The best thing about the Iowa Caucuses last night is that I didn’t stay up to watch the returns, because if I did, I’d be too tired to accomplish anything today, and I start work much too early anyway. However, the whole thing is laid out there for me, in chronological order on twitter, and from what I can see, it’s a whole lot of fuss over an election that doesn’t even bind delegates – the whole thing is really nothing but manufactured TV drama. This is played out by the apparent real victory of CNN for finding a couple of ladies in Iowa named Edith and Caroline who made for good TV, and yeah, apparently Romney beat Santorum(!) by less than ten votes (or maybe he didn’t – Google just had the froth rising to the top on a line graph – it’s essentially a wash).

There’s no denying it’s prime entertainment, but, really, it doesn’t change anything other than to stretch this business out a bit longer. I’m still holding by my position that Romney will be the eventual GOP nominee, though he’ll never quite be embraced by the conservative base of his party, who are now kind of settling on Santorum, this week, because he’s who is left – I guess an Opus Dei-style Catholic is more acceptable to conservative evangelicals than a Mormon, after all. They’ll all kind of fall in line eventually, but none of them will be that enthusiastic about it; echoes of John Kerry in 2004, only from the right.

This business will probably be good for my chosen candidate, though at this point, there really isn’t much of a choice for someone like me.

You see, I’m what US pollsters like to classify as “progressive/very liberal”, who’d probably be a perfectly content center-left type in the EU (where even the righties tend to think that things like national health care and the social safety net are a good and valuable idea). However, at this point in American history, where I’m sitting on the (admittedly imperfect) left-right spectrum falls outside of the mainstream. The Democratic party, despite all the annual accusations of this or that candidate being “the most liberal in history” is actually more accurately categorized as “center right” and occasionally feel like it’s drifting further rightward. There are a few modern outliers, (see Kucinich, Dennis and Sanders, Bernie), but most Democratic politicians active today, including, arguably, President Obama, fall pretty close to the center of the spectrum, not the leftmost edge.

So, given my general leftist/liberal tendencies, I have come to accept that the most liberal political candidate in any given election I might vote in will, unless things shift dramatically, always be somewhat to the left of me. I’m kind of okay with that; compromise isn’t a bad thing at all; assuming all parties are willing to offer up something in the spirit for finding a mutually acceptable solution (this is not an assuption I’m usually willing to make when it comes to American politics).

So, I haven’t much choice but to be a partisan, in the sense that there’s only one party on a given ticket for whom I can imagine voting.

Usually, this doesn’t bother me; on the whole, I think President Obama does an acceptable, if not spectacular job, given his vision of it. He’s taken he whole idea of “being the President of everybody” to heart, and tries to find solutions that could appeal broadly. That’s not a bad way to do it, if there weren’t other factors involved (tribalism and racism, primarily) that prevent the other side from being capable of governing in good faith. One of the things I like about the President is also kind of his biggest weakness – he’s eternally optimistic, and always tries to assume the best of people, which sometimes makes him look like Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football Lucy’s holding. Occasionally, though, he connects with the ball, and we get some good things.

This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love to live in a country where it felt like I had a choice between multiple candidates who I felt represented my values. That actually happens some places, but not that often in America for someone who leans left, and I can’t see abandoning my values and becoming a mythical “swing voter”, the 10-20 percent of Americans who are actually regularly up for grabs in a national election, because for the most part, those “swing voters” are actually “low information voters” who don’t really understand the system and respond solely to emotional appeals like the “who would you rather have a beer with” or “who has the nicest looking family” factors.

However, I don’t want to be partisan to the extent that I demonize everyone on the opposition – I know some very nice conservative people* – I think they’re misguided sometimes, but I like them. Some of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates seem like genuinely nice, interesting people**. Romney seems pleasant, if a little stodgy, and Gingrich, besides being kind of a know-it-all, would probably provide entertaining conversation. Doesn’t mean I’m ever going to support or vote for them.

So, Maybe that’s my unrealistic wish for the new year – to have more palatable candidates to vote for in elections I find myself voting in, or at least have them get elected in elections I can’t vote in. There’s some potential out there – Elizabeth Warren running for the Senate in Massachussets, for example, is someone I’d personally love to vote for – but I’d really like to see that become the norm rather than the exception.

we really need to yank that overton window back over to the left a bit; the structure is feeling a little unbalanced.

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* – Sorry about that; it looks kind of like I played the “I have gay/black/whatever friends” argument. Won’t happen again.

** – Santorum‘s a different animal, however. I can say from personal experience that that guy is categorically not pleasant. That guy, in person, just oozes*** smarm and sleaze (even more than your average politician, who, almost to the man, glisten like lubed up used car salesmen), all wrapped up in the most personally repellent packages, the “asshole jock frat boy who found God, but never lost the bullying nature and sense of superiority and privilege”. I had to wash my hands immediately after shaking his when I met the then-Senator as a recent college graduate, almost a decade before my so-called “political awakening”. <<shiver>>

*** – Ew. “oozing Santorum. <<shudder>>