Brothers and Sisters

I don't like talking about presidential races in an odd numbered year anymore than I like talking about the upcoming playoffs when the preseason hasn't even started. But Barak Obama was on the Daily Show last night, and I started thinking about things. How often is that a good thing?

I find the race between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton very intriguing. It really says a lot concerning the progress we have made as a country that we are finally willing to consider seriously a woman and a black man as president, especially after our stellar treatment of blacks and females throughout our country's history. Congratulations, United States. You've finally caught up with the rest of the world.

The crazy thing is, the whole democratic strategy seems to be revolving around experience. Namely, who has how much of what kind that will be useful in running the nation? Hillary Clinton ran for and won a Senate seat for the state of New York, and everyone knew what she was up to. She ran a very winnable race to gain experience to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. Five years later, here we are saying that she's gained the experience necessary, as well as the Senate voting record, for us to visualize her as a serious presidential candidate.

Obama did the same thing in 2004. Well, not exactly the same thing, but still a similar strategy. This man came out of nowhere to challenge an unpopular incumbent for a very winnable Senate seat for Illinois, ostensibly to gain experience to be taken seriously as a legitimate presidential candidate in four years. Three years later, here we are. I don't know about his voting record, and I really don't care. He wasn't around to vote both for and against the war in Iraq, so there's nothing really to scrutinize there.

That's bullshit, though. Obama didn't join the Senate to gain experience to be a president. He ran to see if he could win something based on his "inexperience". It was a trial run for 2008, and nothing more. Ya wanna know why we haven't heard anything about Barak Obama's Senate record? No one cares. Obama made the point on the Daily Show that experience is what got us in this mess to begin with. "Experience" from two former Secretaries of Defense who insisted that we not go to war in Iraq 17 years ago told us to go in this time. Why? Because their "experience" told them that they could get away with it. And they did. Here we are.

He's right, too. If I had to, I would vote for Obama, just because I don't know a damn thing about him, but he presents himself well on television. And that's where this whole democracy thing is heading. Politically obscene as it was, the YouTube debates were a milestone in presidential campaign history. It's an outright acknowledgement that times are changing, and that they need to change. Great. Now what?

Who cares, as long as it's someone who doesn't have the experience to pull off the geopolitical crime of the century?

The way I see it, this race is coming down to Obama and Clinton. That is, if things remain the same as they are now (which they rarely do, admittedly). And that's the way it should be. We've been asking for decades if "America is ready" for a black or woman president (never both), so why not NOW? Let's do it, and get it over with. (If Fox can pull off a show about a bikini model becoming a "journalist", we may as well go all the way in both directions.)

Obama/Clinton is Suns/Spurs all over again - it's the de facto championship, long before we reach the Finals. Sure, there are "viable" candidates from the other conference, but we already know what we're getting from them - which hasn't been good in God knows how long.

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination between Obama and Clinton will most likely be the next president of the United States. But to me, the loser will be more telling than the winner. Obviously, we're ready for a this. But the loser of this race will tell us one very important thing about our society.

Who would we rather NOT run our country --a nigger or a bitch? And if neither wins, that will say alot about where we really are.