Two elections

The landscape of the U.S. presidential election campaign is becoming less populated as candidates drop out: Kucinich was the one whose proposals most closely match my views (impeach now!) but I never expected him to gain major popular support; Giuliani is a fascistic creep, and I'm so glad he has dropped out; but John Edwards? I'm sorry he's gone. He had detailed proposals on health care, campaigned on issues of poverty, which need to be talked about but are getting lost in the "horse race" style of coverage we are subjected to. I thought his campaign pushed the others to be less evasive. The comment thread on the Crooks and Liar announcement (one of my favorite blogs for reporting on the political ins and outs) gives a sample of reactions among more lefty political junkies. Nezua from the Unapolagetic Mexican posts the text of an endorsment of Obama by the Mexican-AMerican Political Association (MAPA) that lists many of the concerns that we want to see addressed by the candidates, but that are seldom talked about in public in meaningful way.

I'm afraid we are in for several months of extremely irritating he said/she said bickering, in part because of the internal party struggles over delegates and the primary process, which most people don't understand, and which the press declines to explain adequately. But a lot of folks are fired up, so I refuse to be cynical.

There are other elections coming up: Spain will hold elections in March, and it's hard to predict which parties will come out on top. Since the system often requires that the major party make an alliance with a smaller one in order to govern, it's not just a question of winner takes all, but also how the smaller parties use the big ones to their strategic advantage.
eCuaderno.com's JL Oriheula has put up this link to a page on the General Elections in Spain, if you are interested in taking a break from the Hillary/Obama/McCain fest. This link presents the resources for citizens to not only follow the campaign, but interact with the democratic process online, what they are calling "ciberdemocracia", through all the Web 2.0 resources including flikr, google, youtube, social networking, etc. I am particularly interested in how many political figures are writing their own blogs, not just putting up sites run by a campaign.