SOME NEW IDEAS THAT CLINTON SUPPORTERS MIGHT LIKE

Why don't we only seat delegates from the big states at the "Democratic" convention?

Or better yet, for those states with especially large populations of African-Americans, why don't we only allot them only 3/5ths as many delegates? That sounds like the proper proportion, especially for Southern states, wouldn't you say?

Seriously, though, if Clinton loses the pledged delegate count but wins the nomination, here's my suggested olive branch to the Obama supporters -- could the Party at least have the class to change its name?

A LITTLE MID FLIGHT TURBULENCE? OR A CRASH LANDING?

Those are the questions all Americans should be asking this morning. Are we witnessing a momentary downturn in the inevitable path to an Obama nomination? Or has Hillary Clinton figured out a way to take down her rival once and for all?

I could be glib and answer your question, but the name of this blog is called "Empathic Rationalist." So I must tell you the truth -- I don't know the answer.

Most likely, Obama will win. That's what the betting markets say, and they're logical in saying so. He has a big enough lead among pledged delegates that, barring a truly bizarre twist, she won't be able to catch him there, even if they do a re-vote in Michigan and Florida. Ultimately, the pledged delegates SHOULD BE what matters, at least if this party is worthy of its name. After all, could you imagine the Democratic Party issuing a battle cry in Gore v Bush other than "let's re-count the votes in Florida to see which candidate deserves the most delegates from the people's vote?" Once you depart from that pledged-delegate standard, you're opening up yourself to charges of arbitrarily changing the rules in the middle of the game.

But, and it's a BIG but, the Democratic party leaders may not care so much about following the rules of a truly democratic game. They may look for a pretext to select the candidate that they feel is strongest at the time of the convention. If they're so inclined, they would love to find a pretext that smacks of being democratic, and what sounds more democratic than looking at the results of the aggregate popular vote? Assuming they do a re-vote in Michigan and Florida, Hillary really could overtake Barack in the overall popular vote. As of now, she's down 600,000, and she caught up by more than 300,000 in last night's contest alone. I could see her catching up another couple of hundred thousand in Pennsylvania, and even more in Florida. Get the picture?

In fact, even if she loses both the popular vote and the pledged delegate contest, I still wouldn't put it past the superdelegates to look at the overall trend line. Barack won twelve in a row, Hillary has now won three. I expect that trend to stop momentarily, with elections in Wyoming and Mississippi, but if she wins Pennsylvania (in which she's favored), then who knows how far her momentum might carry her in the months of May and June. In short, given that the party elders aren't likely after last night to step in to support Barack, the Fat Lady isn't even warming up, let alone singing, just yet.

Let's leave aside the trees for a moment and look at the forest -- or, to return to the metaphor at the top, let's look at this from 30,000 feet. Barack built a huge lead in the count that matters most and it's still his to lose. He's like a football team that's up by ten points reasonably late in the game. All he needs to do is figure out a way to come close to holding his own going forward, and he should win. My concern is that he's never been in this situation before, so I just can't guarantee that he can get the job done. To be specific, he's never been in the situation where he's been getting relentlessly bashed by everyone and anyone other than the minority of the talking heads who are firmly in his quarter.

Just think about it. McCain and Hillary, and especially the latter, are taking on Obama full bore. Hillary feels justified in mocking him, maligning him ... and throwing out every kind of disgusting innuendo she can envision, and she's getting a free pass in doing so from the media. Why? Consider that half of the talking heads are Republicans, and they want to see Hillary steal the election so that they can mop up the Democrats in the fall. Rush Limbaugh is even telling Republicans to vote for Hillary so as to throw the Democratic Party into chaos. He, like the other Republican talking heads, surely realizes that if the Democratic party elders ignore the results of the pledged delegate count, a number of us will reflexively cast protest votes for McCain.

As for the Democratic analysts, many of them back Hillary, so they're going to let her throw mud and see if it sticks (which it has so far). Many others are intimidated by the Clinton argument that because the media has bent over backwards to help Obama, it's time to see if he can take a little pounding. And still others just want to see a "horse race." (It's good for ratings, right?) The result is that Obama has been getting bashed relentlessly and Hillary has been rewarded for doing so.

Yes, I know. I'm forgetting the obvious. Why hasn't Obama fought back? Why does he continue to persist in acting like he's running against McCain, and not Hillary? Aren't those the $64,000 questions? Five months ago, I might have speculated that he simply didn't have the belly for an intra-party fight. But I don't think that's the case any more. I truly believe he's trying to take the high road because he's concluded that if this becomes an intra-party blood bath, he might win the nomination, but McCain would win the election. Nobody can deny that that proposition is true. The problem is that the media might be giving Barack no choice. I don't see how he holds Hillary off is she continues to be given a free pass in her campaign, which is about as relentlessly negative and slimy a primary campaign as I've seen in my life, at least on a Presidential level. (On top of everything else that she and her husband said, didn't you just love her how she equivocated when asked if she thought Barack was a secret Muslim? Yes, folks, that is slime -- John McCain would never stoop to that, nor would Obama.)

I predict that Barack will look to see how the party elders respond to this last round of campaigning, consider how much momentum he can generate from Wyoming and Mississippi, and then re-assess whether he is gathering superdelegates at a pace consistent with his clear pledged-delegate advantage. If he does not see a major momentum change in his direction, I think he will fight back. And I believe he can do it effectively enough to hold off Clinton. But yes, there could be a price. Fortunately for me, as much as I love Barack, I could live with McCain ... much more easily than with Clinton.

TAKING A BREAK FROM MY "CULT"

Yes, it still makes me laugh to see the Clintonistas and the right-wing columnists join together to mock me and my fellow "Obamaniacs" as cultists. If that is a cult, it is a movement of moderate and progressive people who are simply sick and tired of living in a country where, to be a moderate or a progressive, you're supposed to be cynical, fearful of change, and essentially uninvolved in the process of political change (other than to whine and, on occasion, to vote). Nobody thinks Barack is the be-all-end-all of politics. He simply is the vehicle for gathering people together who remembered how right-wing talk radio singlehandedly killed the immigration bill, and would like to see moderates/progressives get off their butts and fight back. Whether it's a fight for health care, to minimize climate change, or to work for peace in the Middle East, we want to join together and DEMAND progress. In the past, progressive changes have only taken place when the leaders who supported such changes were backed by an outspoken citizenry. The top-down model advocated by the Clintons might get us a conservative welfare-reform package or a NAFTA, but not the kind of things that Hillary likes to promise to her Democratic voters. That's why the intelligent right-wingers hate Barack so much. They realize that, because he can lead a mass movement of active citizens, he might actually get something done.

But enough. This is supposed to be the calm before the storm, right? In two days, we will have "Super Tuesday" -- as opposed to Super, Duper Tuesday, which occurred last month. This Tuesday should either be the day that locks up the nomination for Barack, or emboldens the Clintons to fight all the way to the convention. (Yes, there is a scenario where she quits after the late primaries, but I'm thinking that if she soldiers on much past March 4th, she'll take her shots with the superdelegates ... ugh!) Maybe we who don't live in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island or Vermont can take a break from the festivities to think about something else ... at least for a couple of days. I know. Why not think about Oregon?

For those of you who have forgotten, we have a Senate race out there among two people who are trying to unseat the only incumbent Republican Senator on the West Coast. One of them, Jeff Merkley, is well ahead in the fundraising contest and has the most endorsements from party leaders. The other, Steve Novick, is ahead in the polls. Novick, my old friend from law school, is making that happen with the help of some advertisements conceived by the same braintrust that helped Russ Feingold storm through Wisconsin. They saw in Novick the kind of candidate who can truly inspire people -- with his intelligence, passion, courage, and above all else, his sense of humor.

I'm curious if you all have gone onto You Tube and checked out Novick's political ads and other videos. For example, have you seen the Fox News show that featured Novick's "beer" ad? What's quite amazing about Novick is that the guy is further to the left than I am -- if that's possible, right? -- and yet the right-wingers love him. Why? Because he doesn't take himself too seriously, and he has the kind of playful approach to politics that is so rare among liberals, who generally talk as if conservatives are evil people who should feel ashamed of themselves.

In the era of Obama, Novick is an altogether different politician than Barack. His rhetoric is sharp and pointed. He doesn't try to be everyone's friend. He speaks against the forces of conservatism with sharp political rhetoric, and yet they still don't mind him, because he spends the rest of his time making fun of himself. Novick is the kind of guy that you really can see yourself having a beer with, regardless of your political views, and you know that after he tosses a couple, he'll start speaking out against the wimpiness in his own party every bit as much as the wackos in the GOP.

Anyway, I'd rather not sing his praises any more today. I'd rather you discover him for yourselves. Just go to You Tube, search for Novick videos, and enjoy the shows. Then tell me what you think? Am I exaggerating, or is this just the kind of guy America needs to tell truth to power? I don't always agree with Steve, but I always trust that he's speaking from the heart and with the best interests of the "little guy" at heart. I've never, in fact, met a person more devoted to the interests of the working class than Steve Novick.

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT – AND MORE!

You might think that today my mind would be on the two Democrats who debated Thursday night in Texas -- the two who have fought tooth and nail for more than a year, raising record sums of money, and bringing out record hordes to the polls. I have trouble believing that the survivor of that debate, the one who didn’t have to resort to desperate measures and pathetic little slogans (“Change you can Xerox”), won’t ultimately be elected our next President. And yet I can’t say that the big story of the week involved him, or his rapidly unraveling primary opponent. The story of the week involved another unraveling opponent of Barack Obama. I’m referring to the editors of the New York Times.

I am a daily subscriber to the Times, and I still consider it America’s finest newspaper. I feel that way notwithstanding its support for the Iraq War and its recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Though those positions saddened me, I can’t exactly say they embarrassed the newspaper. But the hatchet job that the paper attempted this week against John McCain was an embarrassment. I doubt it will hurt McCain. The only victim here is the Times itself.

Picture yourself as a statesman who is married but whose job involves meeting lots and lots of people, many of whom are attractive, single women. Then imagine that you legitimately come to like one of those women, enough to want to get together with her socially – maybe have dinner at nice restaurants. You never sleep with her, you never even kiss her, but your staff gets nervous about the fact that you go out alone with her. And a couple of members of that staff, without being willing to identify themselves for the record, tell a newspaper many years later that they suspect you had an affair. You’re asked about the so-called “affair” and you deny it, as does your friend, which only makes sense, since your relationship with her was strictly Platonic.

Does that sound newsworthy? Does that sound worthy of a newspaper story insinuating that the statesman has had extra-marital, sexual relations with a lobbyist for whose clients he then does extraordinary political favors? It may be that the politician did go too far in helping his friend’s clients … but how does that prove that the statesman and his friend actually slept together? The New York Times provided no evidence that John McCain’s 1999 relationship with Vicki Iseman was any different than what was described in the previous paragraph – and yet the paper saw fit to suggest that the two had a “romantic relationship.” No physical evidence was gathered to support such an allegation, no evidence of the two sharing the same hotel room, no witnesses who identified themselves as knowing about this relationship … and not even anonymous witnesses who claimed to have definitive knowledge that McCain and Iseman were physically involved with one another. Still, our nation’s pre-eminent newspaper thought it was appropriate to print the story. If it weren’t so pathetic, it might even be funny.

What in the name of Oliver Cromwell is going on? Have we reached the point where we not only condemn extra-marital sex, but we condemn any kind of close friendship between a married man and a younger, single woman? From what I can tell, the New York Times has gathered evidence that McCain had such a friendship with a lobbyist. From comparing pictures of Iseman and McCain’s wife, I would even be willing to infer that McCain thought Iseman was physically attractive. This is news? This is worthy of sexual innuendos? You might think that the Times ran this story to ruin McCain’s chances, but you’d be wrong. It actually held the story for many weeks until McCain had sewn up his party’s nomination. Apparently, the story wasn’t so much politically motivated as it was motivated by the desire to share with the public a genuinely newsworthy set of facts (and innuendo). That’s what I find so shocking. The editors of the Times really think we should want to know about who may be screwing whom in Washington. It almost makes you want to move to Sweden, doesn’t it?

“Well, OK,” the Times’ editors might want to say now, in the aftermath of the firestorm that their story has created. “Maybe we shouldn’t have played up the whole possible-sex angle. Maybe we should have stuck with the idea that back in 1999, John McCain – Mr. “I’ll take on the lobbyists” – took extraordinary measures to help out the client of a lobbyist with whom he was close friends. That’s newsworthy, isn’t it?”'

Sure it is. I would have had no problem with the Times printing such an article, and in hindsight, the Times’ editors probably wish they had printed that one instead. But the real question is that, even had the Times ignored the possibility of a sexual relationship and demonstrated with undeniable evidence that back in 1999 McCain allowed a personal friendship to cloud his judgment on behalf of a lobbyist’s client, what should the significance be of Mr. McCain’s misconduct? Should it effectively disqualify him from the White House? Should we start looking at the man not as a hero, but rather as a sleaze? My answer is “No, no, 1000 times no!”

I’m a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, and a person who is scared by John McCain’s vision of an endless war in Iraq and sickened by his calls to make permanent tax cuts for the rich. But I also deeply appreciate his service as a soldier and former POW, his maverick stances on such issues as campaign finance reform and immigration reform, and his truly independent spirit. I believe him when he says that he wants to clean up Washington. And those views would hardly change if I were informed that he used bad judgment on one or two occasions in the past.

Happily, from what I can tell, virtually everyone I know – Democrat as well as Republican -- agrees with me that the McCain story, whether it be about extra-marital sex or giving inappropriate favors to lobbyists is just not that big a deal. And that reflects what might be the general mood of this election season. In Barack Obama and John McCain, we have a couple of politicians who are quite obviously so fundamentally decent that we Americans might actually be willing to cut them some slack. I support investigative reporters seeking out the stories about those mistakes and reporting them, but I would be willing to stipulate that all politicians have done a few things they wish they hadn’t, and I’m sick and tired of thinking of them as scumbags simply because they haven’t been moral exemplars every day of their adult lives.

McCain isn’t the only one getting the benefit of a few doubts. Just as the public is ignoring his alleged peccadilloes, so too is the Democratic electorate ignoring Hillary Clinton’s last ditch efforts to badmouth Obama. One minute he’s supposedly “plagiarizing,” the next minute he’s said to have authorized statements about her health care program that he “knows” to be false. “J’accuse!” says Hillary. “Wake me up when you stop acting like a desperate loser,” is the near-universal response.

It is no exaggeration to say that we find ourselves at a crossroads as a nation in terms of our political discourse. We can either remain in the era of Willie Horton and Whitewater, of Swiftboating and scandal, of incessant ridicule, of strawmen, and of slime. Or, we can treat our political candidates like they are presumed to be honorable, and look to see which one, if treated with respect by both political parties, could actually deliver the best changes for America. My preference for the latter is based on a political philosophy that embraces the public sector (within limits) and looks for it to make a substantial impact on our world. There are those who would instead prefer gridlock – “the government that governs best, governs least,” they say. I only wish they would be honest about their preference and not underhanded. Don’t rip into good men like Barack Obama and John McCain, just stick with the merits. Say that you oppose steps to fight global warming. Say that you oppose steps to make health care more universal. Say that you’d just as soon leave nearly all the national wealth in the hands of the top 5% of the population. Then, at least, we can have a national debate on the issues, and the New York Times can read like the New York Times … and not the National Enquirer.

DON'T WAIT FOR THE FAT LADY TO SING -- DO THE MATH NOW!

Here's my recommendation for all the hard-heads out there who want to figure out for yourself why, barring a miracle, it's Young versus Old in November.

Google "Real Clear Politics." Click on to the "Pledged Delegates" count. And just let your eyes run wild. You'll see today even more clearly what I saw last week, after my beloved "Potomac Primary": the only way for Hillary to win this is to steal it. There just isn't enough pledged delegates left for her to make up the roughly 160 deficit that she now faces.

OK. Mathematically, she can obviously still win. If it were disclosed tomorrow that Obama is the "Manchurian Candidate," sent by the Chinese to mess with the good ol' US of A, Clinton would win all remaining delegates, and she'd defeat Obama in a walk. But I'm not talking theory, I'm talking reality. Consider the states that Obama has left on the calendar: North Carolina (huge African-American population in the primary), Mississippi (dominant African-American population), Wyoming (caucus, if I recall correctly), Oregon (Pacific Northwest? Hillary?), and Vermont (a little touch of the Pacific Northwest ... in the East). I see those as a win, a big win, a win, a win, and a win. And it's not like I see a single slam dunk left on Hillary's schedule.

This "firewall" of Texas and Ohio on March 4th is setting up as a dogfight. She might win them, but how many delegates could they net her -- 10? 20? 30? 50? She'd still be down by triple digits, and then she'd get hammered in Miss and WY.

'Taint happenin' for her absent something truly bizarre.

By the way, speaking of doing the math, Rasmussen came out with a new poll on the Oregon Senate race. The incumbent Republican Gordon Smith remains ahead, but only by 13 percent ... and the Democrat that does the best against him is none other than "the next Paul Wellstone," Steve Novick. Novick's "positives" are a few points higher than his primary opponent, Jeff Merkley, and his "negatives" are a few points lower than Merkley. Plus, Smith beats Merkley by 18%, five points worse than Novick. It seems that Novick has become a bit of a rock star from his amazing advertisements, which are major favorites on You Tube.

The Oregon primary is coming up in May. Hopefully, it will be a non-event on the Presidential side and we can all focus exclusively on Democratic nomination for Senate. I suspect that with Barack at the top of the ticket, whichever Democratic candidate faces Smith will have some pretty serious coattails to ride.