Boom!

I didn't participate in the Super Tuesday this week, even though I live in New York and we were one of the almost two dozen states voting in the presidential primaries.

It's not that I hadn't planned on voting, I really intended to go to the polls this week. The problem is that New York is one of the closed primary states. This means that you have to be registered with one of the political parties to vote in their primary. I really don't like to declare myself a member of a party so I have always registered as an independent. In several of the past states I have lived in, like Illinois and Washington, you can vote in the primary without registering with a party. You just walk up on Election Day and the poll worker asks you which ballot you want. I like that way of doing things. It seems more democratic.

I decided I would change my registration to the Democratic Party so that I could vote in the primary. Unfortunately I was not aware of when the deadline to do that was and I missed it. So that sucked. Not just for me, but also for Dennis Kucinich. My not being able to give him my vote would probably cut his total by a third. Poor Dennis.

Well, it didn't matter anyway since Dennis dropped out before Super Tuesday. It did get me to thinking who I would have switched my vote to if I had been able to vote.

It pretty much comes down to Barack Obama.

There are several reasons I suppose. After the last seven years this country really need a leader who can speak the English language, or at the very least pronounce the word nuclear correctly. We could also use someone who is such an uplifting orator, as Barack is, instead of a guy who smirks and accuses all of us who disagree with his policies of being traitors or "surrendering" to terrorists. Or I should say, "Trrhrrst" since Bush doesn't actually use vowels to say that word.

But for all of Obama's good points those aren't really the biggest reasons to vote for him over Hillary. No, it's because he's not a Baby Boomer. With the exception of Kucinich, I don't want Baby Boomers in charge of anything anymore. They had their chance and they fucked it up.

Bill Clinton, our first Boomer president, kicked the most vulnerable of our society off of welfare and gave that money to big corporations, including no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Let's not even forget that he ruined any chance to do any good by not being able to keep his dick in his pants. And instead of fighting for the rights of homosexuals like he promised, he signed the ridiculous "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy that has continued the persecution of gays in the military. He also signed the "Defense of Marriage Act" in the dark of night.

There is not enough room on my blog to rehash what is wrong with the current Baby Boomer in the White House.

The sad thing is that I'm exactly the kind of guy the Boomers could have won over. I wanted the Boomers to fulfill their generation's promise. The generation that spoke out against the Vietnam War and for civil rights, human rights, equality for women, reproductive choice and a host of other things in which I strongly believe.

But these are not the same people.

I would have loved to vote for the John Kerry (technically not a Baby Boomer) who sat in front of a Senate committee and asked them how you "ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake." The same John Kerry who renounced him medals.

But this is not the same John Kerry who ran for president. The John Kerry I got the option of voting for is the one who said he didn't believe in gay marriage, life begins at conception and played up his war hero statue for a war that he had previously called a mistake.

I also would have crawled over broken glass to vote for the Hillary Rodham who spoke out against the war at her college graduation and urged her generation to fight the status quo. Is that the person who is running for president? Not by a long shot.

No, running for president is the Hillary Clinton who voted in favor of Bush's horrible war mongering, sat on the board of Wal-Mart, and supports a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

To answer Buffalo Springfield's question, "Stop, hey what's that sound," it is former idealists selling their souls for power.