Can McCain handle multiple responsibilities?

John McCain announced he'd suspend his campaign, asked Obama to do the same, and called for postponing Friday's debate.

If a man is unable to address the business of the day and carry on his obligations, then how is he going to handle the job of president?

This financial "crisis" (and I have an economics background, so I readily get how severe this could get) didn't suddenly spring up---it's been building from years of ignoring the problem for political expediency (yes, from both major parties). If it only now needs someone's attention, that person is clueless about the U.S. economy.

We've known for a century that an industrial economy cannot place blind faith in Adam Smith's agricultural model. The unregulated 19th century led to exactly the monopolies T. Roosevelt started to address. C. Coolidge proclaimed "the business of America is business," and when his successor ignored the written plea of a thousand economists, the market crashed in 1929---taking "non-market" people with it. Eventually, FDR introduced regulations to pull us out and better manage the economy.

From there it's been a free ride. Economic booms were wasted. Then suddenly Reagan told us everything was simple again, and that morning in America, Adam Smith rose from the dead, unable to address the realities of an industrial economy. So the largest creditor nation became the largest debtor nation in just eight years, and the market crashed again in 1987----along with a Savings & Loan scandal resolved at the expense of the taxpayers.

Then came the largest peacetime expansion in the history of the U.S., and deficits turned to surpluses. But we were too worried about Clinton getting a blowjob to pay attention.

So more deregulation, under the fantasy that all deregulation (and any tax cut) is good. The Treasury will magically create the money. Osama bin Laden attacked the U.S. while the Bush Administration was asleep at the wheel. Then they used that tragedy to slam through the neo-com agenda of more deregulation, stripping away Constitutional rights, and starting a war by lying about its connection to 9/11. Bush made Osama a success by insuring the attacks would indeed undermine U.S. financial interests. We're spending a fortune, we've sacrificed our rights, and Osama is untouched.

So our deficits are soaring, with no end in sight. We're still pretending we don't need to address Medicare and Social Security, even though doing so now will prevent the next crisis. We spend more on health care than any other nation, but we don't have health care for 25% of our citizens---so we pay instead in the emergency rooms.

And now, after almost eight years of Bush, we face another financial crisis, again in banking, and while people lose their homes, even more money is stolen from taxpayers while we're told we must keep taxes low on the wealthy.

Yet Warren Buffet is a Democrat. Go figure.

People need to stop voting against their own interests.

And McCain needs to be a man and have a debate he knows he can't win---and can't win for good reason.

Writer

Super delegates aren't the problem

Lately I’ve heard quite a few people complain that super delegates subvert the election process, that their vote unfairly counts more. That's oversimplifying it.

First, while Democrats have the super delegates, Republican votes are magnified too by the "winner take all" philosophy toward state contests---this is what has allowed McCain to take the lead. Thus, a minority of voters and/or a minority of states can dictate the nominee, provided that nominee wins states with large numbers of delegates.

On the Democratic side, super delegates or no, everything is still up for grabs between Clinton and Obama, as the Democrats count delegates proportionally--meaning a candidate can lose a state while still gaining delegates. [This primary may well need to be resolved at the convention---and there's nothing wrong with that.]

I also dislike the super delegate system, and frankly, the party itself didn't mean for it to work the way it's playing out and may scrap it in the future. Still, it's not as simple as certain people getting extra votes.

80% of the process is the popular vote. The thinking was that such a majority would decide the nomination. The other 20%, the super delegates, were created to make sure Democrats got to the convention with a clear nominee, all battles settled--NOT to hand pick a winner.

We also need to remember that democracy in America is representational, not absolute. Further, these delegates didn't just appear--they've been elected, over and over and over (that's how they rose so high in the party), and were chosen by others elected over and over and over. Consequently, they were indirectly chosen by the voters. I don't like it when Bush vetoes a bill because he personally has a different ideology (in fact, I find it an abuse of his power, one that defies the will of the American people on such issues as stem cell research), but clearly one could argue he was elected to wield that power (and Congress can still override him if support for the bill can gather a 2/3 majority).

Super delegates aren't the only way people get more voting power. Remember all those candidates who have nice dropped out of the race? Their delegates can now vote however they wish---technically unguided by the voting public. They might follow the recommendation of their former candidate--giving that person considerable voting power, but then, one could argue that power was earned via the state primary elections. And what of the caucus states? Those elections are FAR from over--the caucus is only the first step, and again, many of those delegates now find themselves free to pick new candidates.

And finally, all we've done is elect delegates to represent us at the convention. We can't force them to vote as pledged. Yes, they almost always do--but not always. [The same is true of the electoral college, incidentally.]

More problematic in terms of fairness is the mess created by the Michigan and Florida contests. Since those states broke the party’s rules by moving their primaries before Super Tuesday, leadership stripped those states of their convention delegates, and the candidates agreed not to campaign. Hillary Clinton won those states anyway--but then her name was the only one on the ballot! Not exactly fair--and now that the election is close, she wants those delegates seated.

Unless either she or Obama pull ahead significantly enough to decide the contest, this will be the real mess for the Democrats.

Writer