As a Democrat, I’m totally depressed. Another election is coming; another chance to put this country back on track, to right our wrongs, to finally let the people be heard. We’re the party of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt. We have a president in office that makes Richard Nixon looked beloved. So what are our choices? Barack or Hillary. Pepsi or Pepsi Light. Pepsi anyone?

Does anyone else get that creepy feeling we’re all meant to be here, like it’s a weird Twilight Zone episode? That our three choices for president are exactly what the powers that be had in mind? As the Cowardly Lion cried in the witch’s castle, “We’re trapped, trapped like rats.” There’s nowhere to turn. Whatever door we walk through leads right back to where we started, like an M.C. Escher painting.

Here we have a war that will cost $3 trillion dollars, according to latest estimates. That’s so much money that I get a headache thinking about it, especially when I imagine the health care, education, infrastructure, and research that would buy. If this administration has its way, this war (and others in the future) will suck every last penny from our country’s treasury, robbing us of our future, leaving a poor, empty husk in its place. There will be nothing left for our children and grandchildren.

So what are Obama and Hillary proposing to do about it? I don’t know. They’re too busy squabbling over who’s a Muslim and Hillary’s tax returns. It’s like watching two sailors fighting over a dollar as the Titanic goes down. Yes, they both claim to be against the war, but both continue to fund it. Obama says he would not have voted for it, but has shown no stomach for going against the power majority in on anything. His main luck is timing. We’ll never know what he would’ve done in 2002. Hillary voted for it and I get the feeling she’d do it again tomorrow if it would keep her in the boy’s club.

Obama’s been hailed as the new JFK, but I don’t get his message of keeping politics safe and sane and squeaky-clean. After three years in the Senate, in a country beset with war, scandal, economic crisis, corruption . . . that’s your big solution, Obama? We should get out our Emily Post book? In my small town, putting up a new stop sign can bring on two years of near-violent debate, but he’s going to run one of the most powerful countries in the world like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? And isn’t debate healthy? Isn’t that what a democracy is about? I thought the other extreme was dictatorship.

The Kennedy comparison is ironic since JFK encouraged robust discussion, an exchange of ideas, hearing all sides. We’ve had a Democratic majority in Congress for over a year practically falling over each other, capitulating to Bush’s demands. Does Obama want more of that? Does he think this Congress has been too obstructive? Too impolite? I’m sorry Obama. You’re losing me on this one.

Another problem I have with Obama is the John Kerry disease of lawyer-speak. The other day I heard him say, “The Bush administration has mis-served this nation.” Mis-served? How about destroyed? Smashed? Ruined? Driven to the edge of a cliff? Mis-served sounds like a bad meal at I-Hop. That’s what worries me about this guy. He seems afraid or unable to really connect, to appeal to that boiling rage simmering under the surface, to deliver that knock-out blow. If he becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee, how is he going to fare when the next Karl Rove pulls him into a dark alley. “Now see here, my good man!” is all I can hear as the punches fly.

Then there’s Hillary, the woman who doesn’t know she’s a woman, or is afraid to admit it. Yes, I know she’s a warrior, a fighter, down in the trenches with the boys. I know it’s a big, cruel world and bad guys lurk everywhere, ready to get that phone ringing at 3 a.m. Hey Hillary, haven’t you had enough of this macho crap? As a female, would you ever consider standing up for the wives, mothers, sisters, and grandmothers of this world who are sick to death of this brutal, male-dominated planet? No, I didn’t think so.

You know why so many women don’t like Hillary? Not because she’s a woman and we’re all these non-liberated weaklings who want to return to Donna Reed and June Cleaver. It's because she doesn’t represent female values -- compassion, diplomacy, non-violence. Here we finally have a female running for leader of the free world, a chance to better this planet, a chance to do this mess over with a woman’s sensitive, wise touch . . . and guess what? She’s more militant than the men.

Honestly, I don’t think John McCain could be much worse. Yes, I can hear the gasps now, but think about it. He’ll keep us in Iraq for one hundred years and the other two will only keep us in for 20, just long enough for the oil companies, defense contractors, and special interests to vacuum up every last dollar from that poor, traumatized nation. Those groups are the real puppeteers and don’t think it’s any coincidence the people left running seem more than willing to serve them a long, long time. What have they done to prove otherwise? Any candidate with more backbone was shown the exit long ago.