First off - I'm a passionate, active Obama supporter. I voted for him twice (Texas has some fun electoral wrinkles, outside the general sucking of its voting overall).

But second - this Hillary call for a debate is not a bad one. Sure, she's obnoxious, but even better, likely to be obnoxious in a Lincoln/Douglass - Hillary/Barack debate (note that he goes second because Lincoln lost that race to Douglass, as Hillary will to Barack).

(P.S. - I was right about the whole "race" speech thing in a diary almost no one read. And those who read it said 'no, he shouldn't give a speech on race' before he did. But I'm not saying to listen to me because of that. I'm wrong sometimes, too, and sometimes people listen to me when I'm wrong, which is bad. Not saying it, but strongly hinting it, which is shameless. Sorry.)

I see politics from a schizophrenic time-space continuum, through a kaleidoscopic porthole.

I'm a college professor (elitist), at a small, un-prestigious liberal arts college (a little less elitist), with a Ph.D. from UCLA (elitist), a father and grandfather who were Teamsters (anti-elitist), a wife from a Sally Struthers save-the-children poor tenement barrio in Latin America (not elitist), with an ordinary income (not elitist) and a whole lot of complicated books with massive words in several languages (including French) on the shelves (highly elitist).

But enough about me. That's just to show where I'm coming from. Basically, it's possible to be a shot-and-a-beer guy and a what-do-you-have-in-a-cabernet guy at the same time.

Which brings me to Barack Obama, elitism, and race.

In fact, for some reason, among white voters Obama performed much worse in Ohio, where he won one-third of them, than in another Midwestern industrial state, Wisconsin. Just two weeks ago he won 54 percent of white voters in the state. -- Tom Curry, MSNBC, 5 March 2008

The key words in the above quote are: "for some reason." But that phrase suggests that the reason's a mystery, but we know better. The reason is quite simply racism.

I've been re-reading Habermas lately and working on some early 18th-century periodicals for an editing project I'm doing. Both have me wondering if the modern blog-o-sphere is sufficiently like the Early Modern public sphere to help us come to a rational decision concerning who to vote for this coming election.

... until today.

I was born a Democrat. That is hardly an exaggeration. My father was a Teamster. He unloaded cargo from barges on the Mississippi River onto trucks for shipment into the midwest. His father was a Teamster back when Teamsters drove teams of horses. My father went to the University of Missouri only because his brother, after coming home from World War II, became the first member of our family to go to college. The G.I. Bill made an education financially possible for my uncle. It made an education imaginable for my father.

But the Democratic Party into which I was born, and in which I was raised, is officially dead.

This is historic. South Africa used to be our example of shame - when the U.S. and South Africa were the only nations with particular policies (no national health care, unequal civil rights laws, etc.), under apartheid. Now, it's leading on this issue. Five nations have legalized same-sex marriage, and South Africa is one of them.

I was grading a stack of papers on 18th-century British political satire on a flight from a blue spot in a bloody red state to a red sea in one of the bluest of states, and it occurred to me how similar our time period in political history is to that one. Satire is often the only response possible when you're governed by blithering idiots and no one seems to notice.

So, in the spirit of Pope, Swift, et al, and in fear of the evangelical deerslayer in the seat next to me, I started scribbling a ballad down to kill the time. This is what came out, with links to events of the day.

I usually avoid writing political poetry, because it's usually shrill and tedious. Maybe this is, too, but it's what emerged when I was writing in the coffee shop this morning. Please forgive the paranoia, but I just know those bastards have an election theft planned.

Sad news, just moved from the AP ...

Former Gov. Richards diagnosed with cancer|
Eds: will be led|
 AUSTIN (AP) -- Former Gov. Ann Richards has cancer of the esophagus and
will undergo treatment at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,
she announced Wednesday.
 Richards, 72, went in for tests Monday and got the results Tuesday,
said spokesman Bill Maddox. She is waiting to learn from officials at
M.D. Anderson as to when she can check in.
 ``She's facing this challenge,'' Maddox said.
 Richards, a Democrat, was the 45th Texas governor, serving from 1991
to 1995.