The Death of My Candidate

Today, John Edwards backed out of the race for Democratic presidential candidate. Can we all just take a moment of silence to mourn the loss of this leader? Okay, thanks. The loss of John Edwards does not come as a shock to most Democrats, who have sternly divided themselves into either the Hilary or Obama camp. With Edwards out of the picture, I too will stop rooting for any Democratic nominees.

I understand the excitement behind these two camps. America is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to choosing leaders of diversity. I mean, if places like India (which we still offensively consider "Third World"), and Israel can have female leaders, then it should come as no challenge for the United States to do the same. The same excitement can be felt with the prospects of having a "minority" leader as well. However, will so much controversy around the sex and race of the candidates I think we are truly forgetting what is really important in a presidential campaign. Simply put, who would make the best candidate?

This is why my money was on Edwards. Yes, he was more of the same in the sex and race departments, but there was something that took him apart from the rest of the candidates. Edwards did not accept corporate sponsorship. Edwards campaign focused on the ending of "two Americas," one for the common man and the other for the elite powerful. This has not been widely reported on because (surprise, surprise) corporate money funds everything in this country, which was something Edwards was desperate to stop. Barack and Hilary have both accepted generous donations from corporate America.

Let me just say, I'm not saying that all of corporate America is inherently evil. I just believe that regardless of which party wins, as long as corporate interests are kept in mind by the candidates, corporate interests will continue to have a hand in the decision of new laws and legislature.

Keeping that in mind, there is another reason that I believe keeping Hilary or Obama in the race is a mistake. I simply have no faith in the American public. While I would absolutely LOVE to see a female or a minority leader (and regardless of who wins I will probably cast my absentee ballot for the Democratic party), I just do not believe that this can happen with the present make-up of the American people. I believe that electing either of these leaders will bring Republican's out in droves in order to not vote for their party, but rather to vote against the Democratic party.

I do not want to live in a country where we are so disappointed by all our leaders that we vote only to prevent other leaders from getting in power. I'm an idealist in every sense of the word, and I hope I'm wrong. But come on America, this is NOT the time to be playing games with our candidates, this is not the time to be idealist, this is a time to be realistic. This is a time to change the face of the nation, and I don't mean the physical face. There's more to a leader then what they look like, there's the message they send. And I have a hard time believing that the messages of Obama or Hilary are any different from the messages of any other Democratic candidates.

So enjoy your future leader America, I'll be working on getting my visa for anywhere outside of North America.