Political ranting

I am ridiculously sick of the entire election cycle this year: The madness is just too much. With both candidates completely botching their VP picks (Biden was a terrible choice for a liberal ticket, and Palin seems to be too controversial for a conservative ticket) and widespread chaos erupting at BOTH national conventions - this always seems to happen, but in an election year when the hit buzzword is "change", why are we seeing more of the same?

Both parties seem to have presented us with a field of only halfway-decent candidates. In an election year when the Democrats should be able to win the White House with ANY good candidate, why are both parties so close in the polls? It's almost as though neither party "really" wants to win this one - whoever's the last man standing winds up getting stuck with the problems that the Bush administration will leave behind.

McCain was doing so well - polls had him only trailing Obama by a single point, at least as his VP pick was announced; however, popular opinion seems to be turning against Palin (one source I read had the odds of her dropping out of the race as high as 12%; another blogger was running a betting pool on when she would drop out - not much faith in this one).

Obama's VP pick (in my opinion) should have been thoguht about a bit more. Joe Biden? Obama is alienating a lot of his tech-literate supporters (supposedly one of his target audiences) by choosing Biden, whose record in technological areas is less than stellar. As the "ham sandwich" to Obama's "arugula salad" (or some such nonsense; political commentators can be weird with their metaphors), and given Biden's history of supporting McCain publicly, he would seem a better candidate for a republican ticket. Whatever.

Seeing monday night's coverage of the RNC in Minnesota was depressing; the room was almost empty (at least when I was watching; it was before the speakers began). It seems that the Republican party is losing a lot of ground in this election, but it's only minutely visible in the polls - Obama leads by 6 points among registered voters, but with 5% undecided and with the RNC still ongoing, we will have to wait to see the impact of the Republican speakers on these numbers.

With the threat of the Cold War returning to haunt us (and with Putin's aggressive stances towards Georgia as the jumping-off point, why shouldn't we suspect such a thing is starting?), I just hope that whoever wins this ugly election is prepared to deal with the ongoing problems in the Middle East, as well as the re-emerging Soviet Union.

Good luck to all candidates!