yes we can?

i have a new favorite website! www.barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

it's simple, it's brilliant, it's freaking hilarious! and it's the best piece of obama backlash i've seen so far. and i'm probably going to get some serious shit for this, but i'm going on record as being sick and tired of barack obama. or, maybe it's not senator obama i'm tired of -- what makes me feel all icky inside is the hero worship, the golden boy status, the fawning and swooning that seems to happen all over the place every time his name is mentioned.

come on, guys -- he's not bobby kennedy; he's not jesus h. christ; he's not even howard dean! he's smart, he's charismatic, he's run one hell of a campaign, but he's basically proving that american voters are going to elect the person that they LIKE the most. why does leadership have to be so aligned with popularity?

also, nobody seems to have noticed that the democratic party isn't doing anything differently this time around. we've just gotten to a point where the republicans suck more, so the democrats look shinier and prettier by comparison. after the PA primary election (if the PA primary even matters after texas and ohio vote tomorrow), i'm changing my voter registration to "independent". i know, i know -- that's so awfully uncreative, but my options in PA are as follows: democrat, republican, libertarian, green, independent, and other. seriously. "other"??? yeah. that's me!

i wish i had the energy and the wherewithal to put my thoughts together in some intelligent way, but at this point it's almost 2:00 a.m. on a school night, and all i've got is the following:

1. representative john lewis of georgia, the superdelegate who switched his support from clinton to obama last week, confuses me greatly. he claims that he can't go against the voters in his district, who overwhelmingly support obama, but isn't the point of the "superdelegate" to provide a different sort of measure for the democrats than the voters? i mean, if the superdelegates are just gonna go with what the voters say, why do we need the superdelegates at all?

2. i appreciate how excited everybody is about this election. i've become pretty much obsessed with the drama and the spectacle, too. but i'm also a cynic, and a sometimes-realist. i don't actually expect that the next president will be able to, erm, change things any time soon. government has a glacial pace. all the hope in the world can't speed that up. so what's gonna happen when a year from now we have somebody new in the oval office and the economy is still messy and we still have way too many soldiers in iraq?

3. although i think that nader is a crazy old man with no ability to gauge how the public views him, i gotta give props to the principle behind the alternative candidate. i wish it were someone who actually stood a chance of being relevant, but maybe this means that someday we'll have a viable candidate who isn't a hack of one of the two major parties. maybe? is this my foolish hope for change? yeah?

4. sigh...

5. god, i miss john edwards...