…posting online, back in the (mem-O-ries!) daze of dial-up connections, I used to have this “back in my day, Sonny” routine. The premise was that I’d start becoming an old crank while I was still young and could enjoy it.

Well, time, as they say, munches on.

Now, people my age are supposed to be onthe “old” side of the alleged Clinton/Obama “age gap.”

We who “came of age before the Internet age,” according to a comment poster on Paul Krugman’s blog, are supposed to have a whole different mindset than Those Pesky Kids. We’re supposed to go in for understated “quality,” such as that expressed in Sen. Clinton, rather than flashy cleverness, such as that seen in Sen. Obama.

But then again, Sixties Generation smugness grossed me out at least as back as 1979.

I identified with my immediate youngers, not my immediate elders. I fantasized about Kate Pierson, not about Stevie Nicks.

When The Stranger and Nirvana’s Nevermind debuted in the same week of September 1991, I felt that my whole aesthetic worldview had finally achieve true recognition.

Now, I feel my sociopolitical world view is finally achieving true recognition.

To me, Obama is a helluva lot more than a guy with crisp suits and a strong speaking voice.

To me, he embodies what I’ve called “MISCosity.” Assorted different backgrounds, nationalities, and influences. Progressive populism. Optimism.

Yeah, Pres. Obama will likely disappoint me, more than once. Compromise is the nature of politics, after all. But I’d rather have a Prez who promises more than he can deliver, than one who will pretty obviously only work on behalf of the insiders and the too-oft-proven-wrong experts.

As one blogger has noted, the Clinton-era “politics of the possible” reeks too much, by now, of the worst selling-out to power combined with the worst self-aggrandizement. A lot of us want better. And we’re daring/foolish enough to believe we can get better.