Ricky D, our Clinton advocate on steroids is back with what he promises is his final plea for Democrats to vote for Hillary. Somehow, I don’t believe him, but here goes…from Ricky D. in Brooklyn.

What I dislike most about some of the Obama supporters I have among my friends is that if you tell them the Republicans have guns and bullets and no interest in compromise, they smile at you wanly for you are a creature of your own limited faith.

Those who have been fighting Republicans these last fifty years just haven’t believed enough, for once the Republicans see how well meaning Obama Democrats are they will surrender their cudgels and experience the joy of dismantling the corrupt system that has kept them rich these many long years.

Implicit in this occassional (but still too often) faith-healing sideshow is the criticism of the elders. In fact, and I guess as a gesture of good faith towards the Republicans, they are far more condescending and dismissive of other democrats, then of the established GOP leadership. It is, of course, Sen. Clinton who is corrupt, who is a liar, who cannot be trusted.

Have you noticed how endorsement after endorsement for Obama comes with the teenage seal of approval. If I hear one more supporter tell me (in person or on TV) how their children opened their eyes and urged them to vote for Obama, it will be one supporter too many. (Perhaps the campaign could be called The Children’s Crusade?) One way or another it is a faith-based philosophy that - most importantly helps the believer feel smarter and better than their opponents. (At the root of every personality cult are people trying to boost their self-esteem by association.)

“Transformative” and “trandscendent” are great buzzwords for the Oprah book club, but not so hot when you’re hoping to take on the recidivists, the corporatists, the crypto-fascists and the outright loonies who have run the GOP (into the ground, I might add) these past twenty, thirty years.

You don’t enter national politics with the delusion that transcendent intent is some kind of shield of invulnerability.

Let us also be clear about Jack Kennedy’s presidency:

He was NOT a transformative president.

If so, how is it that the political landscape for the next five decades was to be dominated by the Nixons, Reagans and Bushes of this world?

Jack Kennedy was a playboy whose Daddy (once a presidential hopeful himself) used every old boy, political machine that the Democrats could rally to ensure his son’s victory. That Jack and his brother Robert would mature and change their views with experience was not guaranteed in 1960.

There was nothing transformative about his program (boost defense spending due to that “missile-gap” - yes, Kennedy painted Nixon as soft on Communism!) and reduce taxes for the very rich.

He was NOT ready from day one. Indeed, much of the drama of the tragically truncated Kennedy Administration was his having to grapple with schemes dreamed up by his predecessors. The CIA considered him a lightweight and chose to spare him all the complicated details. Far from being in charge, Kennedy kept getting bamboozled into prize winning disasters like the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.

When he finally did begin to assert himself, and demand accountability he was killed by that lone-nut (with absolutely no connection to US intelligence agencies) Lee Harvey Oswald.

Truth is, the current fracturing of the Republican Party (stabbed in the back by this decade’s version of the Dixiecrats - same geography, different hoods) will probably prove more transformative to the American political scene than whatever candidate wins the Democratic nomination.

HOWEVER, if one is truly interested in moving America forward the strategy is not to help rehabilitate these people by granting them legitimacy, but to pin them in their respective ideological camps, and keep them relatively neutralized so some serious policy goals can finally be achieved.

The problem is not Hillary Clinton just as the problem was not Al Gore, nor John Kerry nor Max Cleland nor Tom Daschle - the problem is the Republican attack machine itself (And the modern Republican party is nothing but one big attack machine; the so-called Party of ideas has only been able to hold it’s grip on power these past 15 years by focusing on one idea - attacking the democrats.) Behind that, now shattering, façade of on-message unity, the party had become a grab-bag of ideological oddballs, opportunistic hacks, and ego-maniacal demagogues. The American people are beginning to see that and they don’t like it.

Instead of focusing on disarming the GOP - now at it’s weakest in 30 years - the Obama Democrats want to forgive and forget and move on. I’m prepared to forgive, but not forget.

While I recognize that each generation since I came of age in the 60s (and very strait laced at that time, I must tell you, very much a Nixonian Republican) has had ever higher expectations of instant gratification, it is more a sign of petulant impatience then transcendence when they say they don’t want to “re-fight the battles of the ’60s”.

Oh, really? I didn’t know that those battles had been won.

It is no surprise that the “whatever” generation wants to move on. I do not doubt their idealism (though their holier-then-thou smugness somewhat degrades it) but justice and equality are not merely fashion choices, but continuums in the long battle to establish a better life for everyone.

You must understand this simple fact - that politics is a slow and arduous process which spans, not just decades, but centuries. (see, I can be condescending, too)

When someone points out (for example) that President Bush has declared a prerogative unto himself to suspend Habeas Corpus as he sees fit, saying “I don’t want to re-fight the battles of the 12th Century,” is simply not good enough.

When we vote, we should not be making a choice simply on which branding makes us feel better (It is not a Pepsi-Coke moment) but on a serious attempt to understand the ground rules and the playing field, and to advance the candidate with the best strategic plan to achieve specific goals.

In it’s failure to draw clear policy distinctions between itself and the Clinton campaign, Sen. Obama’s campaign has conjured up a personality cult instead. It is an appealing one, but this is not “American Idol”.

Besides, personality cults are un-American. (File under: George W. Bush: Compassionate Conservative, Reformer with Results, Uniter-not-a-divider, God’s anointed one and guy-you’d-like-to-have-a-beer-with. A man with no qualifications whatsoever for the high office he sought, Bush never had anything BUT his personality cult to run on.)

Better the devil you know than the Angel you don’t.

To see where a candidate stands on the issues visit Issue 2008