I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

Tonight is more exciting than the lead up to a play off game for me. I mean, sure when the Twins make the playoffs and are about to play that day, I get a little excited and can't really focus. But this is different... I am really interested to see how this plays out. Two people, like boxers in the ring, trading canned one-liners and heat-deflecting anecdotes... I'm not scared for Obama. I'm more worried about how self-destructive Hillary will be for her party.

I was thinking about it today, while watching Mette run around the dog park. The Clintons are fighting exactly what brought them to power. It is truly ironic. They started in the DNC stumping for George McGovern -- a change candidate that so terrified the elite of the DNC that he was one reason they cited for creating Superdelegates. Then, they came to office as the non-Washington hicks from Arkansas -- give change a chance. And yet today, they are bashing Barack for not being experienced, for asking for too much change too fast, and for being naive. Hillary's husband was one of the worst Presidents in history during his first two years, but he caught on and I think most people would say he ended up at around the middle of the pack as Presidents go. So I don't get it.

Then I started thinking more. (Always dangerous.) When has a Democrat won an election for president when he (or she) has not been a change candidate? The only person I could think of was Lyndon B. Johnson, but he won due to a sympathy vote over JFK. He didn't even run for a second term, because it was obvious he was the establishment. Clinton won as a candidate of change. Carter won as a candidate of change. JFK definitely won -- or cheated his way in depending on how you look at it -- as a breakthrough minority candidate of change (i.e., he is the only Catholic, the only non-Protestant, to ever be President). FDR, believe it or not represented change too when he was elected. He just stuck around for a while. Truman was establishment, but again I have to think the sympathy vote eked it out for him over Dewey, but I suppose you could put that down as a non-change candidate... my point is that Hillary can't win. It's like nominating Kerry or Humphrey or something. Good God! The writing was on the wall four years ago that the Democrats needed a non-establishment candidate when Howard Dean was doing so well... and then was squashed by the DNC machine and given the paltry consolation prize of becoming the organization's head. Change would have won that year too, I'm convinced. Voting for Kerry was painful... it was like voting for your high school principal by choosing either the current really mean one or the Assistant Principal who is known as being just as mean. What? John Edwards did really well in 2004 simply because he was the only candidate of change left by the time South Carolina rolled around. And this time he did respectably well, considering the people he was up against, because people remembered that.