You don't plug a bunch of variables into the "candidate machine" and get a winning candidate out the end like a frozen pizza. At best, you get a patchwork homunculous that doesn't stand for anything and inspires no one.

People want to talk about "finding that Obama magic again"? .... Conventional wisdom had Obama pegged as the WORST possible candidate, the one our party would be insane to run. NO WAY was "middle America" gonna vote for the One Term AA Senator with the name that rhymes with "Osama". No fucking WAY. And his middle name is "Hussein"? Are you out of your minds?

The Conventional Wisdom people, the people who try to design a candidate by plugging in the "proper" electability variables, wanted nothing to do with Barack Hussein Obama.

And those same people told us Kerry was a shoo-in. War Hero? Gravitas? Oh, and he voted for the Iraq War (yay!), so he can't be hit with Nineeleven, amirite?

Derp.

That same conventional wisdom said Trump was FUCKED. Hell, I thought he was too, at least after the pussygrabbing tape- but remember all the jokes about "more electable than Trump"?

Whoops.

We need to put this bullshit beltway conventional wisdom crap out to pasture for good. And what we need in terms of a leader is someone who genuinely inspires and organically LEADS, and if and when that person shows up I guarantee you it won't matter what gender they are, what color they are, what their last name is or what state they're from.

And then, everyone should move on from the election and look forward. There are millions of people who didn't vote for Trump who also didn't vote for Hillary. We really ought to try and figure out ways to appeal to, or at least reason with, those people. We need to expand our leadership bench, particularly including younger voices, west coast voices, people who aren't afraid to lead, who actually understand the philosophical trends of the electorate.

I don't know about you, but I'm old. I'm okay with the fact that this isn't, really, my century. It's not Donald Trump's century, either. It's not Hillary Clinton's and its not Bernie Sanders's.

This century belongs, first and foremost, to those born in it. Maybe those born in the last decade or so of the last one.

Maybe, just maybe, time for the rest of us to accept the facts and shuffle on a bit. At least make a little more room for these whippersnappers.

Hillary isn't running again. Neither is Bernie Sanders. The primaries are over, so is the election.

But whether or not they add HRC to the list, there are going to be a shit-ton of people at that march, because despite our internal differences there are way more of us than there are of them, and that's what truly matters the most- not who organized the march.

It has solved a longstanding laundry mystery.

I don't pretend to understand it.

Another thing is, there are sockpuppets all the fuck over the place. A lot of the sort of one-note axe grinding and DU-focused drama farming that happens on this board, it's designed to make you think it's coming from a whole big group of people, but it's pretty much the same crowd, they just use a whole bunch of accounts. Maybe 5-10 actual people, max.

They think they're being clever, but it's pretty fucking transparent.

I mean look at this thing. I suppose I could hang ornaments on it.

You're gonna have a tough time arguing that there is sentience-level brain development at that point.

"Oh, but there's a heartbeat!"... that must mean it's already a little tiny person, right?

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2015/07/beating_human_heart_tissue_grown_in_lab_video.html

Uh, no. Cells, like heart cells, self-organize to the point of beating. There is a continuum of existence from fertilization to birth, but only anti-choicers take the decidedly theological; not based in science; position that at the moment of conception by magic, this-



becomes the functional (and, by their thinking, legal) equivalent of this.



Now, I like babies too. But a fertilized egg is not a fetus at 6 weeks is not a baby. And regardless, the ONLY person fit to make a determination about what a woman should be "allowed" to do vis a vis her own reproductive system, is the woman in question. These decisions are too crucial, too personal, too life situation-specific, to leave to total strangers, panels of priests, Ohio legislators with a history of domestic violence complaints, etc.



And most abortions take place in the first trimester. This bullshit about women running around pregnant for 8 months and then aborting because they feel like it is James O'Keefe, right-wing bullshit, the same people who want you to believe that Planned Parenthood calles pregnancies "parasitic". Derp.

Okay, that's pretty funny.