Way down Sunday night blues

What the ... . Oh, never mind.

The Democratic Party is manuevering through piranha-infested waters on a crusty raft with rotten rope holding it together, right? Well, maybe not. I've heard speculation to the affect that Dean is a ringer, a paper-candidate used to distract the GOP from the real dark-horse candidates (Kerry and Edwards). I laughed at my friend Mike's chortling about this proposed secret plan, but I don't believe it's the fact. I think, rather, that the Dems are flogging themselves silly with poll-fueled data and media-based opinions that, in the end, won't mean a thing to the average voter.

Now that Kerry has a little momentum the media will have to reverse course and revise its angle of dangle. I don't believe Dean is out of the race, although I do believe his primal screech into the microphone after the Iowa results were tallied damaged his campaign, though not irretrievably. I wonder if Dean would accept a vice president position if offered by Kerry? Nah! Not bloody likely.

I'm continuously baffled by the willingness of the American people to allow G.W. to push through agendas that, ultimately, make the U.S. look like a mob-run nation. Goons, buffoons and loons people the administration's cabinet and the media sucks up to Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and the mind-police as if it were the patriotic thing to do - though I would submit that Bush has undermined patriotism (at least American patriotism) so as to make it unrecognizable to anyone past the age of 40.

And the youth of America seems to be myopic and uninformed, to a great extent. Am I being negative, paranoid, cynical. You bet! But what's happening in this country today harkens back to the age of McCarthy (the Red-baiting alcoholic who destroyed lives willy-nilly for the sake of self-aggrandizement).

The so-called "Patriot Act," coupled with Bush's environmental record and his reckless spending plan is creating fertile ground for chaos and job losses that will exceed even the Reagan administration's disastrous legacy.

And yet, the Democrats seem unable to separate themselves from the Republican platform - at least not clearly enough so that the man on the street can tell you the difference between Kerry and Dean, or Edwards and Lieberman. The pundits say the Democrats must move to the center if they have any hope of winning against Bush, but I say the Democrats must stake out a platform that stands so high and clearly defined that it eliminates the middle, the right or the left. Somebody has to step up with a vision that surpasses all previous visions from either party and puts a sharp delineation into focus for the American voter. Dean, I thought, had done that up to a point, but now he's struggling to stay afloat and, therefore, is resorting to tried and true (read hackneyed) political gambits to restore his credibility.

Sure makes for an interesting race, but it bodes no good for the Dems without a clear frontrunner with November quickly approaching.

Ah, what the hell. I'm rambling, so I'll say sayonnara for now. And good luck!