Misogynist America. What a shame.

The GOP slate is notable only for its similarity to a field of white lilies. The only differences between them are how conservative they can turn. Except, perhaps for hagel, but even he will have to kiss the feet of the reich wing religious leaders.

What troubles me is the Democrat side of things.

We have a short, smart and wild guy from Ohio, a promising african american from Chicago, and a gaggle of others, including a mexican american. But even our race has only one woman. and not the most appealing candidate at that.

WHY does our party have only one black and one woman in the race? Why is our slate almost identical to the GOP's?
What about black females, gays, non-military, social scientists, and even (ahem) a true liberal? Why are they not running?

Yeah, give me that old mantra - they are not electable. Oh yeah? George idiot Bush was elected. FDR was elected. Truman, coming from a corrupt political powerhouse, and no particular ties to corporations was re-elected, and has turned out to be one hell of a president.

If this country can elect the idiot son of a CIA leader and ex-president, then anything can and should happen. So, where are the other candidates? they should at least try. In fact, Obama's election to the senate was a quirk of fate. Had it not been for the GOP cannibalizing their own, he might not have been elected.

Remember that Illinois elected Carol Mosely-Braun, first female African-American elected to the Senate.

I beg to differ, strongly.

black females? self-professed socialists or liberals?
when substantial percentages of the US population are automatically erased from competition, we have to admit that our country still has victorian mindsets and must change.

How can you claim that our Democratic candidates are essentially the same as the Republicans?
If Condi Rice ran, I guess you would be happier, especially if she admitted to being declared herself a lesbian?

her legacy will continue to cause the US damage for decades to come. Her chances of being president - oh wait. we still have 35% support for bush, don't we?

No, I am talking about democrats. Perhaps we are too close to the situation, but it seems that other nations have better methods of selecting leaders. Our pirmary system is primarily a marathon fund-raising experiment. Those who make the most don't necessarily make the best leaders. To the contrary, actually.

If we fixed our selection method, I suspect our range of candidates would be far wider, deeper and consist of more talent.

I would like to see MUCH shorter campaigns. Some sort of public financing of campaigns would be great, though I'm hard pressed to envision exactly how that would work. We desperately need to get corporate money out of the system altogether, but that seems like a dream at the moment. It looks like it's going to take a rock-honest populist to rise up and save the country from "the system." I can't imagine who that would be though. Colbert? Olbermann? Oprah? None of those choices sound really plausible, but catch my drift, if you will. ;)

I know Britain had a party leader who had admitted having sex with a male in his teens and Germany has an up and comer who is gay but no nation, to my knowledge, has had an openly gay leader.

Gee, ya think?

A black female would potentially be perfectly electable; I will be surprised if there aren't any black female candidates over the next couple of decades.

Non-military candidates are perfectly electable, but given the unhealthy degree of reverence most Americans have for their armed forces a military background will always be an advantage.

Both gay candidates and candidates you'd categorise as "true liberals" are currently unelectable, I suspect, sadly. Too many people who might otherwise vote Democratic wouldn't vote for them. That may change given time, but I'm not confident it will.

Speaking as a mathematician, *I* would be somewhat loth to vote for a social scientist, unless they had a damn good grasp of what data means and how to aquire, handle and interpret it. I've done some work for sociologists who needed a tame mathematician, and been absolutely shocked by what they didn't understand about their own field.

"... thou shalt not sit
With statisticians, or commit
A social science"

W. H. Auden, "Under which lyre".

Hopefully if a Dem wins we will see the same type of racial diversity, and not just for the purpose of putting in tokens who have no input. I was very impressed by Kerry's NSA, Dr. Susan Rice.

eta: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec04/exit_9-20.html