what taste has the primary season left in your mouth so far?

All the way, baby! :crazy:

yum yum!

I love the stuff!

I presume, is a reference to the phrase, "drink the Kool-Aid", being a euphamism for political suicide when used in this context?

Enquiring mind want to know. :)

supporters of candidates (particularly Dean) being "cultish"

That if we don't get it together, we are doomed.

Dems unite!

and I HATE liver! . . .

....when we can cut the inter-party bullshit and concentrate on kicking Bush's fraudulent unelected ass.

This impression is principally attributable to media coverage, since they literally mediate the majority of the impressions that we get. The remainder is direct experience and word of mouth.

The reason I say "mostly bland" is that the coverage is almost entirely framed in terms of a horse race. To me, that is totally unhelpful. When issues are raised, they are raised in distorted and/or simplistic ways, such as making Howard Dean out to be some kind of Gandhian pacifist. It's a wonder that the general public knows a damn thing about the candidates.

These are the crunchy bits, for better or for worse:
- Amazingly, the black candidates have been almost completely ignored, especially the black woman. It's gotta be a coincidence!
- The former Vice President nominee (and VP-elect, but never mind that for now) has gone even further to the right than before, and his campaign is in the proverbial toilet.
- A centrist governor has run an "insurgent" campaign (read: outside DLC management) and has understood that the Democratic base isn't happy, and that has paid off for him big time. He has also become the leftmost boundary of acceptable liberalism.
- Sharpton has been extremely entertaining.
- The media is openly hostile to liberal candidacies (witness ABC's pulling coverage), and the party doesn't seem to mind.
- Most of the centrist candidates are offering technical, rather than principled, distinctions between themselves and the Bush administration on the issue of preventive invasion.

Ad aspera ad astra.