It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite our voracious appetite for change, Barack Obama will likely fall victim to business-as-usual on the first ballot.

Hillary's strategy is to appeal to establishment Democrats by urging Superdelegates either to vote for her on the first ballot or to abstain, thereby throwing open the Convention. 

The problem with that strategy is that the likely winner will not be Hillary Clinton but someone more universally acceptable. 

While the uncommitted John Edwards is hoping for the nod, Al Gore comes more readily to mind.  Who could not at this point get behind a Gore/Webb ticket with a huge sigh of relief?  Not only has Gore previously won the popular vote; he has earned the right to step forward.

With either Clinton or Obama, the Democratic caucus becomes hopelessly splintered and out of touch with mainstream America - Clinton offers that same old/same old; Obama gets tagged with Rev. Wright and a classic Jimmy Carterism, "bitter malaise."

By reserving some 20% of the delegate vote for the Superdelegates, the Democratic Party has declared that establishment kingmakers, rather than the people, will ultimately decide what is best for the party and for the nation. 

In a nutshell, the Democratic Party does not trust the American people to make the right choice.  Nobody knows that better than does Hillary.

You have only to read between the lines of the latest statements from John Dean to see that neither the delegate vote nor the popular vote will be binding at the Convention.  While he urges Superdelegates to declare themselves after June 3, the game that most are playing is that the entertainment factor of this mind-numbing, media-pandering primary season is good for the process.  It offers to the Democratic rank and file a marathon circus that plays well at the water cooler and feeds the myth that the process is "of the people, by the people and for the people."

Both Clinton and Obama have been mortally wounded.  The real casualty, however, is the American people, whose opportunity for a re-awakening to the core values of our republic have been shattered on the rocks of self-interest and greed. 

Clinton's vision is a rebirth of the Clinton years, thus capping our era of political dynasties - Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton.  Follow the bouncing ball.  How many times has she begun a thought with, "In my husband's administration..."? 

Obama's vision is closest to the turn-around that is so desperately needed.  Like Jimmy Carter before him, however, he is vulnerable to being emasculated by entrenched special interests that cannot be overcome this side of economic crisis or collapse.  We have Hillary to thank for bringing that to our attention.

Then, of course, there is John McCain.  What can we say about John McCain, now perceived as the centrist, stable option, an image completely foreign to his constituents in Arizona?  Has McCain been re-born?  Somebody hand Cindy a script! 

America needs a visionary leader with a strong, steady hand.  Too many years of random lurching from one crisis to another has rendered us as staggering drunks, unsure of where we are going or why.  To a watching world, this spectacle of inconsistency has lost us our credibility. 

The Bush Doctrine of eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth has been affirmed by the new Democratic majority, granting our President the power to choose which laws to follow and which to ignore and to distinguish between "patriot" and "terrorist" among the American citizenry.  Failure to heed the warnings of foreign nationals taking flight training in Florida has left our public removing their shoes at airports and dumping their shampoo.

Instead of holding the Administration and the Congress accountable for sloppy intelligence and careless security, the American public pays the price in their lifestyles and at the pump for 9/11.  You have only to experience the security at every Podunk federal building, instituted in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, to know that every crisis finds it payback in public discomfort of one kind or another, while our leadership spins its failures.

Obama has the message without the solution; Clinton is too much a part of the problem, both as her husband's wife and as Senator.

Yes; Al Gore is looking better all the time.