Joenomics.

This month's issue of Harper's Magazine starts out with their regular introductory "Notebook", this time by Roger D. Hodge entitled "Creative Destruction". He provides particularly tough but valid criticism of the Democratic Party's relative impotence in this election and this bit struck a chord with me:

After eight years of catastrophic Republican misrule—in the midst of economic crisis and rising unemployment, in a nation plagued by ruinous energy costs and inflation, bank failures, and staggering public and private corruption—an eloquent, charismatic, intelligent Democratic candidate was locked in a statistical tie with a doddering old hack whose primary argument for his claim to the most powerful office on earth is that he was shot down over Vietnam and tortured for five years. Indeed, this remained the case even after McCain demonstrated beyond all doubt, in his impetuous selection of a ludicrously unsuitable vice-presidential candidate, that he lacked the good judgment that is the primary qualification for the job. If the Democratic Party loses this election, then it should forever concede the presidency.

That fact that Obama does not have an astronomical lead over McCain is not entirely the fault of the Democratic Party, it includes the old-politics death grip of the G.O.P. opposition. But that old-politics mentality corrupts both sides and I can't help feeling as if some of the Democratic candidates hoping to ride the Obama coattails by parroting "change" only do so out of political expediency.

If you have a Harper's subscription you can read the article here. Otherwise you're locked out of the same "walled garden" that once kept people out of the online edition of the Wall Street Journal, so enjoy!