16 more years

as i was getting ready for sleepy-time last night, the local kagoshima news station flashed a headline stating that american presidential candidate kerii had chosen as his running mate former presidential candidate edowaazu. that's nice, thought i, and quietly slid into a beautiful slumberland. upon wakey, i went to the junior high school and thought i'd confirm that it would indeed be a kerry/edwards ticket. i had to be quick, what with first period only a few minutes away and the man breathing down my neck, and i received quite the shock when i saw the following screengrab on eschaton:


oops! 
seeing as most of you have no doubt run across this rather hilarious blunder by the rupert murdoch-owned new york post by now (and i most likely will not be able to come up with any more original and witty remarks than those that have already been posted over at the daily kos, "The Truth Is News To Us!" by "its simple IF you ignore the complexity" being my personal favorite), i shall direct your kind attention to a blogger whose particulary high qualifications are much more suited to the task of biting analysis than those of any of us here at tepid industries, dr. eric alterman:

In all the years I've written about politics, I've never seen in either party so strong a consensus across regional and ideological lines for a choice as was made to Kerry for Edwards. He is, I've said over and over, a magical candidate when he works a room. Nobody, including Bill Clinton, is a more compelling campaigner. The media love him, which Kerry desperately needs, since they seem to disdain the candidate as much if not more than they did Al Gore. He brings in the South and forces the Bush campaign into a defensive crouch in states they thought they had locked up and helps to open up the possibility of a Democratic take-over of the Senate (thanks in no small measure to the genius of David Rudd). But he does so without sacrificing anything in the Northeast.

And alone among serious presidential candidates, he speaks the language of class, which our politics desperately need, if the conservative class war against poor and middle-class people is to be joined and the rest of us are ever to be able to unite in any meaningful way despite our racial and religious differences. The choice could even go a distance toward shutting up that deluded megalomaniac Ralph Nader, who came pretty close to endorsing Edwards, for reasons that -- if you listen to the rest of the nonsense Nader spouts and add it to the fact that Kerry has a more progressive voting record than his running mate -- are genuinely unfathomable.

Edwards' only problem -- and it's not a negligible one -- is that he looks like he's about thirty. So much of American politics is about looks that this "issue" is just not going to go away. Idiot pundits will bloviate on TV about whether he "looks" presidential. I guess by that they mean can he

mislead the country into war;
destroy a worldwide consensus of sympathy and solidarity for the United States
increase anti-American terrorism;
destroy all vestiges of fiscal responsibility;
turn the justice system over to religious fanatics who ignore homeland defense;
you know I could go on indefinitely here.
The larger point is that the best -- indeed only -- defense is a good offense. The battle has been joined. If not now, when?

i remember in the not-so-distant past another boyishly-young looking vice presidential candidate who, dispite difficulties in spelling words like potatoe, still managed to somehow not cost his running mate the election...
but i guess we were only fighting a cold war that time...
the fact remains that edwards does nothing but liven up the kerry ticket and even if the unthinkable were to happen and he was thrust into the hot seat, the criticisms that i am hearing so far, the youth and lack of experience, are certainly balanced out by the sharp wit he has repeatedly shown himself to posses. i would confidently place my trust in him to learn on the job with a lot less reluctance and reservation than i felt when bush declared a never ending war on terror.

the shimmering light of hope has once again brightened the gloominess of the future of american presidential politics. we might just be looking at the next 16 years in the making. where we go from there, i leave to you.