Democracy in Grand Junction

The realization sinks in hard and fast -- almost all registered Democrats here have bad taste and small yappy dogs. How can we seize power when we are watching daytime television on Saturday afternoon?

I got yelled at by more than one McCain-nik, who told me that our boy is a communist, a socialist, a Muslim, and wasn't even born here. Worse yet, they were talking about Joe Biden, they hadn't even gotten to Obama yet.

There is still more to learn about politics, no matter how jaded one thinks he has become. I was listening to a long book on CD about the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 on the way here. The author in an aside suggests that President Wilson's erratic behavior at the Versailles Conference and his incapacitating stroke were precipitated by a case of influenza. Which is how I happened to be thinking about what happened while Wilson was incapacitated. His vice-president did not assume the powers of the presidency, Mrs. Wilson did.

It is considerably more likely that if something goes wrong with McCain's health during his presidency, that he would be incapacitated rather than just cleanly keel over dead. So the woman whose qualifications to be president we should be considering are not Sarah Palin's but Cindy McCain's. She may not be as malign a personality as Nancy Reagan, but to my knowledge she has never done anything in life
but be a rich man's daughter and John McCain's wife.

Barack Obama is 47 years old and apparently in good health. His risk of incapacitation is vanishingly small. Even so, Michelle Obama is a successful attorney and appears intelligent and level-headed.

The second notion that occurred to me was how a Bradley Effect election would affect the winner. In 2000 and 2004, however much one may object to the particulars of the outcome, I think everyone can accept that Bush received roughly half of the votes each time. Contrast that with a Bradley Effect victory for McCain. He would not only not have a mandate, he wouldn't even be legitimately in office. Even Republicans of good conscience would have to question such a result. How could he govern when he had no moral claim to the office at all?