February 20, 2008, Hawaii Five-OBAMA!
First, happy birthday to TD Mom.
And then... it's his tenth win in a row, but TD college classmate (people, on this blog, it's always about me) Barack Obama has won his home state of Hawaii's Democratic caucuses to add to his huge win in the Wisconsin primary making ten in a row. This forces former inevitable dynastic front-runner Hillary Clinton to not only win the Ohio and Texas primaries in two weeks' time, at a time when Gallup is polling that she is losing support among Latinos and older women, but win them decisively to turn back the avalanche of O-mentum that ten wins in a row is building.
The formerly-sainted John McCain-- who has positioned himself as unelectable-except-against-Hillary-Clinton (he sold us out on torture-- TORTURE-- for God's sake... while he can live with his own conscience-- or lack thereof-- the rest of us may not want to live with such a compromised soul as a tortured POW condoning the practice upon others out of political expedience to a bloodthirsty and truly base "base")-- immediately attacked Obama on "experience" (hey, is he stealing lines from Derval Patrick Hillary too?)... and Obama's team shot back about the old "politics of fear". [For those interested in comparing "substance", here are Obama's and Clinton's campaign web-sites... do your own due diligence on the "substance" of their campaigns.]
The national campaigns seem to be forming the battle lines (Obama vs. McCain) already... Which means that the battle of ideas we should have had in 2004 and would again be screwed out of should Hillary be the nominee-- i.e., a war opponent vs. a war supporter-- can play itself out, once and for all, and the voters may yet finally get a legitimate choice not on nonsensical crap like "experience" but on the most compelling issue in the national consciousness (it's the war, stupid).
And domestic issues will matter too. This was going to be historic for Democrats no matter what-- either the first female or first Black candidate to lead its ticket (against the inevitable old White male on the Republcan side). It's looking like the latter.