During a break in my business day, I'd thought to call into a C-SPAN discussion of the Democratic election process. I'd been trying to keep track of all the twists and turns of the party's process to get to the nominee. Here are some of the speedbumps I ran into:

• First, I erroneously thought that whoever won the popular vote got the delegates. Silly rabbit. 
• Then, I heard that it was proporational and not winner-take all. Fine. 
• Next there was some noise about superdelegates who, the Politico found were about half white and male while white males made up only 28% of the Dem electorate--a pretty galling turn of events considering that the men of this particular Boys Club have the numbers to decide who will run in this historical national campaign of either the white chick or the Black dude. The superdelegates and the pledged delegates decide. Kinda. 
• At this juncture, Camp Clinton suggested that we chuck the delegates in lieu of plurality while Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that the pledged delegates decide and not "buck the will of the American people." Right about here is where financial backers of Senator Clinton's campaign (and deep pockets contributors all) fired off a letter so hot that the Department of Homeland Security raised the domestic threat level to crimson with chartreuse spots "chastising Pelosi for suggesting that superdelegates 'have an obligation to support the candidate who leads in the pledged delegate count as of June 3rd.'" Their position: Representative Pelosi's position, "runs counter to the party's intent in establishing super-delegates in 1984" whatever the hell that was.
• Now, we throw in about 76 additional super-duper delegates--people whose identities are so secret that they don't even know they're "it" (kind of like people who've contracted the clap but don't know it yet). Oh, and the DNC hasn't figured out who they are yet, either.
• Oh! Oh! and we can't forget Evan Bayh's insane assertion that whichever candidate with the most Electoral College votes in the states they won, get the nod. Now, here I raced back to Wipedia to learn more about the EC, an anacronism the stemmed from some Germanic kingdom or Visigoths...can't remember much on this one--after reading for about 15 minutes I was struck with hysterical blindness. Next, we'll just have them toss a coin before the last game of the NCAA Final Four.

Did I miss anything? I'm not sure that I care any more.

Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments