Post-March 4 thoughts, mostly for Obama fans

by shamanic

For Obama partisans, here's the deal: Yesterday played out exactly the way the Obama campaign memo from early February said it would, except that the margins were much smaller than what could have been anticipated in early February. Yes, all of us who like Obama were hoping he'd run the tables, but he continues to have a solid delegate lead that Clinton didn't make much headway against last night.

But truly, Obama had a terrible week leading up to yesterday's votes. And this is where we see the mettle of the man: if he's able to right the ship and regain his footing, then the odds favor him and the Democratic Party in November. If he goes into a tailspin, having finally been bitten by real, stinging politics, then he has no business being the nominee.

So this is where we find out whether he deserves it, kids. And this is where he's going to prove worthy or not of the faith that I and many others have put in him in our efforts to make him the party's standard bearer this year. And if he can't take this licking and keep on ticking, he's not the guy.

I'm confident he will, and I remain confident that he is the guy. And though I've certainly wavered on whether I'd be able to support Hillary Clinton in the fall, primarily for reasons of dynasticism, the fact is that John McCain is only too eager to get a lot of American service members killed in wars that let him replay Vietnam for the next half decade.

I wasn't born yet when the iconic image of Americans boarding helicopters on a rooftop in Hanoi was taken. I'm pretty frigging tired of the back and forth between the camps of the culture wars of the 1960s. It's not the world I live in, and for all the terrible things that Vietnam was to America and Americans, I'll say this about it: We've never had to send troops back there.

So Obama will prove himself to be a winner or a loser in this contest, but I'll be voting for the Democratic nominee for president in November. As the primary race proceeds, I say only: may the best candidate win.