I’ve been one of the Obama supporters who has also been quick to defend Senator Clinton. To date, I’ve been proud of them both.

But as the crossroads for the Democratic Party approach, I’m getting increasingly disgusted with the tortured logic of the Clintons and their surrogates. Barack Obama has the lead in pledged delegates, popular vote, and contests won. The entire Clinton claim to the nomination now rests on making a flawed argument to superdelegates that infers November outcomes from Clinton’s modest big-state victories among Democrats.

Ed Rendell was on Meet the Press this morning, where he intoned repeatedly that caucuses are undemocratic, which is meant to discredit much of Obama’s success.

So goes the Clinton/Rendell argument: primaries > caucuses.
Here’s the problem: primaries > caucuses > letting the machine decide.

I greatly respect the superdelegates who have refrained from announcing their endorsements while voters are waiting to weigh in. But if it really is a problem that we’re having an increasingly damaging intra-party war, the remaining superdelegates can announce what their criteria will be. Then the war rooms can do the math in each of the campaigns, and one of them can start to position themselves for a face-saving, graceful exit.

I would make this argument to the Obama campaign: you’ve built your case for a different kind of politics around the concept of grassroots power. Whatever you think about the rules that currently exclude Michigan and Florida, you have to recognize that it was career machine politicians in both parties that created the situtation. I think Obama should be championing little-d democracy by being full-throated about the importance of letting Michigan and Florida voters count. Michigan should be winnable for him, anyway, so why choose to stop being a movement candidate now?

I’ve been at the polling place in Nether Providence Township since 6:15 AM. It’s impossible to know how things are really going, but here’s how it feels on the ground in our little sliver of the Philly burbs:

In the morning, the Republican base was out. They’re always there. This is a majority Republican district by registration, and it’s a community that votes. Hopes of a disgraced and discouraged Republican base staying away from the polls are, to my senses, wishful thinking. This is a fairly affluent, mostly white suburb, still tied to a county GOP machine. Your mileage may vary.

There are plenty of Republicans who will gladly tell you for whom they’re splitting their tickets.

The Democrats who are showing up to the polls are often angry. They don’t like the sleezey way that their candidates were attacked. One lady railed on the local GOP commissioner for more than five minutes about the disgusting ads that our local state rep, Tom Gannon, lobbed at his Democratic opponent, Bryan Lentz (PA-House 161). Others were suspicious and mad about the awkwardness of our polling site. This is probably a reaction to the national mood. Our local judge of elections, though a member of the other party, plays it straight and clean. I don’t think you’d come across a more civil and fair election board anywhere. Both parties work together at our site to make it work right.

Dems are motivated, and Republicans are still coming out, although we don’t know how they’re splitting their tickets.

The one thing I’m sure of: the independents are with us. That’s the group that’s approaching the outside workers and saying, “I’m an independent, but I’m voting straight Democrat this time.” I’d be willing to bet that the registered “NP’s” are voting so overwhlemingly in our favor that if I were a Democratic operative, I’d play the numbers game and turnout independents, period.

If I were a Republican in this neighborhood, I’d be allergic to every NP voter unless I had a voter ID from a previous canvass already in pocket.

By 2:00, our precinct, which has over 900 voters, had already seen 370 walk through the doors. We have an additional 31 absentee ballots returned.

My son came in and helped his mom and dad vote. He made sure we did it just right.

Now we’re at home. Our polls are staffed well and its the slow hour. In an hour, I’m taking some Tylenol and heading back out.

I burst out laughing when I looked out the front window this morning. Our neighbor went a little crazy with some Rendell signs that he recovered from the trash pile at an event site. I knew he wasn’t a Lynn Swann fan, but this was a pretty wild statement.

I congratulated him when I saw him later. The Tom Gannon squad was out doing a lit-drop in our neighborhood. I watched as they skipped his house and ours. I told him those signs were a powerful signal, and joked that the angel of death would pass over his house this night.

We spent the morning at a big full-slate rally in our neighborhood. My wife was grateful to be out of town, so our little democrat went with his dad.

We met cheerful, young Casey Roncaglione. Our good buddy Bryan Lentz got up and proved to be a very effective at talking to a large crowd. (We see big things in his future!) Sestak’s volunteer army was worked up and he got a nice boost from Sen. Max Cleland. Then we had an upbeat Bob Casey, followed by the boyishly enthusiastic Ed Rendell. The headliner was Al Gore, who tied everything back together with a call for us to repair American democracy.

The boy’s favorite speaker was Max Cleland. He really liked the former senator’s line “Don’t wait until O-eight. Get it fixed in O-six.” When he heard that, he looked down at me from his perch up on my shoulders and said “He’s really funny. That was a good one.”

After the speeches were done, he was very happy to shake Cleland’s hand and say “Hi.”

Deena Beard and I drove over to Bryn Mawr to attend the petition-signing rally for our major Democratic candidates this afternoon. (I understand that Geeky Mom and Atrios were both there. I didn’t see Her Geekiness, despite looking for her. And I wouldn’t know Atrios if I tripped over him.) I also got to see some of our friends with the Lentz campaign. (Lentz staffers helped us with poll-staffing in the recent municipal elections. While I’m sorry that he wasn’t given a shot with the *&!$ county establishment, having him run for the PA-161 State House seat means that we can all commit to busting our humps for him.)

Young State Reps. Michael Gerber and Josh Shapiro definitely appear to be party up-and-comers. I expect to see them running for higher office someday. Joe Sestak is clearly refining his four-point security platform that he tried out on the Swarthmore College Dems a couple weeks ago. Lois Murphy looks to be a great shot at a pick-up in the PA-06. Notably absent was Bob Casey, although his petitions were there. (I don’t know if he wasn’t there because of other commitments, or because this wasn’t expected to be his kind of crowd.) More »