This general election more than most will test the courage of voters to avoid lesser-evil strategic voting that has propped up our two-party plutocracy.  People with intelligence and conscience must resist peer pressure and the temptation to vote against John McCain by voting for Barack Obama.

Of course, a McCain presidency that pursues much of the same policies and values of the totally inept and morally bankrupt Bush administration is something to loathe.  But lesser-evil voting sustains our corrupt political system.

Many say they are voting for Barack Obama in a most enthusiastic and positive way.  For me, this does not work.  I see no compelling evidence in Obama's history that he has what it takes to be a true, solid reformer.  All I see is a young, inexperienced terrific talker that has used slick rhetoric to sell himself.  With intellectual and ideological elitism and an aura of superiority and academic smugness, he has successfully fooled millions of people who are so disillusioned with our corrupt political system that they have let themselves be manipulated by poetic promises of change.  In reality, he is just another super-ambitious, lying mainstream politician that has taken considerable money and support from all sorts of corporate and other special interests.

Republicans are supposed to be the party of "law & order" and "family values."  Yet throngs of them are flooding the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton, whom they believe to be the Democratic party's weakest presidential candidate.  Rush Limbaugh and other right wing pundits are actively encouraging republicans to crossvote for Sen. Clinton not just to disrupt and prolong the Democratic primary race, but also because if Clinton wins the nomination, she will engage and energize their base in the general election.

Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" encourages willful violations of the law, and he as well as his followers should be called on this fraudulent undermining of our democracy.  Voting is a privilege and a right for which Americans have fought and died in order to obtain.  Operation Chaos isn't funny or clever.  It's illegal and traitorous; and should be treated as such.

Indiana election law IC 3-10-1-6  Eligible voters
Sec. 6. A voter may vote at a primary election:
(1) if the voter, at the last general election, voted for a majority of the regular nominees of the political party holding the primary election; or
(2) if the voter did not vote at the last general election, but intends to vote at the next general election for a majority of the regular nominees of the political party holding the primary election; as long as the voter was registered as a voter at the last general election or has registered since then.

NOTE: Welcome to this new column series. In "BTB Review" we will be discussing US national politics through the relatively unclouded lens of Beyond the Beltway, a weekly two-hour syndicated political radio talk show headquartered in Chicago. On this independent Sunday evening program which airs from 6 to 8 PM Central Time, veteran host Bruce DuMont teams up with conservative, liberal, Republican, Democratic, and independent guests to "take America's political pulse" and provide "a fresh and balanced perspective of national politics." I discovered this show in late 2003 and have been listening to it ever since on Fort Wayne, Indiana station AM 1190 WOWO. Given that after twenty-eight years of steady running Beyond the Beltway is still not well known, I hope that this column will encourage people to listen to the show, to learn and think more about the issues our country faces, and to become better informed and more responsible citizens of the United States of America.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they believe in giving Americans universal health care.  I don't believe them.  Anyone who takes the time to understand universal health care should conclude that only a simple single payer system will reform the current outrageous system that benefits the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Now is the time for Hilary Clinton to take a bold position that in one brilliant, courageous stroke shows the nation that she is more willing to pursue true reforms of the two-party plutocratic political system than Obama is.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal and x-posted at The Wild, Wild Left, Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, The Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and World Wide Sawdust.

As many of you know by now, The Huffington Post reported yesterday that Senator Clinton slammed the activist organization Moveon.org at a fundraiser in February:

Amidst all the uproar over ABC's debate moderators' divisive, distracting and sometimes just inane questions, there are a couple of gems from the discussion that shouldn't be overlooked. From Hillary Clinton's raw honesty and new insights on middle east conflicts to Barack Obama's revelations on employment and educational barriers for poor whites, here's a selection of items that shouldn't be overlooked.

Gallup's polling of 13,000 voters, released April 17, shows Barack Obama ahead of McCain in competitive so-called Purple states, as well as deep blue states. Here's the summary (link is found below).

Reading further tells you that Clinton would also better McCain in the purple states. However, it is Obama who has the larger margin in be trusty stalwart blue states. (Obama ahead of McCain by 14 points, Clinton ahead of McCain by 11.)

So all together that beats down the idea that Obama's not our electable candidate. The numbers show it's he who's the one who is more electable.

In the year 2008, most Americans would acknowledge that their national politics has degenerated into quite a sorry state in recent years. Name-calling and mudslinging, detraction, slander and libel have never been so commonplace. Not a single solidly-pro-life candidate is likely to win Republican nomination, much less Democratic nomination, for the presidency. People are being asked which candidate they like or trust instead of which candidate measures up to their core convictions. A significant minority of allegedly pro-life Americans is even placing a candidate's support for the "War on Terrorism" ahead of his position on abortion. Finally, thanks to the endemic corruption of our modern political system, the presidential candidates likely to be nominated do not come close to truly representing the American people.

A historically significant political point, regardless of Harding's racial makeup, one thing is certain, even in the face of rising outspoken and virulent racism that had manifest, even legitimized itself in the national politics of the 1920's through groups like the Ku Klux Klan, as President, Harding brought the discussion of race to the table, even in what was then, perhaps the nation's most most segregated city.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been literally shell-shocked as first term senator from Illinois Barack Obama has virtually sewn up the Democratic presidential nomination, no matter how much spinning Clinton's forces attempt to generate to argue with that result.

Hillary Clinton began with a big war chest and significant name edge on Obama, whose biggest national moment was his brilliant speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  

So how did this major turnabout occur?  Apart from Obama's oft-mentioned gifted speaking style, which gives him a fresh and vibrant dynamism reflective of John F. Kennedy circa 1960, the big factor was having the correct message for the time.

Obama's major support has come from a group much akin to Howard Dean's supporters in 2000, frustrated citizens, in Obama's case among younger voters in the under-30 range, who believe that the political system is broken and that we need a fresh beginning.

Let's face it - it's unfair, undemocratic and quite preposterous for the Democratic party to select a candidate for president without including voters from every state in the union. Now that it seems unlikely that either Florida or Michigan will have a revote for the presidential primary, the Democratic National Committee needs to move forward with a decision that empowers those states' voters without undermining DNC Rules and Bylaws and the state courts that have gotten involved in DNC's decision to strip those two states of their delegates.

It's likely that no matter what the DNC does at this point they won't please everyone, but since we're seeing an unprecedented response from Democratic voters this year the DNC needs to move forward quickly to ride the wave of public engagement this primary has already engendered.

The Clinton campaign wants desperately to woo primary voters – and swing superdelegates – with the argument that wherever she has led in the "big states" when she matched against Barack Obama she will surely carry the day in November in a faceoff against Republican John McCain. Her strategists cling to that hoped for scenario in states like CALIFORNIA, NY, FLORIDA, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA, and so on.

But the numbers that came out since mid-March, though overshadowed by Obama confronting the controversy of his pastor, expose the Clinton big-state falsehood. Obama bests her against McCain . . .

. . . in the very biggest states.

The Clinton campaign wants desperately to woo primary voters – and swing superdelegates – with the argument that wherever she has led in the "big states" when she matched against Barack Obama she will surely carry the day in November in a faceoff against Republican John McCain. Her strategists cling to that hoped for scenario in states like CALIFORNIA, NY, FLORIDA, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA, and so on.

But the numbers that came out since last weekend, though overshadowed by Obama confronting the controversy of his pastor, expose the Clinton big-state falsehood. Obama bests her against McCain . . .

  . . . in the very biggest states.

Those attempting to determine the Obama factor in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential sweepstakes have an easy road to travel.

It has puzzled some how Hillary Clinton, ordained by most of the mainstream media as being the winner before the initial competition in the form of the Iowa Caucuses occurred, based on numbers appears well on her way to being upset by Barack Obama, a recent Illinois state legislator who did not enter major national politics before being elected to the U.S. Senate just four short years ago.

Obama's meteoric rise is tied into amateurish blundering by a Clinton campaign that received such mainstream media boosting that important columnists and commentators interviewed sang Clinton's early debate performances and declared that she was winning them regularly and decisively.

A large legion of voters, many of them young and attuning themselves for the first time to the political process, refused to be conned into making a decision based on flimsy media propaganda.  For one thing, with enough candidates on stage to constitute a political "cattle call," how can any one candidate decisively win such joint appearance efforts?