In the saddest development yet in the Presidential campaign, Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race. This is mainly saddening due to the fact that we will not have a FLILF in the White House in 2008.

Bwahahahahaha!!! That was great! Not to mention I've always been a sucker for a redhead.

Well,you learn something every day. I was once acronym-impaired but am now fully MILF-aware. Whew.

OK, a bit low, but that was funny. And I *would* love to steal Mrs. Kucinich away from her hubby. Ummm, fat chance. Well, he *was* the only person offering a sane health care policy/plan, so I will miss him.

Lust-wise, not sure the game is over. Again, I am not entirely sure what to make of her hubby (can you spell R-e-z-k-o?) but I think I would vote for Michelle in a heartbeat in 2016. And I think she leaves any remaining hottie-wannabees in the dust.

Well, no matter what else happens, I think tonight's crushing defeat of Rudy Giulliani shows that American voters, and Florida voters in particular, aren't hopless after all.

I was hoping for a Romney win just to keep the GOP playing field even, but I'll take any result that has Saint Rudy of 9/11 (and his puppy-murdering wife) abandoning his campaign by the end.

And, for the record, I'm with ya on the Mrs. Obama thing. Now, if her husband would just stop reinforcing right-wing frames with his "the country is too partisan" rhetoric. If anything, we need more partisanship, more fighting, and more conflict in our government, not less.

Maybe Barack is just trying to sound positive and appear palatable to moderates, but it certainly doesn't excite me when he undercuts the movement that's put him in this position in the first place..

Then again, with Hillary doing stuff like this, I think my choice might already be made.

I could be wrong, but I have the feeling that he's trying to stop the feuding, not being conciliatory towards right-wing notions. I agree that the Democrats should stop rolling over for Bush, but there is also a lot of pointless feuding amongst the citizenry. (Of course, a lot of that would go away with more reasonable people in the government.) I know that there are a lot of people that would like to see the country not be as divisive as it is right now, and Obama is the only person I see running that seems to share that ideal. Seems like a good election tactic to me.

Yeah, but bipartisanship itself has never solved a single problem. The only thing bipartisanship does is clear legislative hurdles through compromise. Obama (and a lot of DC pundit types) speak of bipartisanship as if it's a solution to problems in and of itself. It's not.

I'd love it if members of both parties gathered 'round the campfire and sang kumbaya each night while passing votes 435-0 in the House and 100-0 in the Senate, but that's not the world we live in. People disagree about stuff, and one man's "pointless feuding" is another man's "arguing about stuff that matters."

I guess my point is that we're not suddenly going to get smarter politicians to replace all the ones we have, so we might as well have ones that fight for what they think is right rather than kowtowing to an out of control executive branch. "Bipartisanship" is what got us into this mess. It's not going to get us out of it.

Agreed. And my point is that (while I have no proof of this) Obama isn't intending to crumple under the slightest pressure, but is saying that he recognizes that the ire is counterproductive.

This is generally the big problem I have with US politics. We either have bipartisanship or we have two parties fighting against each other with polar opposite views on things. Without a 3rd viable party, or more, nearly every issue that comes down either is good to both sides equally, or completely unacceptable to one side. So we miss out on the process of two opposed sides compromising to swing a third side in their favor to gain the majority. While in theory compromise should be happening with two parties, it seems more often that things are just struck down instead since the majority party can all just say no in unison.

Perhaps, but it's not politics in the US that causes there to be two parties, it's the mathematics of the voting system.

Since a plurality always wins each seat, if three significant parties exist, it is always in the benefit of two parties (usually the 2nd and 3rd) to join forces. Which just reduces things to two parties again. For example, if the Democratic candidate was polling at 40%, the Republican candidate at 35%, and a Libertarian candidate at 10%, it makes sense for the Republicans and Libertarians to join forces to get 45% and beat the Democrats. (Replace Libertarians with evangelical Christians and you have a fairly accurate representation of the last two presidential elections.) This is basically what happens with coalition governments in many parliamentary governments, except the individual parties retain their identities, which means that changes in alliances are more easily possible.

If we either had a voting system not based on winner-takes-all, or a system where seats in Congress were allocated proportionally (so that if the Libertarians got 10% of the vote, they got 10% of the seats in Congress), this would be resolved. But that is unlikely to ever actually happen.

Indeed. Having been brought up in the usual continental Eurpoean "27 parties that have to work it out" system, the anglo-saxon "winner takes all" system has always struck me as rather barbarian.
I don't think democracy really can be based on "50.00001 % gets to decide".

I can definitely understand why it happens, and I was right there voting yes in Colorado to split the electoral votes based on the percentages of the popular vote. Sadly the measure was defeated, as those opposed to it started running ad campaigns smearing they guy from California who started the proposition. They generally attacked it on the principal of "Well, if it's really so great, why isn't this guy pushing it in California?".

It does show a possibility for change in the system though, but it's going to have to be a state by state process. Makes me wonder what it takes to get something like this up for a vote.

Splitting electoral votes is about one-tenth of a step. You'd still be doing first-past-the-post voting. You'd just be conglomerating less. I'm far less interested in that than in a voting system that allowed people to vote their conscience rather than having to vote for whoever is more likely to win.

No, what got us into this mess is the unconstitutional actions of a morally corrupt President who, through distortions and outright lies was able to pressure the Republican-controlled congress into an unjustifiable war with appalling, disastrous consequences for the future of this country.

Bipartisanship is the only chance we have of surviving this fiasco as a nation, and I fear it may already be too late.

tanstaafl.

I think his point is that "bipartisanship" has come to mean "capitulation". See the essay What "bipartisanship" in Washington means for more detail.

And by "this mess", I understood it to mean "the current system of politics in America".