Stray political thoughts

First--I freely admit that I am glued to the Democratic race between Senators Obama and Clinton. My view is probably colored substantially by my partisanship for Obama, but I don't think I'm unable to see reason. At this point, the conventional wisdom seems to be that Obama will reach the convention with a slight lead in elected delegates, but Clinton may win several large states (obviously she has already won Ohio, and narrowly squeaked out Texas) just prior to the convetion. In this scenario, the votes of party superdelegates, who are mostly elected officials and a elected party officials, would ultimately decide the winner. There are various schools of thought as to how the superdelegates should vote, but in the end, they will vote in the way that they feel is in their best self-interest, and there's not much that anybody can do to stop that. However, the argument being put forth by the Clinton camp, most recently by PA Gov. Ed Rendell this morning on Meet the Press, is that Clinton should get the nomination based on her winning several, large swing states that will be critical for Democrats to take in November. Because she has done this, even if Obama has a lead in elected delegates, superdelegates should vote for Clinton, the argument goes. First off, it is offensive to me, as someone from a small and mostly conservative state, to suggest that my vote in the Democratic primary system does not deserve to be considered. But more to the point is that if you got in your time machine and went back to December 2007, before the Iowa caucus, and asked both camps what they needed to do to get the nomination, they would unamimously and without controversy, agree that the one thing required to win the nomination would be to have more delegates than the other candidate. Now that the Clinton campaign has determined it is unlikely for her to be in a position of having more elected delegates, they have produced this new line. Since the Democrats, by virtue of their name, are theoretically the party that believes in democracy, I find it hard to believe that we could possibly select a candidate that has fewer elected delegates, or even more importantly, I would like to see the candidate with more popular votes, period. Of course, this is politics, so actual scruples play little role, if any.

Also, it was nice to see Tom Daschle defending Obama on Meet the Press this morning, and on CNN earlier this week. It breaks my heart to see this intelligent, reasonable person that used to hold so much power in the US Senate because it reminds me what South Dakota has given up in order to put a Bush troglodyte into office. Tom has a new book about health care in America out, and I look forward to reading it. From many of the people I've talked to, South Dakota has a real case of buyer's remorse over their decision back in '04. I miss you, Tom.