Will There Ever Be Another Democratic President?

I joked with several folks on Friday that I wanted McCain to win - because whoever inherits this mess of a country is going to be blamed for not being able to clean it up within the next four or eight years.

So let McCain get elected, deal with the mess, then Barak can run and win. Yesterday I really believed I had come to some peace with the idea of a McCain victory. But today as I watch myself sink into yet another election-induced depression, I realize now (and should have yesterday) that I was whistling in the dark.

I despair that we will ever have another Democratic president. While that sounds like an exaggeration, I don't think it is. Nora Ephron's take on the debate last night was one of the first time I've heard one of us liberals speak the truth about how we choose our elected officials. She really, really gets it -- that elections in this country are no longer about substance or issues. They are ONLY about appearances.

Obscene wealth and and years of media deregulation engineered by Republicans (and signed on to by Democrats in Congress) have created a country where many of us simply don't care about reality. Liberals want to believe that many Americans don't understand that the war in Iraq isn't about terrorism. They're wrong. It's not that we don't know; it's that we don't care. As long as there is an appearance of taking action (kicking some ass), we're happy.

I felt some hope after Barak's nomination acceptance speech, which I summed up as: Barak to McCain, "You want to go? Let's go." My dad's response was "Finally a real fight."

And then came last night, when, as Nora Ephron said, "we watched Obama miss opportunity after opportunity to score a knockout punch...." She also commented on "Obama's shirt, which was too loose around his neck, and which was another reason why I thought he had lost the debate -- that, along with his incredibly irritating habit of closing his eyes while standing up." Many people in America make their decisions on who to vote for based on whether candidates "appear" in charge. And sorry, dude, but looking like you got a scrawny chicken neck sticking out of your shirt isn't going to do it for crowd that wants a maverick, "manly" president.

Could it be that women are far more able than men to see who really won - and who will win in November - precisely because we tend to pay more attention to appearances?

So I'm back to those art supplies and reminding myself our country might survive a McCain presidency. I believe Democrats can successfully govern our country. But I'm going to have to do some mental gymnastics to fool myself into believing that we have what it takes to actually get elected.