Both Obama and Clinton benefit a bit from Merkelism. I feel about Clinton as you do about Merkel.

The feeling in the US seems to be (finally finally) with Europe on ending the Bush era. Record primary turnout for the democrats is possibly an auspicious development. Obama talks about joining the world. I hope he follows through if he has the opportunity.

I’d still send the current administration to the Hague, in toto. Kucinich, were he to win, might do it, too.

I am afraid it’s the same with elections all over the place. A good dictator, wasn’t that the best model according to Plato’s Politeia? I myself decided not to vote because I found myself stricken with a similar conundrum during the last elections in Germany: Under social democrat Schroeder cancellorship the most anti-social bills ever were passed in Germany, and he generally seemed to be in love more with this image than with getting decent work done. Angela Merkel on the other hand was (and still is) conservative, and there was no way that I was ever going to vote for another conservative government.

But like many women and intellectuals, the thought of a female chancellor was so appealing that I almost voted for her – and it only took a month or so until Merkel was being flattered by politicians around the globe. Germany was cool all of a sudden, simply because it had a female chancellor. Achievements are still pending (with the exception of the outstanding “minister of families” Ursula von der Leyen, who is a conservative mother of seven but was the first one to implement a law in which single parents were finally no longer discriminated).

What I mean to say is: Maybe Obama is to American voters what Merkel was to those who thought that a woman chancellor could turn this ship around. She isn’t progressive at all, but her gender might have given people reason to think she is – like Obama’s color of skind does.

Anyways: In Europe, everybody is simply longing for an end of the Bush era, and nobody thinks that there could possibly be someone worse than Bush.

Glen Ford at blackagendareport.com writes:

“Barack Obama’s corporate-made and -financed presidential campaign is the product of three distinct factors, all mitigating against Black self-determination and political cohesion: 1) corporate decisions, made a decade ago, to provide media and financial support to pliant Black Democrats that can be trusted to carry Wall Street’s water; 2) a widespread desire among whites to prove through the safe and simple act of voting that they are not personally racist, and/or to dismiss Black claims of pervasive racism in society, once and for all; 3) a huge reservoir of Jim Crow era, atavistic Black thinking that refuses to evaluate Black candidates’ actual political stances, but instead revels in the prospect of Black faces in high places. A President Obama would, of course, be the zenith of such narrow, non-substantive, objectively self-defeating visions.”

Obama seems poised to win New Hampshire today. Kucinich will have done quite well if he can take 7-10% of the vote.