Hillary Clinton, Hélas!

Matt Yglesias huffs at Jon Chait and David Broder as they ponder the need for a third-party presidential candidate link . "It makes you think,” (sound effect: dripping irony).

if only, instead of the party that's been governing the country for the past six years, there was some kind of second major party whose elected officials supported substantial policy shifts on Iraq, immigration, energy, and health care. Wouldn't that be great? It could almost make this Bloomberg business irrelevant.

I’m sympathetic with what he says here, but I don’t think he grasps how frustrated people like, well, me, are with the Democratic roster. Stipulated that it’s light-years less God-awful than the other lot. Stipulated that politics is the art of compromise and that we never get exactly what we want. And for sure I don’t want another Ralph Nader (come to think of it, I never much wanted the first one).

Does anyone really—I mean really, really—think that if we chose presidents by merit, we’d end up with any one of this lot? Or indeed anyone else from a process that seems so structurally corrupted that it can’t begin to churn up the kind of candidates we so badly need? They asked André Gide, who was the best French novelist? --“Victor Hugo, hélas!” I suppose I’ll vote for Hillary, holding—not my nose, precisely, but surely my breath, hoping against experience and expectation that she won’t annoy me quite as much as I expect her to do.