It seems like just yesterday that we watched then-Candidate Obama, still full of Hope and promising Change, stand in front of an emotional, exultant crowd in Grant Park and declare victory in the 2008 presidential election.

In fact, that whole campaign, from the declarations of candidates in early 2007 to the primary battles between Hillary and Barack and McCain and Huckabee to the conventions to the Phillies’ World Series victory to the election seems like it just happened.

But in fact, another presidential election is right around the corner.

You might not really know it though, since, unlike this time in 2007, there aren’t many announced candidates.

There’s Obama. And the Rent is Too Damn High guy from New York’s gubernatorial election. And that’s officially it. There’s a few with “exploratory committees” and a few are assumed to be in, and then there’s talkers like Donald Trump.

The fact that so many Big Name Candidates are yet to declare points to a fundamental problem the Republicans are going to have in the upcoming election: While the general populace might not be too fond of the president right now, the alternatives are even worse.

It’s like 2004 all over again.

The real problem, of course, is that the Republican Party has been hijacked by the Tea Party. Right now it looks like, in order to win the Republican nomination, one will have to stake oneself to positions that, while popular among the base, are seen as crazy by Democrats and the majority of independents.

Look at Trump, for example. For the past few weeks, The Donald has been out on the circuit promoting his television show by trying to convince people he is considering a run for president.

And in doing so, he has staked himself to the Birther position.

And it worked! He’s currently running second in a poll of New Hampshire Republican voters.

Unbelievable.

Birthers, for those not in the know, are people who believe – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary– the president was not born in the United States.

Now, there is the distinct possibility that many of these people are so dumb they don’t realize Hawaii is a state, but that can’t possibly account for the whole number.

In an ironic twist, many of these people in 2008 actually voted for someone who was, without a doubt, not born in the United States. It’s true! John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was not part of the U.S.

But I digress.

Among the Republican base, the whole Birther thing is still very popular. Like majority-type popular. But among voters as a whole, it is seen for what it is – a pile of steaming, racist stupidity.

This is the inherent problem for Republicans right now: the base you need to secure in order to win the nomination is WAY to the right of general population, even if said general population still leans center-right to begin with.

Meanwhile, the Democrats can’t seem to even pass their own agenda. Voters handed them the White House and supermajorities in both houses of Congress and yet somehow, they can’t even pass the platform on which a very popular president ran.

A popular president who once in power began to slowly walk back much of what left-leaning voters hoped for after eight years of watching the Bush Administration ram terrible, terrible policies down their throats.

The announcement two weeks ago that the administration would go back to secret military tribunals for Gitmo suspects (a place that was supposed to be shut down by now, anyway) instead of courts of law – as the Constitution says – coupled with a Brand New War in which the United States and its allies are backing a rag tag bunch of rebels who may or may not want to destroy us against a dictator that we all but ignored for a couple of decades, left many of the more liberal supporters of the president shaking their heads in disbelief.

How did we get back to 2004?

Right now the country is stuck between a rock and a dumb place, forced to choose between a party that is willfully dumb and evilly ideological or one that is completely useless and stupid.

It’s a no-win situation. The only reason to vote for either side is so the other doesn’t win.

And that’s no way to run a country.

By staff writer Brian Beckley