Friday, February 29, 2008

"Sometimes, I really wonder how dumb the Clinton campaign thinks we are."

Me too. Well, not really. I've always taken a very jaundiced view of the whole "expectations game" theory of politics, because I just don't think that you can manage expectations, which are largely set by externalities, and you certainly cannot do so twice. Hillary Clinton was the one who raised the stakes for March 4 by insisting that Texas and Ohio were do-or-die states. Now, she wants to reduce expectations of them because it's beginning to look like she's not going to win either. Texas is already lost, according to the polls, and Ohio is virtually tied. So, it's time to downplay expectations. But that can't work because the media swallowed her first batch of medicine and has declared these primaries the make-or-break event for the Clintons. So, as one might expect, it's time for the Clintons to resort to cheating by trying to sue Texas over their delegate selection rules, even though those rules didn't seem to bother her until she was in danger of losing the Texas primary.

Enough already! Stop with all this legal bullshit and try to convince some people to vote for you!

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.