The Democratic Death Wish

While John McCain is being tutored by Joe Lieberman on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the Democrats are squandering their chances by extending their internecine squabbling so as to give the Republican candidate a free and open opportunity to coalesce his support and win the general election.

The media won’t say this, but here are the facts:

1)    No matter how many states either Democratic candidate win between now and the Denver convention, neither can win the magic number of pledged delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. This means that fighting it out all the way through Puerto Rico will have no effect on the outcome other than to prolong the time for John McCain to solidify his support.

2)    The Democratic outcome is solely in the hands of the Super Delegates, and most of these will withhold their announcements of support until the Denver convention toward the end of August.

3)    Hillary Clinton will not drop out because, although she is mathematically shut out of the pledged delegate lead, she is hoping for a celestial event to similar to the Reverend Wright  fiasco to somehow enable her to convince the Super Delegates to overturn the Barack Obama’s clear delegate lead and the will of the people.

Clinton’s specious argument so far has been based on the fallacious notion that her wins in the “big states” gives her credibility in the general election as if a win in a Democratic primary automatically translates into a win against John McCain in November.

The endorsement of Bill Richardson this week is a hopeful sign that the Super Delegates are coming to their senses and are not willing to wait until the very end of the primary process to anoint a Democratic candidate. To do that would hand the Presidency to John McCain who is proving to be even more dangerous than the current administration.

So we can only hope that the courage of Governor Richardson will spill over and encourage the Super Delegates in time to salvage some of the General election season so McCain doesn’t get a free ride.

Speaking of free rides, we must once again ask ourselves why the media continues to portray the Democratic primary race as if it were an even two person contest. If Obama and Clinton were switched in delegate count, Obama would have been relegated to the “where are they now?” file currently occupied by Dennis Kucinich and Mike Huckabee.

Please, Democrats, give the country a chance to have a decent election with the two obvious candidates, Republican and Democrat fighting it out in time to address issues and character without one side being bloodied and shortchanged.

Nothing else in this campaign matters at this point.

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