Capt. Sawyer has a good post up about political parties. He’s in a familiar bind – neither of the two major political parties represent his views very well and the other political parties, particularly the ones that come closest to his views, aren’t really viable.

And, frankly, his views seem pretty mainstream: pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun rights, and fiscally moderate.

Maybe a “third” party will prove me wrong some day, but I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that our electoral system is such that the two parties just won’t leave enough political oxygen for a third party to arise. The most practical way for a coalition to get policies they want — or as close as possible — is to participate in one of the political parties and steer it in its preferred direction.

This Obama in 30 seconds site is addictive. I just keep clicking ad after ad. Here is one . . . not even the best one, but I’m finally going to drag myself out of my seat to go buy beer. What? I never claimed to be a role model!

I think I’ve mentioned this thought before, but I read Todd Beaton quoting Brian Williams and thought I’d mention it again.

It’s like mini-tornadoes…Think about how the primary process changes each state as it moves through. Pennsylvania is now altered politically because all of this happened. Bucks County started this process Republican, it’s now considered a Democratic county. Montgomery County, Philadelphia suburb, ditto, went from majority Republican registration to majority Democrat because of these new voters. In that way this has kind of changed the political landscape.

The conventional wisdom is that the primary process is damaging to the eventual Democratic nominee the longer this thing goes on. And, depending on how divided the Democratic electorate eventually becomes, I suppose that could be the case. But, the antipathy toward Bush and his policies is so deep that, when confronted with more of the same and either Democratic nominee, most of the Democrats will pull the lever for the person to whom they were opposed during the primary. In addition, to offset that division, you have the fact that both of these Democratic nominees are spending a considerable amount of time and money in each state, developing political machinery and getting the lay of the land. I have to think that sort of organization is going to pay dividends come November. Will Indiana vote for a Democrat in the general? Remotely possible, but I doubt it. However, I bet the spread will be closer than in years past. And, down-ticket, the results could be significant. For example, a lot of folks who might admire John McCain won’t necessarily have the warm-fuzzies for Steve Buyer and maybe Nels Ackerson gets a better shot; and so forth across the state and down the ballot.

Looks like the Obama and Clinton campaigns will be rolling into the state in earnest now. Clinton won Pennsylvania as expected and there probably isn’t any reason for either campaign to give up. So, it’s on to the next round — Indiana and North Carolina on May 6. Obama appears to have a formidable lead in North Carolina and it’s not clear Clinton has the cash to make a run in hostile territory. Indiana’s polls have shown a close contest with Clinton likely having the lead at the moment. I suspect she’ll devote most of her efforts trying to hang on here, and Obama will spend his resources trying to bury her.

Today, Obama and Clinton both announced they would be attending the state Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Indianapolis on May 4.

Update Looks like Clinton beat Obama by about 9% in Pennsylvania and picked up about 10 delegates, reducing Obama’s overall lead to about 125. She still has no realistic path to the nomination. As a matter of state pride, I’d enjoy it if Indiana’s vote brought the Democratic nomination fight to an end.

Update #2 And, by the way, I’m a political genius. I predicted “Hillary by 10” on Monday. Somebody should probably put me on TV as an “analyst” now.

Too little, too late; but this Ron Paul video is kind of cool in a 300 kind of way:

The narrative out of last week’s ABC News “debate” seems to be set. Maybe Obama’s stumbling hurt him. Maybe Clinton’s resemblance to the vast right wing conspiracy hurt her. But, those things are pretty much a wash. The big loser was ABC News (and citizens generally, I suppose).

Frank Rich has a column on the “televised train wreck.” Charlie Gibson, in particular, is the subject of mockery since his primary display of passion was in opposition to an increase in the capital gains tax which seems to go along with his view that a family income of $200,000 per year is somehow “typical.” (In actual fact, 96% of families earn less than that.)

As between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, Rich seems to take Obama’s side:

The video of Mrs. Clinton knocking back drinks in an Indiana bar drowned out the scratchy audio of Mr. Obama’s wispy words in San Francisco. Her campaign didn’t seem to recognize that among the many consequences of the Bush backlash is a revulsion against such play acting. Americans belatedly learned the hard way that the brush-clearing cowboy of the Crawford “ranch” (it’s a country house, not a working ranch) was in reality an entitled Andover-Yale-Harvard oil brat whose arrogance has left us where we are now. Voters don’t want a rerun from a Wellesley-Yale alumna who served on the board of Wal-Mart.

Privileged though they are, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama do want to shape policy to help the less well-heeled. Mr. McCain, who had a far more elite upbringing than either of them and whose wife’s estimated fortune exceeds the Clintons’, is not just condescending to working Americans but trying to hoodwink them. Next week, in a replay of the 2000 Bush campaign’s “compassionate conservative” photo ops among black schoolchildren, he will show he’s a “different kind of Republican” by visiting what he calls the “forgotten” America of Alabama’s “black belt” and the old steel town of Youngstown, Ohio. What he wants voters to forget is the inequity of his new economic plan.

Another good passage:

However out of touch Mr. Obama is with “ordinary Americans,” many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible “YouTube young people” are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on “Meet the Press,” as she did last Sunday, it’s pure farce. It’s typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying “we don’t need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead.” Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he’s Harvard ’67.

DailyKos has some suggested questions for George Stephanopoulos to ask John McCain. This is more a knock on Stephanopoulos in light of his inane questions to the Democratic candidates last week; but, fair is fair. But, clearly, I don’t expect fairness where the mainstream media and St. John McCain are concerned. Suggested questions:

* Senator McCain, some have suggested that you take on Mike Huckabee as your running mate to offset the mistrust many Christian voters have of you given your support of stem cell research, which as you know, they consider to be murder. So my question to you is, will you ask Mr. Huckabee to join your ticket and can you explain why destroying unborn children isn’t murder? After all, this viewpoint can be found on the internet.

* It has been widely reported that you told Senator John Cornyn to “fuck off.” Given your famous and self-admitted temper, should the American people be concerned that you may use the same sort of language to world leaders?

* Let’s move on to religion. You have “proudly” accepted the endorsements of Reverend John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Do believe and accept their belief that the Catholic Church conspired with Hitler to exterminate Jews, that Hurricane Katrina was a righteous punishment from God for the sins of New Orleans, and that a part of our American destiny is to destroy the false religion of Islam? If not, why haven’t you publicly disassociated yourself from these remarks?

* Keeping on religion for another moment; 20 years ago you began attending a Baptist Church, yet you refused to be baptized into that church. Why?

* Do you believe that committing adultery should disqualify someone to be the President of the United States? Why or why not?

* It’s been noted that you don’t wear an American flag on your lapel. Do you believe that wearing one proves ones patriotism and conversely, does not wearing one mean that you don’t love your country? In other words, is this an issue that the American people should be concerned about?

Margaret Talev of the McClatchy Newspapers wrote an interesting article about Nash McCabe who ABC News used as a stand-in to ask Barack Obama about flag pins so Charlie and George didn’t have to further embarrass themselves by doing so.

McCabe doesn’t like Obama because he’s a Golden Boy. Everything seems to come easily to him. According to McCabe, Clinton has to grind it out for her successes. McCabe identifies with that:

McCabe met her husband, Lloyd, in April 1983 at a dance. They married two months later. Six months after that, she says, he was injured in a coal mine accident. He hasn’t worked since.

They never had children. He had back surgery. The muscle relaxers he took damaged his heart. He’s had three bypasses, nine angioplasties, seven stents and a pacemaker. Three months ago doctors found a brain tumor. His choice: surgery that he may or may not survive, or life in a wheelchair.

Over 25 years of marriage, McCabe was the breadwinner. She said it took eight years to get her husband disability payments, during which time they racked up huge bills.

“I was a nurse’s aide, a cashier,” McCabe said. “From 1996 to 2000, I was a manager of a cleaning company. I started out as secretary and worked my way up to manager, and then the company decided to close. It took me almost two-and-a-half years to find a job that I got laid off from recently” as a clerk-typist. She has a high school diploma.

Sometimes the McCabes borrow money from her parents, who are in their 70s. She has a request in to the local food bank to see if she and her husband qualify.

“People who have sick spouses or children understand how hard it is,” she said.

Her situation certainly isn’t unique. I probably hear 4 or 5 similar stories every week in the course of my debt collection practice. Most of those folks aren’t deadbeats or people trying to shirk their debts. But plenty of them seem to lack good planning skills or a long view of the consequences of their actions. A lot of them –perhaps out of necessity– live in the now without dwelling a great deal on the future; not taking advantage of the fact that “a stitch in time saves nine” or an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” etc. Where you are willing and able to take advantage of that sort of planning, things do start looking easy. (And, for what it’s worth, I’m not saying that’s the whole reason for any of their problems — some things simply can’t be planned for. And, sometimes, you simply have to eat your seed corn to avoid starving.)

But I can’t figure how any of this translates to flag pins or flags, generally. Her question for Obama was to note that he generally doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin and to ask “I want to know if you believe in the American flag.” Buh?

Obama received a lot of grief for his “bitter” comments. How dare he suggest that people’s frustration with their economic situation translates into them making political decisions based on non-economic issues like guns and God? But now we have a woman who has been beaten around pretty good by the economy who is apparently basing her political decisions on things like flag pins and jealousy over a politician’s seemingly innate gifts.

Where the rational thing to do would to be to probe which politician’s plans would help improve her situation; she’s asking about flags.