The caucuses and primaries

There are many pundits who know much more about all of this than I do, so I'll keep this brief and try not to regurgitate too much of what they're all saying.

My favorite Presidential candidate has been John Edwards, who's pretty much a long-shot at this point, which is too bad. On the plus side, I would be fine to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and I think they'd both be decent, if not ideal, Presidents who would go a long ways towards rebuilding this country's sense of pride and direction after seven years of arrogance and divisiveness. Also, I think the fact that the primary season will continue on at least until the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday races is a good thing - the idea of an early coronation rubs me the wrong way, it certainly didn't help John Kerry four years ago, and I think both Clinton and Obama could use the pressures of a real primary race to improve themselves. Obama, who won his only statewide Illinois race in a cakewalk in 2004, needs more experience in running a national race and more experience in pushing back against attacks and mudslinging. Clinton needs to learn how to present herself in a way that doesn't reinforce her negative qualities. Regarding Hillary's 'choking up' moment the other day, it was probably a good idea - voters who saw it as a calculated performance weren't going to vote for her in the first place, and voters on the fence regarding her personality issues may have been given the nudge they needed to decide it was okay to vote for her after all.

Somewhere in the future, someone will make a movie about a tough female national politician similar to Hillary Clinton, and it'll be a thousand times more interesting than Commander in Chief, getting to the unique difficulties faced by powerful and ambitious women and how they're perceived in our modern world, where even Pakistan can have a female leader before America. There's something strange about the fact that a candidate's laugh and cleavage and emotional outbursts get as much attention as what they think of the trade deficit.

On the Republican side, I have mixed feelings. I'm glad to see McCain beat Mitt Romney, who I consider to be an absolute phony who'll say and do anything to win a race, and because McCain is the only Republican running who I have any respect for whatsoever - especially on issues like immigration and torture, and because he's a pragmatist instead of an ideologue. On the other hand, since McCain is probably the most electable Republican in a national race, I'd prefer for the ultimate nominee to be Romney or Huckabee, who should both be more easily beatable.

I'm also glad the focus is finally gone from the fringe candidates like Tancredo, Paul, and Kucinich. I'm not a fan of any of them.