Iron Man and shit

Right now, at this moment, Rotten Tomatoes has Iron Man at 94% with 151 reviews.

Ummm... that's Schindler's List territory. Iron Man may kick ass, but come on!!!

I haven't seen Iron Man yet, and I probably won't see it for at least a few weeks, but last year's Oscar winner, No Country for Old Men is at 94% with 196 reviews. (I have that on DVD sitting here, but I haven't watched it yet, 'cuz I'm lame.)

Seriously, there is no way that Iron Man is that good.


***

I live in Hoosierville and we get to weigh in on the Democratic primary in a few days. I've been pro-Obama since about last summer, but I was never a fan of the Clintons' policies, hence why I voted Nader in 2000 (the first election I could vote in). Seven years of Bush is enough to make even a radical lefty like me look back on the Clinton years with nostalgia, but ever since Hillary celebrated "winning" Florida and Michigan, I've just come to despise her more and more. It's more than simple "personality politics" as some bobble heads who get paid way too much to spout bullshit would say - Hillary Clinton's brand of politics is poison for the Democratic Party.

Look at her campaign - they had the money advantage for a long time, they had name recognition, and they had the support of the "Democratic Party Establishment." Remember when Hillary Clinton was the "inevitable" nominee? What happened to that? Why can't she "close the deal" against Obama?

She blew it, pure and simple.

She believed her own hype, surrounded herself with lackeys and spent all her campaign money on "Super Tuesday." She did not have any real organization in the states after the February 5th elections. Her campaign assumed she would have wrapped up the nomination by then and essentially forfeited the entire month of February, which is when Obama made his biggest gains. That series of ~20% victories in a row essentially won him the pledged delegate race.

If that's how Hillary Clinton's primary campaign went, why would anyone expect her to do better in the general election? Isn't conventional wisdom that this election is an "inevitable" win for the Democratic party?

My mother has said she doesn't really care if it's Hillary or Obama, but she's thinking about voting for Hillary. I told her that voting for Hillary is essentially voting for the Democratic Party to split in August, that every time Hillary wins a state, she uses it to question the legitimacy of Obama's nomination and risks splitting the party in half at the convention by usurping the pledged delegate count via coup by superdelegates.

If the superdelegates go for Hillary when Barack has the pledged delegate lead, the Democratic Party will be sundered for at least a generation. Why would the African-American community, the Democratic Party's most reliable voting bloc, continue to support a party that screwed an African-American candidate out of the nomination in favor of a white candidate who performed worse in the primary elections? They may not start voting Republican, but if they just stopped voting at all or moved towards a third party, that would be devastating for non-right wing politics and policy - essentially handing the Republican Party another 20 years of free reign to then destroy our country through bad policy. Furthermore, the under 40 crowd, such as myself, who have so fervently donated to and worked on behalf of the Obama campaign are *not* going to simply shrug their shoulders and do the same for Hillary in that scenario - they may not vote for McCain, but instead they may not vote at all, and may not be there for the next election, either.

The Obama campaign signifies a transformational moment for the Democratic Party. These Obama voters, donors and volunteers can be the foundation for the Democratic Party and for liberal and progressive politics for a lifetime. All my life, it's been playing to the right wing Republican tune, from Reagan to Bush, to Newt Gringrich to Tom Delay, to George W. Bush. Obama can be the first of many election cycles where *we* have the money advantage, the grassroots organizational advantage and the issues advantage.

Not only do I believe that Obama is a better candidate against McCain than Clinton, I think that *even if* Obama were to lose to McCain, this infrastructure would last and carry us to victory in future elections. I've always felt it was better to stay true and lose an election than to win by triangulating and pandering, because when you do that, you end up passing and enacting horrible, horrible shit, and then what's really the point of having won in the first place? Ronald Reagan lost the 1976 primary to Gerald Ford before coming back in 1980 and redefining American politcs for the next 20 years - to the detriment of the majority of Americans today.

If the Democratic Party superdelegates hand the nomination to Clinton when she did worse, that foundation may not be there ever again. If it goes to Obama, whether he wins or loses, it will be established and ready to go for years to come.

My mother's response was, "what if Clinton wins the pledged delegate count?" I told her I, and the majority of Obama supporters would be there for her in the fall and beyond, BUT in order to do that, she's have to win by 70% of the vote in EVERY SINGLE PRIMARY REMAINING. My mother thought I was exaggerating, so I dug up this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2185278/

If you scroll down a bit, there's a pledged delegate calculator for the remaining states in the primary elections. If you set every remaining contest to 69% for Clinton, *still loses the pledged delegate count by 1!*

If you set every remaining contest to 70% for Clinton, only then does she beat Obama by 8 delegates.

EVERY CONTEST THAT SHE DOES NOT WIN WITH 70% OF THE VOTE, SHE ONLY NEEDS A LARGER PERCENT OF THE VOTE IN EACH REMAINING CONTEST.

And that is why, in this point in the game, each vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to undermine the Democratic Party.