Hope

[Insert name here] are not a leader. Barack Obama is not a Leader. Hilary Clinton is not a Leader. You, Liberal voter, and you, progressive, you are not a leader either.

The Conservative attack line used against Stephane Dion so easily applies to anyone that the neoconservative movement disagrees with. Though it means very little, the Republicans are bound to use a variant of this in the upcoming presidential election. It could be Hillary or it could be Barack. The Republicans are also likely to promote divisions within the Democratic party resulting from their leadership contest. And there might be some gullible democrats who will fall for that trap.

I like both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Although at this moment I prefer one just a little bit more than the other, I fully believe both would make a great president. But I fear that following the heat of the Democratic primary, some partisans of the losing candidate will have so firmly convinced themselves in the value of their own choice they will not support the winner. That would be a huge mistake. The George Bush years were a huge mistake. In fact, I would be greatly disappointed in the losing candidate, Obama or Clinton, if they were not to put their tremendous political connections and rhetorical skills to the service of regaining the White House. In my mind, failure in the next election would reflect badly on the whole Democratic leadership.

To me the leader of the party is a vehicle for the issues I would like to see promoted. It takes time to build a winning leadership profile with the voting public (in Canada historically this process takes several years) and the ongoing Democratic race is perhaps already cutting into that.

There is a lot of advertising for the two candidates. This one makes me totally crack up.



Disclaimer: I don’t understand the language in the ad; I just happen to like Bollywood. So the ad might be a bit mischievious without me knowing. I doubt that this would be a good ad for Obama with the larger part of the American voting public, but that is not the audience of this blog.