I just think Democrats are better people on the whole.

And I offer this series of interviews by the NY Times of Floridians voting in yesterday's primary as evidence. You'll find one or two decent people--maybe three--among these Republicans, but person after person among the Democrats is a mensch, as they say in Yiddish: a good human being.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/01/29/us/politics/20080129_FLORIDA_PRIMARY_FEATURE.html

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Primaries suck.

We've been through 8 years of a nightmare regime. Obama supporters believe he's the best man to end the nightmare. Hillary supporters believe she's the best woman to end the nightmare. Edwards supporters think he's the best man to end the nightmare. Considering the stakes - a Republican continuing with another 4 years of the Bush doctrine - of COURSE these people are going to fight tooth and nail for the person they think can win.

Ironically, some of our candidates would be stronger versus some Republican candidates than others. That's one thing the highly competitive race has deprived prognosticators on both sides - we can't pick our candidate based on who theirs is like we were able to with Kerry and they were able to do with Gore.

These fistfights are a result of people fighting for the strongest candidate for November - but we run the risk of damaging that nominee if we push to hard. And, realistically, these fights are manipulated by posters among us who WANT to see a sundered party in November so whoever the lame, weak Republican nominee is can waltz to victory as some progressives sit out like they did in 2000.