I Can't Support Him Anyway, But...

Thanks to Michigan's legislative effort to hand the primary to Hillary Clinton on a silver platter, I can't vote for anybody but her, Kucinich (who tried to remove his name, but didn't follow procedure), or Dodd. Write-ins don't count. So why even bother with a primary?

Assuming Michigan undoes its "early primary" legislation and gives primary voters the opportunity to choose between all of the candidates.... Oh, it's not that I don't see value in the three frontrunners (and some who are trailing behind), but it's difficult to choose. We can talk about electability, personality, qualification, whatever - there are a number of decent candidates, but I can't say one truly excites me above the others.

I can say this, though.... If Obama maintains his present course, in a theoretical Michigan primary where he's on the ballot, at this point he's losing me. The Social Security "crisis", the diminishment of his wife as part of his attempt to diminish Hillary Clinton, and now his approach to health care? Add to that the fact that, by his measure, I am many times more qualified than he is to address foreign policy issues (during my childhood I lived in two other nations for a total of thirteen years - that's more than 3:1)?

His approach to these issues seems silly and divisive. His positions suggest that either he has a hard time recognizing and setting priorities (see, e.g., my prior comments on Social Security reform), or is spending too much time listening to pollsters who tell him to pitch his campaign to the center-right.