http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/218241And so it's about six weeks until Pennsylvania gets to play its big role in the Democratic primary, and already I'm thinking:
Dear God, make it stop.
Last week there was a rally for Hillary Clinton in Harrisburg. Local Democats are hoping to get a bigwig in town, and who knows! Maybe even Bill Clinton will pay us a visit. Lock up your wives and daughters.
Kidding. But exciting as it all may be for Pennsylvanians, who don't usually get to play a big role in the selection of candidates, I can't help but think this drawn-out campaign is a bad thing for the Democratic Party, and maybe the country.
In one respect, I'm sure GOP nominee John McCain is loving it, though in another it's got to be tough — unsure whether Hillary or Barack Obama is going to be the nominee, he in effect has to run against both. And with all the spotlights turned to the Hillary-Obama race, he's left over to the side of the stage a bit, not really getting the attention he might if things were more settled.
The longer that race goes on, however, the better off McCain may ultimately be. Hillary and Obama are wounding one another; indeed, Hillary's hardball tactics have garnered some attention in the McCain camp, as they've pinpointed some of Obama's weak spots. That, along with all the money the Democratics are burning through, suggest they might have fewer dollars in the fall.
And of course, by then much of the air may have gone out of the balloon. There's been a tremendous amount of excitement this campaign season, but when it goes from sprint to marathon, you tend to lose people along the way.
Much of the enthusiasm, thus far, seems to have been for Obama. That's not to take away from the enthusiasm of Hillary supporters. But I have to admit, I don't quite get Hillary's appeal.
She's competent, absolutely, and she has some experience — but that's all a canard, anyway. As if a President Obama, or any president, isn't going to be surrounded by a cadre of advisers who have spent entire careers in the halls of government, formulating policy and the like.
Policy-wise, I think she's worlds better than what we've got now, though on the issue of the war in Iraq, I'm simply not convinced that there's a whole lot of space between what she thinks and what John McCain thinks — regardless of what Hillary might be saying now.
Most daunting of all, though, is the degree to which Hillary pumps new life into a conservative movement that has been on the wane. I'm of the opinion that the movement needs to crash and burn before the country can actually move forward. But Hillary is far and away the premier villain in the right-wing universe, and one gets the feeling that hating her is what gets Rush Limbaugh up in the morning. Indeed, Limbaugh specifically called for Republicans to vote for Hillary in Texas and Ohio. They won't, of course, support her in the general election.
We want to perpetuate this?
I'm sure Hillary supporters will say this is unfair, that no party should let its actions to be dictated by its opponents, that she is indeed competent and that what the country needs now is a steady hand. Maybe.
Still, I can't shake the feeling that the country sees the November election as a demarcation line, or wants to see it that way. People want to move on, I think — past the toxic partisanship, past this idea that all you need is 51 percent and then you can govern as if you've got a mandate. People want to put the past behind them, but Hillary seems of the past, a vote to go back to the future.
I just don't know that you can. And even if you can, I don't know that you should.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News.
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