The Ides of March

I’ve always known politics is a dirty game, but I’ve seldom seen it played as dirty as this. And in this movie the Democrats, fighting it out in the Ohio primary! No telling what the Republicans were doing. It would have been so much easier for director George Clooney to have this be Republicans doing all these shenanigans, but I think it has more of an impact this way. Hell, for us liberals, the Dems are supposed to be the good guys.

Ryan Gosling is in charge of media matters for Pennsylvania governor George Clooney, who almost has the nomination wrapped up. But nothing is ever sure in an election, and new factors arise, mostly a Republican blitz (this has been done in the past by both parties) urging registered Repubs to vote for the candidate they’d most like to run against in the open primary. A good argument against open primaries. That’s dirty, from either party. Gosling professes idealism, he is burning with the desire to see Clooney elected … but when his moral mettle is tested, he doesn’t have any, and Clooney doesn’t have much. It’s discouraging, since the positions Clooney stakes out are pretty much what he—as a man, not a character—seems to believe in, pretty much what I believe in myself, and he’s saying such a politically ideal progressive candidate would do pretty much anything, make any compromise, to get elected. And I think he’s right.