We're angry, uneducated and unhealthy. Now what?

Sunday, June 01, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Jeff Jarvis said something that got my fur up: Only Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan had an irrefutable point. 'We've got a totally irrational system of nominating our president,' he said. 

It's refutable. Obama looked at how the nominating process was laid out and then built an organization and strategy to win on the terms of the system, rather than close his eyes and try to hit the target and then blame the game for his loss as Clinton and her supporters are doing. 

Which kind of President would you rather have -- one who accepts the world as it is and then maps out a way to win, or one that grouses at how irrational it is. 

Yeah it's irrational that all the oil is in the Middle East. Now what? 

Yeah it's irrational that Bush started a crazy war and that the country's education and health care systems are inadequate to compete in a global economy. Now what? 

Our infrastructure is crumbling, our products aren't competitive, we're uneducated, unhealthy, angry and to make matters worse our houses aren't worth shit. Now what? 

I want a President who welcomes the chaos and then figures out how we can be smart about the hand we've been dealt. Not one that whines and complains about how irrational the world is. 

I can't wait until the Clinton Democrats accept that their time has passed and the world their way worked in has passed too, and let's get on with it. 

Update: This piece, cross-posted at Huffington.