Of course nothing is more important presidentially than keeping McCranky out of the White House. But isn't it clear who the better candidate is?

The other day I brought up the "gas-tax holiday" business, not for the issue's sake--since it seemed to me that Howie had been covering that perfectly well, and the bad things it told us about both holiday proponents, "Crazy" McCranky and our Hillary--but because of what was suggested to me by the way the Crankyman was making, or, rather, failing to make, his case, what it told us about the quality and condition of his "mind"--for want of a more descriptive word. (I did come up with a possibly more descriptive word: miasma.)

Which was not to dispute the dangerous foolishness of the proposals of the Tax Holiday Twins, Senators McCranky and Clinton. I have yet to hear a hint of disagreement on this point from anyone familiar with either the economics or energy impact of the subject. The only dissenters appear to be the aficionados of pandering to public ignorance.

I'm just catching up on yesterday's news, and in the pile I find breaking news (well, I guess it's broken by now, but still alarmingly pertinent) from A Siegel. In the way that Pastor Dan of Street Prophets is my go-to webguy on matters religious, A Siegel (of Energy Smart) is my go-to webguy on energy and environmental matters. (Please, no complaints about sexism. I have go-to webgals too--like Firedoglake's Christy Hardin-Smith and Marcy Wheeler on legal and governmental matters. I suppose we could make them all "go-to webgurus," but that seems somehow wrong as well as unnecessary.) And yesterday he was excited to report that Friends of the Earth has endorsed Barack Obama:

Until quite recently, those who focused primarily on energy and global warming issues could see reasons to be supporting Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama. In this arena, both have plans and records with strengths … and weaknesses. Both could learn from each other and strengthen their own programs. Thus, with real legitimacy, an “environmentalist”, those concerned about Peak Oil or Global Warming or related issues, could easily defend their position supporting either (or neither) of the candidates. And, again, their platforms/records are certainly light years ahead of this Administration’s and of McSame McCain’s, but have weaknesses and are ‘reasonably good’ but not the best that they could be. Thus, many of us were ’sitting on the sidelines’ when it came to the Presidential campaign.

Well, this has changed.

The precipitating event: Hillary Clinton’s determined foray into the Energy Dumb ranks with her vociferous and highly counter-productive calls for a gas tax moratorium.

Well, this morning, Friends of the Earth jumped off the fence and endorsed Barack Obama for President.

And, for FOE, the defining event, the precipating development: the gas tax holiday. . . .

A (if I may be so familiar) made clear: "[I]t was not just the gas tax holiday proposals from Clinton and McSame McCain, but Barack Obama’s forceful rejection of the idea as wrong-headed and counter-productive. -1 Hillary, +1 Barack. As far as FOE is concerned: Game, Set, Match for its endorsement."

And he concluded: "Again, let us not do things that dig our hole deeper, 'sham solutions,' but look forward to actually changing our path for the better."

I'm sure nobody's noticed that I haven't been writing much about the Obama vs. Clinton contest. I actually said pretty much everything I've (still) got to say on the subject in one of the less-noticed (which is saying quite a lot) pieces I've written here: "Sure, I'll vote for the monster, almost surely, if she's the Dem nominee--even though I don't think she and Bill will support the nominee if she isn't" early last month.

I know I'm far from alone in feeling that where the "major" contenders in the 2008 Democratic presidential field were concerned, it was a field of quite acceptable candidates--especially set alongside whatever life form the Republicans were likely to extract from their candidate freak show--but with no one to gladden a progressive's heart. (I made, and make, a slight exception for John Edwards, but even there, I remain unconvinced of what he would actually advance and fight for as president.)

And I know I'm far from alone in feeling that, since the Democratic field narrowed to the present two-horse race, the two candidates have been separating themselves to a near-astonishing degree--that Obama has emerged as steadily more sensible (as in the case of the gas-tax holiday) and committed to bringing people to his agenda, while Clinton has turned into a pandering horror show, trying desperately (and I don't think "desperately" is an exaggeration--just look at her, for goodness' sake) to be the centrist or even right-wing "strongman" that her low-life advisers (and again, her political advisers seem to me truly among the vilest people on the planet--and I don't see how we can ignore the implications of this for the kind of people she would surround herself with in the White House) tell her some deeply muddled and deeply moronic band of "centrist" voters want her to be.

Let me say again that I truly don't believe that this is what Clinton has always been, though of course in some form the potential must always have been part of her. No, I like my friend Peter's explanation: that she has turned into the monster that the sociopathic Clinton-haters of the '80s and '90s portrayed her as.

Which is why I've written so little about the race. I think any prospective voter to the left of, say, Richard Mellon Scaife needs to be prepared to support either Obama or Clinton unambiguously in November. (Oh wait, is Senator Clinton really to the left of her new booster RMS, one of the principal bankrollers of what someone once described as "a vast right-wing conspiracy" aimed at Bill Clinton and, er, someone else?)

A McCranky victory would be a horror of almost unimaginable proportions. After eight years of the Hurricane Katrina of presidential administrations, the next president has to deal with an executive branch in which nearly everything that hasn't been simply decimated is in an advanced state of corrosion. All the issues, great and small, that have been bungled or ignored these last eight years will have to be dealt with.

In addition, the next president has a backlog of judicial appointments to make. And while they will now have to be made over the veto power of the Senate's Right-Wing Obstruction Machine, would we rather that those appointments be made by a President Obama or Clinton or by Crazy McCranky? (Let me say again that in a sane world, all that would be necessary to make the point would be a big picture of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, whose replacement will all but certainly be named by the next president.)

It's clear already that whoever emerges with the Democratic nomination will have to deal with a large bloc of voters who think that not voting or even voting for McCranky is an acceptable or even somehow morally superior option. Well, that's a summer-and-fall discussion, though one that scares the daylights out of me.

If I may venture one further observation. In 2000, there were people who persuaded themselves they were taking the moral high ground by voting for Ralph Nader over either Al Gore or, um, the other guy (please don't make me say his name) and, when it was pointed out to them that they were effectively voting for, um, the other guy, they didn't care! They said something like: "Well, maybe that's for the best. Maybe what the system needs is to be thoroughly broken in order to build something better."

Well, I ask, how'd that work out?

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