If Michigan revotes and Obama wins, will Clinton drop out then? Doesn’t that take the remaining wind out of the big state fallacy? Just wonderin’

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?

Super Tuesday redux: Hillary Clinton wins states that Democrats win. Obama wins in states we need to win. I don’t want the electoral college map inherited from 2000 and 2004. I want a new map.

Hillary Clinton’s case used to be inevitability. Now she’s struggling to spin her margins as nominal victories over an insurgent movement candidate from within her own party.

I want to win more than an election. I want to grow the number of people who seem themselves within the progressive agenda.

I think that the question of judgment is a credible one for Obama to raise. Of course, past performance is not a perfect indicator of future success, but clear thinking about Iraq in the runup to the war seems like a good test.

My ears pricked up at a new wrinkle in Clinton’s explanation as to why she voted for the authorization of force:

Knowing that he was a megalomaniac, knowing he would not want to compete for attention with Osama bin Laden, there were legitimate concerns about what he might do.

So I think I made a reasoned judgment.

I’ve always been bothered by Clinton’s assertion that the intentions of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were concealed and unknowable. But okay, screw me once….

And I’ll concede that nearly everybody in government seemed to believe that Saddam probably–if not certainly–had a stockpile of some weapons of mass destruction.

But having WMD is different from using WMD. Hussein had control over the Iraqi state. Using WMD outside of his borders would cause an immediate and swift, unified response from the world to strip him of his power. Clinton justifies her vote by saying that she thought that Hussein would be jealous of all the attention that Osama bin Laden was getting? A ridiculous bit of amateur psychological profiling is a centerpiece of your “reasoned judgment” to authorize the war?

In my book, that’s either being governed by unreasonable fear, or being tragically overconfident in your ability to personally read the intentions of faraway dictators.

Tonight my son made the poignant observation: “Daddy has too many meetings for the Democrats.” I was at the Delaware County Democratic nominating convention last night. There was a local meeting last week also, so I guess it does seem like a lot.

Not too much to report of general interest from the convention. No floor fights. Bob Brady was there. He spoke for about three minutes. Joe Sestak was there spoke for–er–longer. We heard from Auditor General Jack Wagner. I’ll be darned if he doesn’t have an eye on the Governor’s mansion a few years out.

It doesn’t hold any real significance, but there was a straw poll on the presidential race. I believe the tally reported was Clinton 92, Obama 85, Edwards 12 (despite his pullout earlier in the day). These are your party stalwarts, and there’s not a consensus. (If anybody was there and has corrected/updated numbers, please feel free to chime in.)

A former Democratic president, and the ostensible leader of the party, should never, never, never resort to this form of dog whistle politics, no matter how stupid the question was. It’s interesting to note that President Clinton didn’t say “John Edwards won South Carolina in 2004 by 15 points, but did not win the nomination.”

Not unlike the general election, where a candidate can win the general election and still lose on electoral college votes, it’s really odd to crow Clinton’s victory tonight. Clinton and Obama actually split the open delegates evenly, 9-9. Obama had three superdelegates lined up to Clinton’s two. So the final delegate tally for New Hampshire is:

Obama- 12
Clinton- 11
Edwards- 4

So, who actually won New Hampshire?

A really interesting question is how long does John Edwards hold out, and is it possible that the primaries are all going to be close enough, even through Super Duper Tuesday, February 5th, that he gains leverage as kingmaker?