Hillary and Tracy Flick

this is kind of old now, but it's still hilarious

see Bush v. Gore, 431 U.S. 98 (2000)

See Bush v. Gore, 431 U.S. 98 (2000).

anyone want to guess that citation will show up in a Clinton v. Obama court battle?

I think it's time that i subscribe to the Journal, because along with the other recent stories I've blogged about, today's WSJ op-ed by Washington super-lawyer and conservative ideologue Ted Olson is a really thought-provoking piece about how (inevitable?) litigation over the Democratic nomination process might proceed. [click here for the op-ed].

I'm pretty much on the exact opposite side of Olson on most political issues, but he makes some fantastic points in this article that really make you consider the lens through which you view Bush v. Gore: as political hatchet-job or sincere legal construction. Here's my favorite part of the piece:

These superdelegates, Byzantine hyper-egalitarian Democratic Party delegate selection formulas, and the fact that many delegates are selected at conventions or by caucuses rather than primaries, combine to offer the distinct possibility that by convention time the candidate leading in the popular vote in the primaries will be trailing in the delegate count.

How ironic. For over seven years the Democratic Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave George W. Bush the presidency over popular-vote winner Al Gore in 2000. But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count, and thus the nominee, over the candidate favored by a majority of the party's primary voters.

[Clinton v. Obama: The Lawsuit]

McCain and the Hoyas

thanks to the van buren boys, i found this great story by mike madden on salon.com [click here]:

John McCain and his senior strategists are among the most superstitious people in politics, and over the course of this primary season, the Hoyas have become something of an omen to Mark Salter, McCain's longtime speechwriter/Senate chief of staff/intellectual alter ego.

...

When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist endorsed McCain three days before the primary there, Salter was marooned in a ballroom without a TV to watch the Georgetown-West Virginia game. Tracking the score online while at a Rudy Giuliani speech (I'm a fan, too; my wife went to Georgetown, and we have our own tickets nowhere near as good as Salter's), I sent Salter updates by e-mail as the Hoyas prevailed on a last-second blocked shot by Patrick Ewing Jr. By then convinced the team's results were linked to his own, McCain called Salter afterward to tell him about the play. A few days later, he had won Florida and become the GOP front-runner.

Primary Election Law 101

slate's "jurisprudence" is a fantastic column, and they had a great entry this week describing the constitutional issues behind idiosyncratic primary rules [click here].

the column always does a really good job of explaining some really complicated legal issues in lay terminology, and this article is no different ... here's a taste:

What gives? Didn't the Supreme Court declare a "one person, one vote" principle back in the 1960s requiring the equal weighting of votes? And shouldn't this render most of these party rules unconstitutional? The short answer is no. Although most of the deviations from "one person, one vote" would be unconstitutional if a state put them to work in the general election for president, party primaries and caucuses are different. Aside from some really egregious no-nos, such as weighting candidate delegate strength according to the race of their supporters, courts are likely to stay out of disputes over the rules for choosing the parties' presidential nominees.

A Brokered Convention?

In today's daily report, The Week features a fantastic compilation of punditry regarding the split Democratic race (click here).

The most interesting piece they linked to was Roger Simon's latest missive about the potential shit-storm into which the Democratic convention in Denver could easily devolve. Simon gives the clearest explanation I've yet heard about the super-delegate situation:

Superdelegates are designed to protect front-runners and make sure dark horses don’t run away with things.

Superdelegates grow in number as the party gets more successful: They include all Democratic members of Congress, members of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic governors.

They also are the party warhorses and include “all former Democratic presidents, all former Democratic vice presidents, all former Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate, all former Democratic speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic minority leaders, as applicable, and all former chairs of the Democratic National Committee.”

This means that not only Bill Clinton, but Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, are superdelegates.

And their votes count just as much as the delegates chosen by actual primary voters.

If the Clintons succeed in seating the delegations of Michigan (where Clinton had the only name on the ballot) or Florida (where both candidates agreed to not campaign or compete), or if the Clintons attempt to steal the nomination by twisting the arms of super-delegates, all hell will break loose.

And I fully expect the Clinton machine to do anything and everything they can to win this race. Their 15 years of controlling the party apparatus will certainly serve them well if this race comes down to the proverbial smoky back room.

2008

here's my gut reaction on the 2008 presidential campaign:

hillary is essentially unelectable when pitted against a moderate mold-breaking republican. any republican who doesn't show strong neo-con ties and doesn't quote bible lines left-and-right will siphon off an enormous chunk of male voters who simply can't bring themselves to vote for hillary.

rudy giuliani scares me. i think he's making deals with the devil during this primary campaign that will result in conservative judges and hard-right-wing appointments throughout his administration ... but he will run in the general election as a moderate, and i think he has a good chance of beating hillary (numbers right now are 46 hillary v. 45 giuliani).

obama will trounce any of the republicans. he's exactly what voters are looking for in the upcoming general election: change, a fresh face, etc .... add that to the fact that voters are BEGGING to vote for an anonymous democrat (i think the numbers are 50 for an anon. D v. 35 for an anon. R), and you see why i'm so down on hillary right now

My Generation

i was reading recently about hillary's college correspondence with a pen pal, and it got me thinking about how the adolescence and young adulthood of my generation of politicians will be recounted

as everyone knows, once something gets on the interweb, it's there forever ... people my age and younger pour their hearts out into the digital ether and document every foible and misstep with alarming precision

i'll be really interested to see how politicians of the first internet 2.0 generation are picked apart by opponents and the media, i'm sure some really brutal (and, hence, hilarious) stuff will surface