By now, everyone has heard the comparisons being used to depict the Democratic presidential nomination race. There seem to be thousands of them.

• Hillary Clinton is Dunkin’ Donuts. Barack Obama is Starbucks.
• Hillary is a PC. Obama is a Mac.
• Hillary is prose. Obama is poetry.
• Hillary is analog, Obama is digital. (Which doesn’t work because analog records still definitely sound good and have their place)

Those comparisons only tell part of the story.

A more effective comparison is that Hillary Clinton is VHS, while Barack Obama is DVD.

VHS definitely had it’s day. It beat out all its competitors (like Betamax), and stayed on top of the game for some time. It got the job done during its day. Not too long after its inception, however, we knew that bigger and better things would eventually come along. We knew someday we would outgrow the format. Someday relatively soon… at least many of us hoped.

Then DVD comes along. After a couple failed attempts (ahem, Laser Disc), people thought that the format was too good to be true. It sounded better. It looked better. Everything about it seemed to make it a vastly superior product. Despite the legitimacy of DVD, people remained skeptical. While some consumers took the DVD plunge and reaped the benefits, others stuck by the tried and true dinosaur format of VHS.

The skeptics haters said things like:

• “I’ve invested so much in tapes, and they’ve always been dependable. I think I’ll just stick with these tapes for a few more years. No need to change yet.”
• “Why should I go for change? Could VHS be better? Sure, but it’s always worked for me. I think I’ll play it safe for now.”
• “DVD looks and sounds pretty, but does it actually work? How can one little disc accomplish all that stuff? There’s no way it can do all that.”

It took some time, but after a while the entire nation realized that we had outgrown VHS and its limited abilities. We moved on to DVD and never looked back.

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Many of you won’t know about this, but the Senate just thwarted an amendment that protected our Constitutional rights — 67-31. Sen. Chris Dodd said about it, “We’ve just sanctioned the single largest invasion of privacy in American history.” Ouch.

Here’s the gist of the proposed/defeated Dodd Amendment to the FISA bill:

To strike the provisions providing immunity from civil liability to electronic communication service providers for certain assistance provided to the Government.

Basically, the Dodd Ammendment would have stripped the new FISA Bill of immunity for telecoms, preventing them from being able to wiretap without a warrant. This is a huge win for the have-to-give-up-civil-liberties-to-be-safe crowd, and a crushing blow to the rest of us. Bush has won again. For now.

The other news here is that Barack Obama voted for the Dodd Ammendment, standing up for all of us in the process. John McCain, of course, voted against it. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was one of only two Senators who just decided not to even show up and vote. Is that the kind of President we want? One who decides she doesn’t have to show up because what is going on with her personally is more important than the plight of the American people? I vote nay to that!

For more on the FISA Bill and Dodd Amendment, head over to this thread on Daily Kos.