OK, so updating can be optional.

So I haven’t updated in, oh, forever. I should probably change that. Of course, much like my workout schedule, I’ll begin with fire and good intentions and end with, well, ice and ennui. And sore thighs when I try to start back up again. OW.

More to the point, I’ve been posting on waterthread my thoughts on the incipient political season. As Soulflame aptly points out, expecting reasonable political discourse on the Internet is like… well, there is no metaphor that doesn’t involve your head exploding, I suppose. As happened here when one particularly unique and special snowflake completely abdicated all responsibility for having any political opinions.

So my bloviating on politics is probably more appropriate to a blog. I mean, come on. Blog. Politics. You see where this is going – I’m going to be Howard Dean’s next campaign manager!

Anyway. As a conservative, I really shouldn’t care WHO wins the Democratic primaries. As a libertarian, I’m probably not going to vote for Bush this time, because, well, that would give John Ashcroft four more years to make the Bill of Rights optional. So I’ve been looking at the political horse race for what it is – a horse race!

I was convinced that the race was Howard Dean’s to lose. Well, after tonight, he’s lost it. (No, not like he lost it after Iowa.) Most exit polls now have him coming in at best second in a few states, third at the most. If Dean wants to be a force in the Democratic party, expect him to exit the race shortly. Or, if he wants to eventually be a Naderite independent, he can stay in as a spoiler. My money’s on the exit – if he wanted to continue to run an insurgency instead of a primary campaign, he never would have dumped Joe Trippi.

So now it’s up to John Kerry to lose the race. Kerry reminds me of everything bad about politics. He doesn’t actually have opinions so much as polled statistics. Even his most genuine moments are disingenous, such as when he dropped the F bomb on Rolling Stone in an interview because, you know, kids love that word these days!

That leaves John Edwards, and I suspect after tonight he will be the new media darling. He’ll probably win Oklahoma as well as South Carolina, which will be taken as “Oh, he did BETTER than expected!”. The media, immensely bored with Kerry, will deluge Edwards with publicity. Edwards will probably handle it well – he’ll continue to spin his campaign as “the positive alternative” which always sounds nice in sound bites.

So – Kerry vs Edwards, with Dean possibly screaming from the gallery. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.