United Colors of Democrats

I loved the placement of candidates at the New Hampshire debate telecast on CNN this afternoon -- Hillary in the center, Obama to her left, Edwards to her right, and increasingly irrelevant candidates placed further and further out on the fringes. I taped the debate using a (gasp) VCR, and fast forwarded through much of what Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel had to say. Joe Biden came through with some straight talk at the beginning of the debate, but he got fast forwarded some too. Eventually, I ended up fast forwarding through almost the whole second half of the debate. I guess I lost interest because it's impossible to know what these candidates will really do with Iran and Pakistan and the G-8 for that matter once they're in office. The political reality of a nasty, partisan, "wide open" campaign will have so changed these people that they'll probably hardly be recognizable at the end of the campaign. Mark my words, whoever's left standing at the end of this thing will again have a razor-thin margin to govern with. All the candidates on the Democratic side are against the war. All the Republicans are in favor of it, except Ron Paul. The war won't be over by the time of the election, and it probably won't end until well into the next President's term. The divisive question of whether to "end the war now" or "stay on the offensive" will be the deciding question of the campaign. Obama has been consistently anti-war, so that issue will be his key message. Whether it gives him the edge he needs to win is, of course, still up for debate.