I’m trying to wrap my head around the possibility that the Democrats would be stupid enough to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket as their Presidential candidate. I honestly can’t fathom that any group would be so shortsighted and idiotic to present such a divisive, unelectable person as their standard-bearer. But here they are.

On some level, I can excuse their hatred of George W. Bush and his various questionable policies and actions. This hatred has mobilized and energized the left who now have two putative candidates, both of whom represent a stark contrast to the likely Republican candidate. So, if both Clinton and Obama are the front-runners and both seem to poll reasonably closely to McCain, what motivates the various camps?

Well, the Obama-ites are focusing on the message of hope, the positive feelings that the candidate seems to engender among all races. It’s almost as if Obama is tapping into all of the negative feelings towards Bush and telling the voters what they want to hear; the world is a good place and we need to emphasize what’s good.

The simple fact about Obama is that he isn’t qualified to run a country… yet. We have no track record on this guy. He’s made a lot of really energetic, positive speeches, and accomplished very little on a national scale. This is like a company taking their top salesman and making him CEO of the entire operation. This is almost a vote for change… for change’s sake.

On the other side, you have Hillary Clinton. She IS qualified (or so her supporters would have you believe) because of her “years in public service”. I guess First Ladies are now considered public servants. I find it interesting that Hillary-ites want it both ways: they are trying to separate Hillary from Bill’s administration so they don’t get any of the blame for things that went wrong, but they want to count her work on the (failed) Universal Health Plan and her spousal influence as positives for her public experience.

So, while she has more experience in national politics than Obama, she also has much more negative baggage. At this nascent point in his career, Obama has no really big political red flags, while Hillary has her health plan, Whitewater, her carpetbagging to New York, Vince Foster, her law practice in general, her newfound riches (where does a First Lady get $5M of her own money to plow into her campaign?), all kinds of little “details” the Republicans are surely stockpiling for an October advertising blitz.

But the Clinton machine keeps chugging along, steamrolling through the big states, piling up the electoral votes. This is like a company taking their corporate attorney who has skeletons (and knows where everyone else’s skeletons are) and making her CEO of the entire operation. This is almost a vote for the villain… just so they don’t piss her off.

So, when choosing between the known (Clinton) and the unknown (Obama), half of the liberals are hanging their hats on the known evil, the other half are betting on the new guy who has never done anything. Which side is right? Or are they both wrong?