Politics - 'Cause it wouldn't be a Blog without it

So, I watched the Democratic debate tonight on MSNBC. The winners and losers of which may ultimately be inconsequential as many people don't get MSNBC, nor do "most" people watch whole debates. I did. Maybe I'm not a political pundit, whatever that means, but I couldn't tell the difference, really, between the candidates tonight (Obama, Clinton, Edwards). Chris Mathews, whom I like usually, has come out and said that Hilary Clinton decisively won the debate. Really? What makes you say so? Maybe it's me, but the discussion seemed polite and the candidates seemed to agree on virtually every issue. Maybe it's that Mathews has an agenda that favors Hilary Clinton. That's right! I said it!

Mitt Romney won the Michigan Republican primary. This means that in the 3 meaningful nomination contests in the republican party, there have been 3 different winners. While it remains to be seen what will happen in the Democratic party - it appears that tonight they appeared to all be aligning themselves with one another. Due to the fact that we had 3 different Republican winners, means that the party, at this point anyway, is fractured. This could be difficult in terms of the nominating process because the nomination might not be decided until the convention, at which point you'll have vying for delegates. Who knows, maybe they'll all get it together over their natural hate of democrats, and it'll be like the good old days.

What I don't buy is when Mitt Romney says "take that Washington!" Nor the other candidates for that matter. There's no homeless people running for president this year. Or, there won't be after Dennis Kucinich drops out. All the candidates are wealthy, and have deep standing political interests. The idea that one person's gonna come in and change everything is nice, but the US government is built upon a general model of being slow to change. Some say the benefits of this type of system is that it makes it difficult for politicians to really muck up the country. We essentially have a 2 party system in America - so anyone saying that one party is to blame is insane. I think we'll all be better off when George Bush is out of office. I think his type of neoconservatism was particularly vicious, divisive, derisive, and generally bad for middle class Americans. Hopefully, whoever we get will be able to "change" things - but I'm not convinced of it, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

What we as Americans need to do is to take responsibilities for our own lives, and for the people around us. We can get as rowdy as we want about our candidate, and how they're gonna make serious change, but we can't escape that we're really the ones who are responsible for our lives. The US government "could" do a lot of good - but the mean time we need to do more at the state and local levels - even in our own communities. It's not until the rich desperate housewives of the OC feel responsible for the poor in East LA, or the deep south, that is change really gonna happen.

-cjfer-