As you are reading this column, we are in the middle of Super Tuesday primaries, and although important, the races will still be competitive after the day has concluded and the results are known.
I will, sadly, miss voting in the New York primary as I am stuck (?) out in sunny California.
The Los Angeles Times has publicly backed Barack Obama (no surprise there) and John McCain on the Republican side (no surprise there, either).
Considering all the other liberal Republican supporters he now has backing him, I don't see how he can possibly call himself a conservative. The media are also giving him a free ride and will jump for joy if he beats out the two other principal candidates for the party's nomination.
If we're lucky, the three candidates will split the delegate count. This will hopefully mean that McCain won't be able to go into the Republican convention with a majority of delegates, and we can have a brokered convention. Anything can happen then.
Fortunately, we might have history on our side. In the past 120 years, only two candidates went directly from the Senate to president: Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy.
During that same period, we have had seven governors elected. The only two past governors still in the race are Republicans.
So who do we have left standing going into Super Tuesday? On the Democrats' side we have Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama's experience includes an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000 and a mere three years as a U.S. senator. The only thing he has to offer voters is being a great orator with no real vision of substance.
I'm getting tired of his promising hope, hope, hope and nothing else. Maybe that's all he has to offer.
Hillary? The candidate of experience? What experience, for heaven's sake? Being a first lady is admirable (at least the position is) but what does that have to do with qualifying you to lead the most powerful country the world has ever known? The only experience she has is knowing how to do whatever is necessary to win.
Forget ethics and appropriate behavior. The only thing the Clintons know how to do is sling mud, tell lies (especially about Obama) and make borderline racist remarks.
At least Bill has dropped out of the campaign picture for the time being after his own inappropriate, racist remarks surfaced. Even by the Clinton rule book, his behavior has been reprehensible.
And if Hillary has enough blind loyalists to win, how would you like to be her vice president? Bill will be her unofficial VP, and her running mate will be selected simply to get her the most votes and then be shoved aside.
Do you really think Al Gore was the real vice president under hubby Bill's reign?
The only experience edge Hillary has over Barack is four more years in the Senate (for a total of seven). Even in those seven years, she has shown absolutely no evidence of leadership.
What has she done of any significance legislatively? All she has done is moan and groan about the Bush administration and play the partisanship game to perfection.
Lastly, you have to compare the Republican and Democrat campaigns and debates. The Republicans have been generally nothing but issue- and idea-oriented, respectfully pointing out their differences as candidates.
Unfortunately, in the last debate McCain and Mitt Romney departed from that strategy and cheapened themselves as a result.
But they didn't come close to the bitterness and hatred displayed consistently by the then-three remaining Democrat candidates, except for last Thursday's lovefest debate between the last two.
The admiration they showed for one another almost brought tears to my eyes. Of course, their pollsters pointed out that their behavior was turning voters off, hence their changed behavior.
CNN has also been tossing softball questions to the Democrats, allowing them to skirt around significant domestic issues with their responses.
I'll talk about the Republican side of things in the future since it might be inappropriate for me to do so now, my being on the ballot as a delegate for Mike Huckabee.
However, I will say this, leaving Huckabee out of my comments. If it does eventually come down to a two-man competition between McCain and Romney, there is only one clear choice.
McCain would be a disaster for the party and the country, and Romney would be the clear choice for the conservative base (if Huckabee isn't there in the end).
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Tom Sears, a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta, is a delegate candidate for former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., in today's New York primary.
He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.
