Two-Minute Rant

Okay, there's one thing I simply have to get off my chest this morning after breaking my vow and reading a little of the horserace coverage.

There's a good reason that the Obama campaign is winning the delegate count. Because they're a good, smart political campaign. They read the rules, and they knew that the only way to win the election was to win a majority of the delegates. And so, they set out to construct a plan which would lead to them winning a majority of, you know, the delegates.

All of this bullshit talk spewing from the Clinton campaign and its supporters about the popular vote, or Ohio and Texas and Florida being the only states which count, is simply beside the point. I wish that our system were less Byzantine, and that every election was conducted purely on a popular vote basis. But it's not, and to pretend that those statistics have real-life meaning when they don't is the kind of foolish, utopian crap that distracts the attention of Democrats all the time.

Now, it does so happen that, the way the Democratic party is constructed, with the superdelegates making up about 40% of the delegates needed to win the nomination, that it's nearly impossible, in a tight two-way race, to get to the magical 2,025 number without a decent number of them flopping your direction. The Clinton campaign knows that they got outhustled and outsmarted in the pledged delegate race, and so their only option is to try to win over the superdelegates with a variety of tactics, the current one seeming to be the scorched earth tactic of 'we're going to destroy Senator Obama so thoroughly that he'll be radioactive to the touch, and they'll have to come crawling back to us! Mua ha ha!'

But previous, less scurrilous tactics to win over the opinions of superdelegates, like the 'important state' campaign or discussions of electibility, were totally valid campaign tactics. I don't like them, but I am rather biased.

And, if they work, and the Clinton campaign can convince the lion's share of the superdelegates to fall their way and win, then good for them. They won, according to the rules as they were laid out at the beginning of the game. I won't like it, but I won't be crying messiah-shaped tears in my beer, either.

Incidentally, the whole 'rules as they were laid out at the beginning' thing sort of defines what ought to happen with regards to Florida and Michigan as well. A smart party will reward the campaign that does the best job of playing to the rules as they are. That is the campaign most likely to be able to succeed in the general election, where the rules won't be changing midstream. And so the votes in Florida and Michigan ought not to count for anything. If we can agree to seat the delegations by splitting their delegates 50/50 for each candidate, fine. Otherwise, screw the states. They'll get over the slight.