Election talk

It's been awhile since I talked about the election. The end of the Democratic primary kinda ended the fun of talking about the election, 'cause John McCain's boring, man! ;-)

Neither candidate has selected their running mate yet. I stick by my suggestion of Bill Richardson for Barack Obama, because the African American/Hispanic ticket would be historic in setting a precedent, and such a ticket is going to be too "juicy" for the media to resist gushing about. Forget the others - including Hillary. This ticket is the ticket.

For McCain, I thought about this some more, and it seems to me that he would need to pick either a Gen. Colin Powell or a Dr. Condolezza Rice, or perhaps Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. OR, if McCain HAS to go with another white guy, then my suggestion is Sen. Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is a maverick for his party much like McCain is for the GOP. Their campaign slogan could be "Obama *talks* change; we've been delivering it for years!" The "maverick ticket" just might be enough to draw interest both from the media and from the voters. McCain's going to need something to counter Obama's rising star - especially if O takes my advice of selecting Bill Richardson.

Now let's examine how they're running their campaigns so far. Despite the generous coverage that O's been getting, he hasn't had a corresponding huge surge in the polls. Why is that? I really don't believe that it's because of race, because during the primary season, he managed to beat all of the white dudes, one Hispanic dude, and a woman to get the required number of votes to be the party's nominee. That is an accomplishment that makes anyone take notice.

Yet, O couldn't "get the job done" and put Hillary Clinton away right away. Granted, Hill's no slouch either, but O kept running into difficulties that made the primary season agonizingly long (but certainly entertaining for political pundits such as myself!). What at first looked like it was going to be a rout ended up a slugfest to the finish, with O finally lunging across the finish line on the last day of the primaries. He's locked up the nomination, and yet he's still not pulling them in like he's been expecting to.

Now let's look at Mac. While O and Hill were duking it out, he was on Easy Street, having wrapped up the GOP nod early. He should have been using that time to get his house in order so that he'd be ready for whichever Dem got the nod. And yet, he often looks very UNprepared, and is often reacting to something O said or did rather than making the news himself. Why was he so unready?

Any candidate with the free ride that he had should have been all over the respite preparing to do battle with the eventual nominee. To have not only been unready, but to look so bad is just plain unprofessional - especially for someone who has been in politics as long as he has. Someone somewhere in his campaign staff screwed up royally in this shocking lack of preparedness. Perhaps the blame should be on Mac himself. If he loses, then he really has only himself to blame.

As for myself, even if both candidates take my suggestions for running mates, I'm still not sure I'd vote for either one. Both candidates have views that I don't like - enough so that I might actually vote third party for the first time in my life. Yeah, yeah, "wasted vote" and all that, but change won't come about unless voters have the courage to express their dissatisfaction, and voting 3rd party is one way of doing that. Even so, I will be keeping up with the latest news and tidbits, as that is what political pundits such as myself live for.

I also need to get back to making editorial cartoons, because us edtoonists live for times like these. Plus, both O and Mac have faces that an edtoonist loves!