It’s really perverse how hitting the snooze button on the alarm is like a trigger to make me fall immediately and deeply asleep, only to be rudely awakened again 9 minutes later when the alarm goes off again. On some deep psychological level I think this must be ruining my life.

Now that the Democratic primary is really (more or less) over, three things:

1. Regarding misogyny, it seems true to me that our society has a greater taboo against public denigration based upon race than it does against public denigration of gender. So yeah, perhaps Hillary (two Ls) was stereotyped and gender-bashed in ways that Barack (with a C) was not race bashed. It was subtle, but sometimes that’s the worst kind of critique. I’m sure w/in a year or two there will be a dozen books analyzing this
2. It would be really cool to have an Obama/Clinton ticket, but can you imagine being President Obama w/both Bill and Hill in your White House telling you what to do all the time? I can’t see it working.
3. Lots of things are younger than McCain.

Listening to the NPR tell me that groups of Hilary Clinton supporters are going to vote for McCain if Obama becomes the Democratic candidate. Exqueeze me? You think the media and the Democratic leadership have been unfair to Clinton because she’s a woman, so your response is to vote for yet another old white male who believes far less of what you believe than does Obama? This is a strategy? This is reasonable? This makes any sense whatsoever?

I don’t think Hilary should stop this madness because I’m a misogynist. I think Hilary should stop this madness because she’s encouraging the kind of insanity voiced by these supporters. She could easily have put an end to this weeks ago by simply saying, ok, it’s not going to happen this year, let’s all get behind Obama. She could have done that w/a great deal of dignity, she could have claimed victory in many ways, and she could have kicked McCain in the balls by helping to further unify the Democratic party. Instead, she fights on, encouraging extremism and division w/in her own party, and for what?

As the NPR story says, someone has to lose. If you want to say that Hilary lost because too many people just want to keep women down, well, ok. So does that mean Obama won because so many people want to lift black men up? Could it be Obama ran a better campaign? Could it be his speeches and positions on issues just resonated more with more voters? Could that even be possible?

Nah, No way. It’s all about woman-bashing. Absolutely.

Grrr.

So why were all the polls in New Hampshire wrong? Supposedly Hilary was on her last legs; a solid loss in New Hampshire and her own staff was planning to tell her to pull out of the race. The polls all had her losing by 5-13 points, yet we’re supposed to believe that just because her eyes got a little watery in response to a question that thousands of voters in New Hampshire changed their minds and said, “Hey, that Hilary would make a great president. I’m voting for her!” Sorry, I’m just not buying it. They use electronic voting machines in New Hampshire primaries, don’t they? Hmph.

In other news, I’m still looking for an adequate way to collect notes on my cases and stay on top of The Caseload that Ate My Brain. I know someone out here has been in this pickle; how did you get out of it? Still seeking suggestions…

Case Management: Following up on yesterday’s post about some solution to help me track my work on my many cases, I’ve had a chance to search the Google for options and so far, not much. The best candidates I’ve found are Notes Organizer Deluxe and myBase, but I haven’t had a chance to actually try either out to see if it would really do what I’m looking for. Another option might be something like Filemaker, which might allow me to more or Iess design the database I need, rather than trying to find one that works for me. I certainly don’t need an entire case management package; our office is going to use Justware for that whether I like it or not. But, like I said, Justware is so awful (primarily because it’s so *slow*) that it won’t even come close to doing what I need. The search continues; suggestions welcome! What do you use?

Presidential Candidate: I admit, I’m just starting to pay more than passing attention to the campaign, but one thing is immediately clear: Barack Obama wins hands down when it comes to public speaking, both on radio and television interviews and in big speeches. The man is just awesome when it comes to stringing one sentence after another in a convincing, genuine, inspiring, and persuasive way. His speech last night compared to Hillary’s or McCain’s? Those two are not even in the same league as he is. For that reason alone I’m almost sold on Obama. After the last seven years of a pResident who could barely speak a single sentence properly, I’ll admit I’m swooning at the prospect of having a president like Obama who would make such a great impression every time he opens his mouth.

You know, I’m not all excited about Al Gore getting into the presidential race, but I know one thing: We should be listening to what this man is saying, and not just about global warming. In an excerpt from his new book, Gore writes:

…our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.

The rule of reason. It almost sounds like a new romanticism, but hey, I’m all for it.

Hooray! Resurgent Democrats win control of the House! Democrats still need VA and MT to win the Senate, but in VA, Webb (the Dem) has declared victory and is ahead w/almost all votes counted (although there will almost certainly be a recount). In MT, Tester (the Dem) is ahead by 3,000 votes but one county — where I live and also Conrad Burns’ “home” county — is having a recount because of human error with the electronic counting machines. Of course, a recount raises the specter (in my mind, at least) of dirty tricks and vote-rigging—the count didn’t come out how the losers wanted, so they have a quick recount to make sure their candidate gets just enough votes to win. That wouldn’t happen, though, would it?

My paranoia aside, welcome back to divided and accountable government! (Let’s hope.) Is this election result a wholesale rejection of the Bush regime and its congressional lapdogs? Uh, yeah. But get ready for the Republican spin about this not being a mandate for Democrats, being about local issues not national or global issues, etc. Bullshit. People were freaking voting for Democratic governors just to send Bush a message on Iraq.

It’s about freaking time, is all I can say. Thanks America, for finally waking up and standing up to the “vote for Democrats and the terrorists win” lies that have kept the Republicans afloat since 9/11/01. Finally finally finally we’re going to get some reasonable discussion of real issues rather than having to put up w/a steady drumbeat of fearmongering and demagoguery that’s done nothing but make the world a less stable and secure place. Of course, the president still has the lead on foreign policy, but at least we can hope he’ll be held accountable for the most egregious of his many, many mistakes.

Finally, while I’m absolutely thrilled with the results, my happiness is dogged by two things. First, some of the Democrats who won last night are eerily like their Republican counterparts on many issues—anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc. Maybe that’s not a big deal, but it does seem to confirm that the political possibilities in this country have shifted far to the right on the whole. As L. put it, we’ve moved so far to the right that Reagan Republicans are now Democrats. That is not good.

Second, the Democrats have a lot of work to do and I don’t personally have a great deal of confidence that they’re up to the task. This is especially true if the Democrats do take the Senate (and I’m still very hopeful they will)—in that case, there will be no excuse if they don’t get things done domestically, and there will also be no one to blame if whatever the Dems do turns out unpopular. So they’ve got a huge challenge; here’s hoping they’re ready to meet it or Dems are going to really unhappy again in 2008.