The Case for John McCain.

A good friend picked up my last post for his blog, but headlined it in such a way as to suggest that I am still supporting John Edwards.

Sadly, that ship has sailed.

While I hope John Edwards will adopt a second-choice, convention-oriented strategy - that would require him to break with the entire tendency conduct of his campaign so far, i.e., he'd have to do something strategically intelligent.

As a potential president, I really like John Edwards. As a candidate, though, he seems to have caught something chronic from John Kerry.

Actually, the decision I've reached - and it surprised me, too - is that the best thing for the progressive movement is for the Democratic Party to nominate Hillary and go down in flames to John McCain.

I'm not sure the Democratic Party can ever be reformed, but the present Hillary-Obama brawl is basically a war of old-line insiders: the Clinton/DLC machine, minus some of their black supporters vs. the Illinois Democratic machine, plus most of the black Democratic pols. Whoever wins this fight, it isn't going to be the folks who rallied to Howard Dean!

What needs to happen is for the Democratic Party to get so shockingly upset - for President, not Congress - that it either becomes open to reform, or begins to die and make room for a new party (or some entity to replace a party) on the Left.

Which leads me to the conclusion that - assuming Edwards continues to blunder toward extinction - what progressives should do is cross over and support McCain.

At 73 (on January 20, 2009), McCain would almost certainly be a one-term President - and a President eminently qualified to deal with the nastiest parts of the Bush legacy: the mess in Mesopotamia; the flagrant disregard of the Constitution and Geneva in the name of "national security"; and America's failure to take the lead on the environment.

Indeed, as a Republican - assuming the next Senate doesn't have 60 Democrats (exclusive of old Joe) - McCain would probably have more success wrapping these things up than any Democrat.

Besides, between the Bush deficits and the incoming recession, there won't be a lot of money for things like health care in the next four years. It's going to be a "lost" administration in terms of truly progressive legislation.

So I say, let McCain clean up Bush's mess - and elect a staunchly progressive Congress to keep him from doing anything dreadful. It would give McCain the sweetest kind of revenge for 2000 - reversing much of Bush's policy, and moving the GOP toward the center.

And it would give us time to find an outstanding, progressive candidate (Democrat or otherwise) for 2012.