Reply #5: That must be it. This Hillary obsession really has me confused.

[Raenelle]

Why were they falling for it? It was just ol' crazy Safire, saying stupid really crazy stuff. But everyone picked up on it, and I couldn't figure it out.

They have a real Dem race. Three incredibly viable candidates in Clark, Dean and Kerry; some pretty good challengers--Gephardt, Edwards, Graham; old spoil sport for the Zell Miller Dems in Lieberman. Two of these, according to polls today, could beat Bush right now, today. And they're talking about Hillary and stalking horses and Machiavelli!???!

We get attacked by Osama's organization, and next thing you know our big enemy is Saddam--a secular Muslim nation. We insist Saddam has WMD, probably even nukes, then nada, null set, zilch, zip. They assume, really assume, that Iraqis will greet a foreign attack and occupation with cheers, candy, and rosewater. Well, grenades and candy ARE both smaller than bread boxes, I guess. And the Dems are fielding a bunch of respectable, knowledgable candidates, most of whom present a real challenge to Chimpy, and all they can see is Hillary and Machiavelli. I seriously question people's touch with reality sometimes.

I just wanted to shake some of these pundits today. You know, why don't you deal with the race that is actually in front of you. Say Hillary does get in--there will be plenty of time to deal with that then. Speculation is OK, I guess, if you have real reasons behind your speculation and you don't ignore what's really going on, breeze over what's right in front of your face, so you can talk about your imaginings about what might happen. These people, these pundits, most of them should move over to the sci-fi channel or something. I'm no hard nosed zen realist, totally attached to the here and now, but this is really ridiculous.