Oy Vey, the 2008 election!

I’ve had the strangest string of emails over the past few days, some from strangers (both left and right) and others from old email correspondents who are looking for someone to share a thought with.

What’s odd is that nearly all of them are indicating to me that they feel something is “off” about this election. They all sense something coming down the pike.

One person wrote to agree with an old prediction of mine that McCain, despite all indications to the contrary, may not be the GOP nominee, come November. That’s just a feeling I’ve had all along, that – perhaps for health reasons – McCain might end up backing out. This writer also admitted “…it could just be wishful thinking on my part, since he seems to be running Bob Dole’s old campaign.”

Well, McCain does seem to be so busy trying to reassure everyone that he is “nice” that he is missing opportunities to play hardball against an opponent who is clearly up for it. And if rumor is correct and he is thinking Romney over Gov. Sarah Palin for his veep, well…two dull white guys against an exotic charmer like Obama (and his possibly female veep)…that sounds like the Fade Into the Background Ticket From Hell, to me. But then I wrote a long time ago that the GOP was going to need some flavor in ’08:

The next GOP candidate has to be charismatic, and yes, have a patina, however thin, of ethnicity. John Kerry and Al Gore were the last two button-downed-droning-mainline-protestant types we’re going to see as serious candidates for a long time, I think. And to be honest, Kerry was so insecure and phony, and Gore was so nakedly crazed by the end of his 2000 campaign, that their weirdnesses stood in the place of ethnicity, which is probably the wrong word. Perhaps the word I want is “flavor.” President Bush is WASP but with a twinge of cowboy and plain-folks about him that is appealing. A staid, respectable white fellow with no twinge of flavor is going to die out there. He’s everyone’s competent project manager, but no one’s CEO. Again, who has got flavor in the GOP? Rudy. Rice. Romney has a little because he is exotically Mormon, but as I said, I suspect that flavor will not travel well. In a world where “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” is an award-winning song, a candidate has to bring more to the party than the dependability of a Maytag washer.
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You know what’s funny? I know the press thinks John McCain is the front-runner…but honestly, he doesn’t even pop into my head.

Another writer says McCain does nothing for the conservative “movement” and there may yet be a convention floor battle. I disagree. That will only happen if – as I said – McCain backs out for health reasons OR the Democrats have a dramatic and successful floor battle and that excites the GOP to into doing the same.

Yet another writer tells me she’s not sure Obama is going to be the nominee, either, because she’s not convinced Hillary is out of the picture, nor does she want her to be. This lady notes that Hillary merely suspended her campaign, never conceded, and she’s looking for a convention fight! She even sent me a video to go along with her thoughts! I like the music! But I do think that Hillary – for the settling of her campaign debt – may have “conceded”. In a fashion. Sort of.

Finally, a person of the left wrote me a friendly-ish letter, Although he had to tell me how stupid I was, he wished me no ill, but he wanted my thoughts on the idea that President Bush will “nuke Iran, declare martial war and suspend the elections indefinitely!”

I told him that in 2000, Clinton-haters envisioned the exact same scenario (except Clinton was supposedly going to be nuking Iraq instead of Iran) so that indicated to me a level of paranoia commensurate with ideological fervor and nothing more. I added that I could not think of man more unwilling to leave the Oval Office than Bill Clinton, or a man more eager to get the hell out of there than George W. Bush.

But I do think it is interesting that so many people are wondering if anything is actually what it seems to be in Election 2008.

To which there is only one response: oy, vey – not another screwy election! Lord, help us!

Former CBS newsguy Dick Meyer, now writing at NPR, writing at NPR<has some good advice for the rest of the election cycle: Breathe – then diversify. Then breathe some more.

Glenn Reynolds has more on those unhappy Clinton supporters

And, because I like the music, here is the Hillary-fan’s video: