A Few Thoughts…… We can sink or swim on the outcome!
By Rich Luongo
She was the darling of the Democratic Party. She was going to break down barriers. The first woman to make a serious run for the presidency. Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in.
Then comes Barack Hussein Obama. A lot of people never took him seriously. Young. Upstart. No diplomatic or international experience. What does he know about running a $2 trillion corporation called the USA? Nothing.
Well, guess what? Hillary's fighting for her life. Obama is attracting lots of people who ordinarily would go for Clinton or play the race card: they would be against a black man.
All of that has faded away and Obama is this close to getting the Democratic nomination. If he does, that would be the breaking down of a very huge barrier. And if elected president, all barriers are gone.
In the meantime, Hillary is being told — in no uncertain terms — to get the hell out of the race. You're not going to make it. She has no intention of dropping out, though. She says she'll stay until the convention.
What this will do, really, is divide the Democratic Party with the Super Delegates undecided, in some instances, as to whom to back. And the Republicans can sit back and smile and assume John McCain will make it.
Well, you know what assuming does to you and me. We can't be that positive that McCain will be elected or that Obama will be the candidate. Things can change drastically before and during a political convention. What could probably happen is what happened between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960: Kennedy won the Electoral College but only got 120,000 popular votes. It could happen again between McCain and whoever gets the Democratic nomination. The winning candidate may not be that popular and could have a lot problems with the Congress.
And let's not forget: Whatever a presidential candidate promises are only empty promises. Nothing happens unless the Congress lets it happen. The Constitution provides that the president carries out the laws passed by Congress and to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That's it. Those are his or hers only constitutional duties.
If the newly-elected president wins a small portion of the popular vote — or doesn't win the popular vote at all but is still elected — the new president could find it difficult with the Congress to get anything done.
Kennedy had problems. His major bills got passed only after his death because Lyndon Johnson was probably the most powerful politician in Washington with half the Congress members owing their jobs to him. So it was easy to get Kennedy's laws passed because LBJ wanted them passed.
Again I say this is probably the most important presidential election in the past 60 years. We can sink or swim on the outcome. And I can't swim.
The author is a former editor of the Haddon Herald, a feature editor for The Collingswood Retrospect. He was also adjunct teacher at Camden County College. Presently he is a freelance writer for a number of newspapers in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area.
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