Let's dump the horserace notion, please

[Cross posted over at Daily Kos]

I posted this comment on the recommended thread about the tip heard round the world.

How does her (Hillary) tip story relate to her stance on Global Warming? Or Healthcare? Or her stance on the Constitution? Or anything else for that matter?

Stupid obsession with parsing every word somebody says, every body movement, every event or location they physically appear in, it's beyond meaningful. IT SERVES NO PURPOSE, except to sell crap on teevee and does nothing for the political process.

Just like if John Edwards doesn't win Iowa he is done. How many delegates does Iowa have? And how many are needed to win the nomination?

[ed-this is expanded from my comment hereon down] This is not a game, people, let's try treating it appropriately.

Yet Iowa could destroy his campaign, ACCORDING TO THE NEWS MEDIA and parroted all over the blogs like this one (Daily Kos, not mine fer dogs sake!!).

How does that serve democracy? How does that benefit me? Or you?

Rather than debate whether somebody's healthcare plan plays well with this or that group of voters, lets debate about how to make it happen, what are the best mechanisms or programs or POLICIES that can provide us with national healthcare for all Americans.

Because that's the kind of thing that matters, not who has the best soundbite, the best debate performance, who looked effing "Presidential" under the glare of the camera and under the inane and disgusting self serving questions of lazy fat assholes like Tim Russert.

I hear that somebody is working on making ethanol from tree farms, how does that affect agricultural policy, is ethanol the best route to go for cutting greenhouse gasses and our dependence on terrorist oil? Not the same issues, btw, greenhouse gasses and oil dependence.

Why does it matter if a candidate criticizes another candidate? On their policies, that's what I want to know, it doesn't mean anything except that they don't agree. This isn't the schoolyard, people, yet that's how everybody acts, and it's stupid and serves no purpose except the media narrative. And the media, people, is out to kill us, they are as much the enemy as bin Laden, scrath that, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Iowa and New Hampshire do not represent me, and I'm tired of the news media and then all the campaign experts and political operatives who have no real deep abiding values, allowing those states to decide who my parties candidate will be. They did it to Howard Dean, and we got John Kerry, who still beat Bush if everything had been done properly. They did it to Al Gore, they're doing it again, and I say that THIS MUST END.

So long as you all insist that money is the defining aspect of a political campaign, and that's what all this momentum bullshit during the early primaries is all about, then we will continue to get lackluster, half assed, timid politicians, and no leadership.