Bore me with your grand pronouncements

We've written about politics a lot here on Long Sunday, so maybe a quick post, however reluctant, is warranted.

Very little to say about this USian shitparade, but this writer has probably got something of the current impasse right:

To be fair to [Obama], his ability to run as a black man for president of a white-run country depends entirely on his being non-threatening. If he adopted even a smidgeon of Edwards’ rhetoric he would sink like a stone. This isn’t his fault; chalk it up to lingering racism. But that doesn’t change the political reality, which is that, to get the friendlier world the Obama voters thought they were voting for, we need the confrontational chutzpah that Edwards pushed.

So, a bit of an impasse, or maybe it's a bottleneck.  Also, Edwards may really believe the things he's saying (as much as anyone in his position can), but not realizing the popular wisdom has him thoroughly and accurately pegged as desperate opportunist isn't helping much.  Clearly though, again and as always, we do need a push from someone outside the two concierge families.  As my Gore-enamored brother noted years ago and I've always agreed, the appearance of some kind of deal struck between the Bushes and the Clintons has been everything but publicly acknowledged.  Bush got another term, and it's Hillary in 2008.  Obama has been hand-selected and groomed as her VEEP.  Think about it:  the combination would be unbeatable.  (John Holbo attempts to propose and justify the flatly unthinkable, even comical reverse of this, but like those Americans commenting I just can't begin to see it.)  In any case, I'm sure what all this says about American electoral politics (phrases like "political reality" being nearly too despairing for thought), is more or less what Lewis Lapham has already summed up in Harper's, recently (see above link).  But several Long Sundayans including myself having sworn they wouldn't vote for Hillary, I wonder if Obama with his talk of cooperation makes any stomachs equally turn.  Still I'd probably vote for the guy, if only because he represents the closest thing to a political coup.  (Also the computer tells me to!  And to be fair to Obama - whose book, I should say, several people close to me have read and admired - here is the website with his actual positions in some detail; thanks Kenneth.)  It's all very sad.  Al Gore in his current wisdom would have made an excellent President, just as such wisdom is precisely what now keeps him out. 

nb.  An old post of mine around election season nearly four years ago, recalled to me after glimpsing the clip on OGM of Dan Rather transparently attempting to tar Edwards with guilt by association with  Ralph Nader.