Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island, and YOU

[Note: I originally wrote this for the political blog, Politiparty, but I was so happy with its outcome that I thought I'd post it here.]

The political landscape is oddly blurry at this point, mostly because expectation doesn't account for anything whatsoever.

The most explanatory for the sort-of vague statement above resounds in the fact that Lincoln Chafee won his bid yesterday.

It's almost ironic tha the biggest battle was in the smallest state yesterday, with the "most liberal senator" in the GOP getting the nod as the Republican candidacy for his district in Rhode Island.

And, I think, his opponent was not the big loser yesterday - even though it seems he was - but expectation. Expectation truly did lose yesterday.

Democrats are hubristic to assume that everyone wants a change and wants exactly the same thing that they do (Bush/Republicans out of office). That's the Dems problem: they think that everyone is with them based on a few polls. And, to their credit, it should point to the fact that the country is unhappy and wants to go in a different direction.

However, a few polls don't make it so, I'm afraid. The fact that the war is a mess and we don't have the respect of the rest of the world doesn't mean that the American people are going to vote that way.

What did the movie 'Reality Bites' teach us? Expectation is nothing. Winona Ryder should have, by all acounts, gone with Ben Stiller. But she went with Ethan Hawke. I think Chuck Klosterman would agree with me that what someone should do doesn't mean that's what he/she is going to do.