The minutiae of American Presidential politics is not to everyone’s taste, to be sure. I’m certainly not all clued in myself. However, now that we’ve got both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced as running (well, exploratory committees) it could in fact be interesting this time around. John Edwards is also a pretty sure fire runner.
Now, of course, I don’t want three liberals like this to get anywhere near the White House: I’d much rather Ron Paul who has just announced he’ll be running for the Republican nomination (he’s closer, much, to the classically liberal position).
But I think it’s going to be hugely, massively, fun to see the twin problems of race and gender being fought over. There’ll be those who do run entirely racially based political campaigns (the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons) claiming that Obama is not really black (I’ll lay good odds that at least some people claim that he’s not really black as he’s of direct African descent, and thus has not shared the genetic and cultural burden of slavery) and on the other side there’ll be those who fall over their own feet desperately trying to claim some reason to oppose him other than the fact that he’s black.
Similarly with Clinton and "Is America ready for a Woman President?" stuff. I’m sure it is although not this one (at least I hope not).
However, fun as all this is going to be to watch, do remember that there’s still two years to go. There might not be enough fun to cover all of that time span.
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