BillCosby

It is still left up to voters to decide between a single-headed male candidate and what has been dubbed "Billary" – two heads to match a double set of sex organs. It also means certain kinds of trouble because it both affords the Republicans an almost certain victory and illuminates the confusion and lack of integrity that have always been the problem of "identity politics."

There is nothing the Republicans would love more than running against the political hermaphrodite. Hushed word is that new barrels of factual mud are arriving and being put in storage until the word is given to create a quicksand out of which the hermaphrodite cannot emerge victoriously.

While Oprah Winfrey and the women who back Sen. Barack Obama have declared themselves free women because they are voting on the basis of that freedom and not the dictates of ideologues, Gloria Steinem and all of the other feminists who kept their mouths shut about the male head when it was sanctimoniously impeached removed any single set of principles from their ideology. We can have no doubt that Steinem and that bunch would have had so many people eternally picketing the White House if the Monica Lewinsky case had come down during the presidency of the first Bush. Those fervent marches would have gone on for so long that archeologists would still be finding their bones and bits of their clothes in mounds on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The issue still remains: Are we to assume that the GOP will not hit the Clintons with everything that it has been amassing?

I am sure that it will and that it will make much of Andrew Sullivan's argument that there were constitutional questions about the president's appointment of his wife in charge of what became the health-care debacle.

I think we can safely assume that Hillary Clinton will return the favor and put her husband in charge of something if she is elected. The elephants, who have shining memories for mud, will not let us forget that possibility.

On the other side, many have been startled by Obama's ability to thrill the masses. His speeches overflow with patriotism and the inspiration for young people to become engaged in the promise of this country once again. He has the next generation fired up.

The most important thing he said in last week's debate is that he intends to have important issues argued on television before the people and knows that the people have to make their voices heard whenever inarguably monumental policies are on the table.

That was an oblique reference to the way the elephants made sure that the C-SPAN cameras were packed up and gone before they sold the country out on Medicaid legislation. That legislation made representatives of Medicaid incapable of arguing over the prices set by the pharmaceutical companies. The cost: $500 billion dollars. Both that information and the way the White House has muted or distorted information about global warming are available on the Web site of the news show "60 Minutes."

Since neither Obama's nor the hermaphrodite's policy intentions are so very different from each other, that ability to get the public involved is what he has over his opponents. It would be a revolutionary situation if we had a president who called upon the American people to treat their elected representatives differently from the way they do plumbers, whom they call for service, put to work, then close the bathroom or kitchen door and let them do their stuff.

That is not good, and the need for a more involved public approach to policy is part of what makes Obama so indisputably attractive to the American people. Not only does he have ideas, but he seems to have the ability to righteously inflame the populace against the lobbyists and the wealthy special-interest groups that have done so much to hurt this country.

Voters must realize that they cannot move forward until the forces that hold the government down are neutralized by public attention and public action. I think that is what they will realize as the battle for the Democratic nomination continues.

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror