I wish my fellow patriots here would stop for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and look at what we’re doing to ourselves. The vitriol I read in the comments here and at other progressive blogs is wrong-headed and may leave us with another unhappy November and bleak prospects going forward..

When I read the many commenters here who assert that, if their particular Icon doesn’t get the nomination, they’ll stay home in November; or those who threaten to waste their vote on a Nader or a write-in; or those very strange (to me) “if Clinton gets it I’m voting for McCain” and “if Obama gets it I’m voting for McCain” people, I get discouraged. As this becomes more a collision of two personality cults rather than a challenge of competing ideas, I fear we will become increasingly blinded to what is really at stake.

This may be heresy, but I’m not all that thrilled with either of our potential candidates. They are both corporatists with a populist bent – not progressives. Look at their health care plans; both of them are full of corporate fat. We’ve had Medicare for years. It is one of our most successful programs ever, and, since it is in business to deliver health care rather than profits, it is 5 to 10 times more efficient than private health plans. But our candidates both find political expediency in turning it over to “private” interests. Dissect their other proposals and you will find the same.

The prize is not the presidency. The presidency has been nearly ruined by Bush, both by what he has done, but more importantly by what he has undone. The “unitary executive” – a concept that seeks to expand the idea of “commander in chief” from just the nation’s military forces to the nation and the people as a whole. This authoritarian coup d’etat has been nearly achieved by the installation of four Judicial Fundamentalists (Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts) on the Supreme Court. One more in the mold of Scalia, as promised by McCain, and not only will the court be lost in terms of cultural, religious, civil and reproductive rights, but there is the far greater danger of the exalted executive who reins supreme over the congress, the courts, the constitution and the people. Lest we forget, in America, We the People are sovereign. The unitary executive seeks to rob us of our sovereignty and invest in a single man the power of a king. Could anything be more antithetical to everything America has stood for? The prize is not the presidency. The prize is the preservation of our liberty.