All of us here have our preferred candidate or conversely some of us have a preferred candidate we do not wish to see get the nomination, and some of us are more ardent in our support than others.

I would postulate that most of us are probably semi-passionate with random, but generally rare, moments of insanity where we cross the line in our support or disdain as it were.

I came here a month or two ago when one day, after being on DailyKos as a lurker for a year or two, a comment over there mentioned this place after DK had become the Obama echo chamber.

As an Obama supporter, or probably non-Hillary person, DK was still good for dem stuff and other diary tidbits, but the candidate diaries were tiresome.  I enjoy lively debate and as a younger brother in real life I can be a bit of a devils advocate.  I try to reign in my more snarky tendancies, but I love to debate and discuss.  The way DKos painted this place seemed right on at first, a rabid haven of unhinged Hillary supporters.  And after a few days of lurking here I saw that with all things, there was a small kernel of truth to the statement whereas the underlying reality was quite different.

Sure there were and are agitators or those so blinded that rationality and reason have long since left their stances.  But the bulk of the people here, while mostly ardent Hillary supporters are just that, ardent Hillary supporters, but most importantly, democrats first.

The problem I have most with this site is this inbred fear of the republican hate machine and how it will doom the candidate we dont support.  We have begun to use our fear of the hate of the republicans as our own attack fear on the candidate we want to lose our democratic primary.

I find this really embarrasing and dispiriting.

Lets face facts here.  No matter who are nominee is they are going to be smeared mercilously ten ways to Sunday and 90% of it will be baseless, hateful bunk.

Please do not delude yourself that your candidate is somehow less susceptible or somehow immune to this than the other.

Are the republicans going to use Michelle Obama's 'proud' comment, Wright, Bitter, Obama's flag lapel pin and a bunch of stuff so manufactured and hateful that it would make you puke?  Of course.  And they will do it gleefully.

Do you think the republicans arent salivating to reinvent the 90's hate machine against the Clintons?  Bosnia?  Elitist?  Dont be silly.  To go after Clinton unbridled is probably their most driving passion in the world.

Whatever you think you can come up with as the nastiest attack on your candidate, the republicans will come up with something 10 times as vile and use it and use it with glee.

All that said, that is not how we democrats should choose our nominee.  Sure we may believe in our candidates and think only our guy/gal can come through that and win.  But the reality is, we have no clue how it will play out.

What we do know is we have two great candidates who, in my opinion, once we choose one will mop the floor with McCain.

We democrats are holding all the cards in this election and sadly we are not used to and comfortable with running from the front.  But we better get used to running from the front or we will lose.  We have the better message right now.  When things are this bad it is almost hard to lose.

I dont want to get too overconfident because I never say never and who knows what could happen, but McCain is such an awful candidate that in the light of day and in a head to head campaign he stands no chance.  He is a bitter old man who is wrong on so many issues that I will almost feel sorry for how badly he will be defeated.

So lets not let the fear of republican attacks guide us.  All our candidates are susceptible to vicuous, baseless, scurrilous attacks from the republicans - they know nothing else, and have nothing else.  The republicans will be in full desperation mode.  They hate their candidate (truly, McCain is their albatross), they fear being labelled losers, they fear their complete loss of power and more importantly they fear being repudiated so completely for the last 8 years.

So please, no more using the fear of the big bad republicans as a valid reason for us to choose our candidate, its a loser argument and moot since it will be applied equally to both.

We can not let someone like McCain get into the white house.  He is more and more leaning with the neo-cons as he seems to be more and more surrounding himself with them.

I will make one prediction though that I would bet the house one, and I doubt many of you would disagree.  If McCain gets into the white house, we are going to war with Iran.  Hell, we may be going to war with Iran anyway before the election, but with McCain its a certainty.

Couple that with the supreme court and any of use who claim to be democrats are yet so childish to say 'if its not my candidate, im going home or I'll vote for McCain' should be tarred and feathered.

I know we love our and believe in our candidates, but McCain is worse than both by light years.  Remember that and keep that in mind during this long and sometimes prickly primary season.