The political playoff season is over. It’s been a long, nasty dirty fight, but it looks like the Democrats have finally made a decision as to who they are sending forward in this year’s political championship series.

Obama and McCain. Not the two that I would have picked to come out with the summer nominations if you had asked me in January. Interesting how these things seem to pan out. Over the last six months, I’ve listened with a keen ear to the debates and speeches and now that the dust is settling and the real battle is about to begin, I think it’s time that we ask ourselves an important question. Just what IS the difference between the two major candidates vying for the White House this November?

First lets take a look at the GOP front runner. In my opinion this is not the John McCain that I wanted to see run in 2000. Where did the maverick go? Where did the man who was a political moderate that didn’t mind bucking the Republican party disappear to? Listening to his speeches lately I’ve seen an old man pandering to the masses in hopes of shaking off enough of Bush’s shadow to legitimately give himself a chance. What’s he really standing for though?

Then we have Obama. Junior senator, excellent orator, first black candidates and man who is going to bring about change! Well, change is good right? The question is what changes is he going to bring about? Is he going to change the way the federal government works? Is he going to change the tax code? Is he going to change the decor in the Lincoln bedroom? These are all things that I want to know..

Environmental “crisis”, boarder security, the war in Iraq, the economy, health care, and education are all among the things that are listed as issues on both of the candidates web sites. The problem is, if you read through the solutions they almost say the same thing.

I mean sure, McCain wants to see the war through, Obama wants to withdraw.. fine.. that’s one big difference. What about all those other issues though?

The Environment: well, both candidates want to institute a cap and trade system. Hmm… What about those scientists that don’t even think global climate change is our fault or as serious as some others think? How about continuing the debate and the search for evidence? Nope, both have decided. But.. Eh.. that’s a debate for another rant.

Education: McCain wants to give parents a choice which crappy school to send their kids to. Obama wants to throw money at the problem. No mention of turning it back over to the people, deregulation or encouragement for schools turning out bright students, in spite of the dismal failure that is the No Child Left Behind Act.

Economy: Both candidates say Cut taxes, reduce spending, fix the problem with gas costs. Both candidates also seem to want to bail out people with sub prime mortgages by, yep, you guessed it, throwing money at the problem.

Health care: Let’s throw money at the problem. Maybe big government can fix it.

And so on and so on. The real point I’m trying to make here is that reading between the lines you can see that there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between what these two men want. Sure, you could point out that the devil is usually in the details, and yes, both men have different approaches to the “throw the money at it” solutions they propose. The real problem is, when boiled down to their basic ideas, these men don’t have any new ideas. They are just trying different implantations of the same problem solving technique.

Not to mention the pandering that they both do to special interest groups? When did the Republican party get filled with fundamentalest christain whackos? Why does the Republican party now represent the religious right? Gone are the days of a republican party who was for small federal government, pro-local government, tax cutting and deregulation. On the flip side of the coin we have Obama pandering to minorities and eco-nuts. Gone are the days of JFK’s democratic party and in are the days of the eco-terroist and the femi-nazi.

NEITHER of these men represent the moderate. You and me. The people who might have ideas on both sides of the fence.

Sure, there are a few people running for president out there that share our ideals, the problem is, we’ve been brainwashed to believe that these people have no hope, a vote for them is a wasted vote. We need to stop buying into the system set up by the two major political parties and start taking our government back for ourselves.

Otherwise, soon, we won’t have a choice.

Here is an updated List of 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates…

Democratic Party

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York and former First Lady
Barack Obama, U.S. Senator from Illinois, and former Illinois State Senator

Republican Party

Senator John McCain of Arizona
Congressman Ron Paul of Texas

Constitution Party

Former Ambassador Alan Keyes of Maryland
Don J. Grundmann of California. Chiropractor and anti-tax protester
Bryan Malatesta of Texas. Constitution Party of Texas chairman
Max Riekse of Michigan. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel
Diane Beall Templin of California. Attorney and political activist

Green Party

Cynthia McKinney, former Georgia Congresswoman
Kat Swift of Texas, co-chair of Texas Green Party
Jesse Johnson of West Virginia, former Mountain Party candidate for US Senate and Governor of West Virginia
Kent Mesplay of California, California Delegate to the Green National Committee

Libertarian Party

Bob Barr, former Republican Congressman from Georgia
Mike Gravel, former Democratic U.S. Senator from Alaska
Daniel Imperato, an entrepreneur from Florida
Steve Kubby, an author, political activist, cannabis consultant from California
George Phillies, a physics professor, writer, and libertarian activist from Massachusetts
Wayne Allyn Root, an author, CEO, TV celebrity and producer from Nevada
Mary Ruwart of Texas. Research scientist, author, political activist
James Burns, former chairman of the Nevada Libertarian Party
Mike Jingozian of Oregon. Software company founder
Christine Smith of Colorado. Writer, humanitarian activist

Prohibition Party

Gene Amondson of Washington, minister and temperance movement activist, received the Prohibition Party’s presidential nomination at its national convention on September 13, 2007 (Leroy Pletten of Michigan is the vice presidential candidate)

Socialist Party USA

Brian Moore of Florida received the Socialist Party USA’s presidential nomination at its national convention, October 19-21, 2007 (Stewart Alexander of California is the vice presidential candidate)

Socialist Workers Party

Róger Calero of New York, journalist, was announced as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Workers Party in January of 2008 (Alyson Kennedy is the vice presidential candidate)

Independent

Ralph Nader of Connecticut, consumer advocate and activist (with Matt Gonzalez, political activist, of California is his running mate)

I want to thank you all for your continued support.

Credit: Wikipedia.org List of Presidential Candidates, Gravel2000.us, AlanKeyes.com

Hillary Clinton
1037 elected delegates, 254 superdelegates = 1291 total

Barack Obama
1194 elected delegates, 208 superdelegates = 1402 total

That was the simplest count to recap; if you’d like to dig down deeper, both the New York Times, AP and RealClearPolitics.com have different numbers give or take, which I have been trying to keep track of here.

2025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination for the President of the United States race. 161 delegates are on the line in Ohio, 32 in Rhode Island, 228 in Texas and 23 in Vermont.

Republican Primaries are also being held tomorrow in Ohio (88 delegates on the line), Rhode Island (20), Texas (140) and Vermont (17), with John McCain leading Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul in delegates, 930 to 248 to 14 according to NBC News. In order to clinch the GOP nomination, 1191 delegates are needed.

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