Politics is like Marriage.

But none of this means that we should throw a childish hissy fit and leave them just because they disappoint us once. The fact of the matter is that everybody is unique in this world. That means that there is nobody else that is uniquely you. It follows, then, that it is a near certainty that someone else is always going to do something that you think of as absolute lunacy and that you would never dream of doing in a million years.

And the person we live with and love for the rest of our lives is the same way. They will challenge us, test us, disappoint us, know all our secrets, and set the temperature at 74 degrees when you want it set at 72. The challenge in picking candidates to elect and support is not to pick the Perfect Candidate. That is simply not going to happen, because as I said before, there is nobody that is uniquely you. The challenge is to pick the candidate whose weaknesses that you accept and that you can live with.

This is why there is going to be a lot of disappointment today. There are going to be disappointed that Greg Palast may have exaggerated some of his figures about the Rove e-mails. This is the sort of thing that happens when you post yourself as the Perfect. When you pose yourself as the Perfect, then you will inevitably set yourself up among some people for disappointment. People will see Palast as a serial exaggerator and give themselves over to existential despair.

And there will be people disappointed with Cindy Sheehan. She set herself up for disappointment from a lot of people by posing as the Perfect. But there is bound to be a lot of disappointment among people with her announcement that she is leaving the party. Those who still support her knew from day one that she was not a Democrat, that she was a peace activist and would only support peace candidates. I still support her because I never considered her one in the first place; I support her for her message and not her party affiliation.

Many of the people who throw a hissy fit and either leave the party or leave Daily Kos do not understand the kind of message that Kos brings. His movement works, not because it is the flashiest or because it produces the most change yesterday, but because it is the most realistic. It did not take overnight to get to where we are. The 2000 election, where five men thought they knew better than the American Public who should be President was merely the final straw. That was merely the cumulation of a 40-year attack on the New Deal by Republicans starting with Goldwater and progressing into steadily more extreme forms disguised as moderation. And it will not take overnight to reverse the abuses of power of the Reagan and Bush years.

That is why so many people left Nader after the 2000 election. In 2004, they saw him as an ass who would not work with either the Green Party or with others to get rid of Bush. Of course, he was the same person in 2000. But people did not see him for what he was -- a divisive figure who undermined the chances of not only Al Gore, but of Jimmy Carter when he refused to endorse him over Reagan. Any reasonable person could have seen that Carter was much better than Ronald Reagan. But when Nader was still near the height of his influence and power, he could have made things interesting by endorsing Carter over Reagan and making things close. But that did not happen, and all of the undecideds broke for Reagan, making what had been a close election into a landslide. Once Nader set himself up as infallable, their downfall was only a matter of time.

And look at what happened to Bush. After the 9/11 attacks, he developed a core group of followers who believed that he was incapable of doing anything wrong and that he was the greatest man since the New Testament was completed 2000 years ago. And look at what happened to him now -- he is now the most unpopular president since Nixon was in office. What we have is a president who is incapable of changing, incapable of admitting he is wrong, and who sets himself up as Mr. Perfect.

So, for all those people who tell us that Edwards supported the IWR or that he is extravagant or that he is rich or that he accepts $55,000 speaking fees, do us a favor -- just drop it. We knew all that about the IWR. We knew that he was not perfect; he himself would be the first to tell you that he is not. We know that he is extravagant and that he makes more money than any of us. Does that somehow disqualify him from speaking out about the rampant poverty that is running loose in our country and the massive inequality between the rich and the poor? Does that somehow disqualify him from engaging in people-powered politics like Howard Dean did four years ago and mobilize thousands of voters to lobby against the war? Does that somehow disqualify him from calling the party to account and demanding that they grow a spine and stand up to the abuses of power of the Bush administration?

It is not a quest for a Holy Grail of perfection. The Presidential primaries are about picking one of 10-20 different imperfect men or women to lead this country. If people don't vote and don't participate in the process because they do not accept the reality that they are dealing with imperfect leaders, then Rudy Giuliani thanks you for your support. That is what they want, to see you drop out of the process and sit on the couch and go back to watching American Idol and the latest dissappearence of the Cute White Blonde.

And there are plenty of people who are still holding out for Al Gore and Wes Clark. My advice is that if you are holding out for them because they are perfect, then forget it. They are no different than the people already running. They have their own flaws and their own imperfections that people will jump all over once they run. The healthy thing to do is to hold out for them knowing full well that if they jump in and they win, they will let you down just like the rest of them will.

That is why people like Reagan and Clinton were political teflon. They had gotten to the point where people liked them despite their weaknesses. People agreed with Mondale on the issues more than Reagan, yet they voted for Reagan because they had learned to like him despite his weaknesses. People knew that Clinton was the biggest two-legged tomcat ever to walk the White House but they voted for him anyway because they realized that he brought about record growth and prosperity. The challenge of Edwards and the rest of the candidates will not be to show that they are perfect, but to show that they are the best candidate for the job despite their flaws and imperfections.

It could be argued at this point that the party could just all go over to the DLC and that they could just use us. But there is a remedy that we can use that would not involve voting for a Green candidate that would never get more than 1% or not voting at all and letting George Bush be the Decider. It is called the primary process. If the Big Three are not the right candidates for the job, then the proper way to express displeasure is to vote for Kucinich or Gravel or one of the other candidates. The Democratic Party is a big tent that is a party of people from all walks of life. There are plenty of candidates on the far left that people can vote for and there are plenty at the political center or the Blue Dogs that you can vote for. That is why there is always going to be disagreement within the party; if you want to go to a party where everyone agrees all the time, there is a place called the Republican Party and a place called the Green Party.

The key in any marriage situation that makes it work is the ability to agree to disagree. If it is "My Way or the Highway," then there is not a place here. It was not merely Iraq that got Joe Lieberman primaried out of the election. It was the fact that his attitude towards the rest of the party was, "My way or the highway." He would always go onto the Sunday Morning talk shows and constantly second-guess the party; whenever someone wanted to create a "divided democrats" meme, all they had to do was give him a call. The primary succeeded in defining him as no longer a Democrat because of his divisive behavior.

And, of course, there is always the requirement that all opinions be fact-based. That is why, for instance, conspiracy theories are not welcome here, because they fly in the face of the facts and are frequently attempts by fringe or hate groups to mainstream their hate as opposed to actually seeking and finding the truth. There is a big tent when it comes to opinions, but people are not entitled to their own facts.

One of the reasons we were in the political wilderness for so long was because the perfect was the enemy of the good. People like Ralph Nader took a "My Way or the Highway" approach that convinced a lot of people to stay home and not vote or who tipped close states to Bush in the 2000 election. Rush Limbaugh was able to exploit this and convince millions of voters that liberals were merely out-of-touch elitists who could not relate to the ordinary needs of the people. That is why the right is pushing the haircut meme so hard this time around.

And that is just what the Republicans want -- to be able to make the perfect the enemy of the good and to use that to divide us. Everyone after the 1960's was living in the shadow of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys, and people were inevitably disappointed when they did not live up. When Carter did not live up to everyone's expectations of him, they turned to spiritual junk food in the form of Ronald Reagan instead of the realism of Carter or Mondale.