obama’s favor. But there are the Dems that have the mind-set (however blind they appear to be) that feels the Elephants fundamentally fear a Clinton candidacy, because the Clinton crew is the only one on the Democrat side that is fundamentally unafraid of the "GOP smear machine"; they hit back, and they hit below the belt. With Hillary as the Donkey candidate we'll have another nasty election. Maybe with Obama we'll get some true rhetoric flowing between he and McCain. But as I stated a week or so ago, McCain and Hillary seem to like each other..scary as that may be.

As far as Obama or Clinton; the race is too close. I do think at this point momentum is with Obama. The longer the race goes, the more likely it is he’ll be the one to finish it. And McCain looks to be the most feared (and electible) over either of the Donkey choices at this point:

My vote will continue to be thoroughly undecided for the time-being. McCain is just too moderate for me. Hillary scares the bejezus out of me. Obama seems to be able to vocalize one word, "change" without any substance. But here is the thing that frightens me the most: Senators make piss-ass Presidents. And it looks like we'll be voting a Senator into the White House irregardless.

Never before have two senators run against each other for the White House.

Only 5 Presidents, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson were Senators before they were elected President. Of those Harding never held another elected position, and Truman only held a judgeship and the Vice-Presidency. Why?

Perhaps the reason lies in what makes a successful Senator: a diplomat. Unfortunately, “diplomat� and “leader� don’t make good bedfellows. Rare is the Senator that can a) strike the populous as a leader of the country, and b) can execute once they get there. History has not been kind to Harding or Lyndon Johnson, and the jury is out on Nixon and in some circles on Kennedy.

Let's dive into this aspect just a bit deeper.

Obama, Hillary, and McCain are all sitting Senators. A whopping total of two sitting Senators have been elected president - and even there, there's a mixed record:

Warren Harding, our disgraced 29th president, was notable for three things:

1. He was the only newspaper man to occupy the oval office. (The press and politicians regularly make the bottom of the list of trusted professionals. So Harding was a double whammy.) 2. He had the largest feet of any president (size 14), all the more surprising that he and his wife had no children - though he did sire a child out of wedlock with mistress Nan Britton. (By the way William Howard Taft wore "gout shoes" which are sized differently.) 3. He presided over the most scandal-tarred presidency in history. (Give the guy credit: He was in office for less than one term.)

John F. Kennedy is the other president to have been elected while still serving in the Senate. His record, of course, is better, even if things began disastrously with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Still he was elected only narrowly (the definition of "narrowly" being "a bunch of dead people in southern Illinois") and perhaps only because his competition was Vice President Richard Nixon, a sweaty unlikable guy hobbled by a title that rivals Senator in presidential unelectability. (When V.P. George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988, he was the first veep to do so since Martin Van Buren, 152 years before!!)

It's not as if Senators haven't tried for higher office. During this presidential election alone, Six senators have thrown their hats in the ring.

So why else don't Americans like to give Senators the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

The President is Chief Executive Officer. So the prize has gone overwhelmingly to governors, our states' highest executives, who in many ways are like mini-presidents. (Among other powers, the governor is the commander-in-chief of his/her state.) Senators, on the other hand, rarely can take credit for doing anything singlehandedly, so they're rarely seen as leaders. They co-sponsor complicated, often shady, legislation - legislation they can sometimes shirk responsibility for when the legislation turns out to be a liability. Sure, they have power to "advise and consent." But they can't order anyone to do anything.

Go back to the last election. Remember John Kerry? He seemed to have the makeup of a successful Senator: flexible, nuanced, a horse trader of sorts. Yet he didn’t have what appeared to be the makings of a good President: decisiveness and direction.

And this is where Obama will nail the coffin shut on Hillary. After several defeats Dem's were asking, “What happened to standing up for the little guy"? That’s what the Democrats were always about. Instead, in '04 they got this eastern, blueblood, upper-crust pansy who seemed to have absolutely no connection to the common man. And now they have a choice between Obama and another East Coast blueblood upper-crust pansy. Yeah, Hillary may be a yokel from Arkansas but she's all New York City now.

On the other other hand, the best Senators master the art of compromise, a skill sorely needed after 7 years of runaway White House power mongering. And if a Senator does manage to slog through the procedural morass and come out with something to show for him/herself, that's a real accomplishment.

At least, we better hope so. Because we're about to elect our third sitting Senator to be leader of the free world.

Posted by briankeithmaas@msn.com at February 9, 2008 01:12 AM