SUPER DELEGATE AWARENESS

It is taking much longer than I thought it would (and much, much longer than the pundits wish it would) but Awareness is arriving in the Dem Primary storyline. If it were simply a matter of counting votes, it would already be over. But politics is rarely only about numbers. Not every vote in the United States is equal – as Al Gore will be happy to remind you. And that goes double during Dem primaries.

Almost all states award their Electoral College votes in a winner take all fashion. So, for example, do the primary votes of Democrats in Alabama (which probably will go Republican in the general regardless of which “heathen” the Dems put up) count as much as those in California which will probably, (but not necessarily) go Dem?

And what about the votes in Ohio, which is a must win swing state? Hillary trounced Obama there and leads against McCain. Obama trails McCain in Ohio in all the latest polls (but poll numbers don’t mean much this far out anyway). Or do they? They certainly mean more if you know how to read them, which is one of the skills which supposedly makes those Super Delegates so Super. 

Add to that John Dean’s fifty-state strategy which seeks to totally energize the grass roots of the party. Theoretically Dems could lose this election, and still end up winning the war. That is what happened when Johnson trounced Goldwater in ‘64. The passionate idealism that the conservative Senator from Arizona kindled in hearts of his college-age supporters burned so brightly that it made the conservative revolution inevitable. The same might be the case for the Obamamaniacs. Is this the beginning of a new, New Deal coalition? Or would a loss now just be one more Dem crash and burn?

What the Dem storyline needs now is careful study and a bit of inspiration. The emphasis is on inspiration. It is a “Trust the Force” moment. .