The Veeping Villow...Confronting the Democratic Conundrum

Welcome to our new Senior Junior political correspondent Aurash Kamkar

First off, I want to thank Tye and Deano for allowing me to join the team and throw out some great posts. Lets get to it!!

As the end of the primary season draws near, a huge question is on the horizon: Obama's VP selection. The importance of this selection cannot be understated. This decision as we all know needs to shore up Obama on several fronts. The selection has to make him more formidable on national security issues and curtail fears about his experience. By experience, I do not mean governance, I mean pulling the trigger on a daunting choice, where he truly does trail his competitors. The VP choice also needs to bridge the ever more apparent Obama/Clinton divide. I know that many are calling for an Obama/Clinton ticket. This is a very sharp double edged sword. It would unify the party behind both, in addition it would unify an ailing republican base. The strengths of a Obama/Clinton partnership are negligible while the weaknesses are apparent even to the blind. The dislike of the Clintons will overshadow the GOP's disdain of McCain.

I've looked over the literature about the different options. I firmly believe that former NATO commander Wes Clark is a perfect fit. He is experienced on the International scene along with many years of military service. He is a Clinton surrogate and more importantly he's not a career politician, he's a general, which should mitigate McCain's military virtues. A Obama/Clark ticket becomes very appealing to "upper crust" democrats as well as Midwest blue collar voters. Such a decision, should appease the Clinton wing of the party and diversify the pull of the overall ticket.

Any questions or comments are always welcome even stupid ones....
AK out

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Time to Call a Spade a Spade

Let's be honest people, unless Hillary rolls out another 40-60 superdelegates in the next week or two, her mathematical chances at taking the nomination are all but over. So what the hell is she still doing giving stump speeches and campaigning around the nation? Why can't she just give it up? Because she is too smart and keen on the political workings to be defused by one defeat. I'm sure she has studied the history books and you don't have to look very far (Reagan '76 and Hart '84) to find examples of those who were strong losers in an election and then became strong front-runners in future races.

She will be one of the strongest losing candidates that our political playing field has seen for a long while. And I fully believe she knows that this race is over, "I will work my heart out for the nominee of the Democratic Party to make sure we have a Democratic president" were the exact words out of her mouth last night after winning in a landslide victory in West Virginia. As a quick aside, the primary in WVa wasn't even a battleground until Hillary declared it so last week and the results of that election were known months in advance, so those results shouldn't scare anyone in the Obama camp.

What Hillary is doing is setting herself up nice for the 2012 or 2016 run to the White House. She is getting experience in organizing a nationwide campaign and setting the seeds in local communities, recruiting volunteers and organizers that will no doubt benefit her next run for the office. These are all lofty and altruistic goals but hopefully the tone of her current campaign will not divide the Democrats and Independents enough to see John McCain into the White House. That could be her biggest mistake in continuing this campaign. If the Democratic voters feel she betrayed the party to further her own goals (by dividing the vote and wasting precious general election campaign time) she may negate her chances for the future.

So while I won't say Hillary should step down, it is time to regear your statements and views towards the other candidate, it is time to uplift and fulfill the Democratic party. Divisiveness should not be tolerated, no matter how valuable the personal goal is, this election is too important for American's around the world to have mudslinging and stereotypes sway the voters minds.

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How Close Is The Democratic Primary?

I sat around and watched a little about the Democratic Primaries in North Carolina and Indiana last night. Obama took a pretty sound victory in North Carolina and Clinton managed to just squeak out a win in Indiana. So I started thinking about how close this primary was and what it would take for each candidate to win the primary. It turns out that this race isn't as close as the media would have you believe.

One of the major issues muddying up the Democratic landscape is the large body of "superdelegates" who have yet to throw their hat in the ring for one candidate or another. Currently Clinton leads in pledged superdelegates, but by a slight margin. To make my analysis easier I assumed that Obama and Clinton would split the remaining 277 superdelegate votes (139C, 138O). If this turns out to be the case the race for the nomination is not nearly as close as I had previously thought.

Taking the assumption that the candidates will split the remaining supers leaves 5 states (WV, OR, SD, KY, MT) and Puerto Rico to contribute their votes. For Obama to win the nomination he needs just 24% of the votes from each state. That means Hillary will have to muster more than 76% in every single contest left to be able to keep Obama from reaching that 2,025 threshold and securing the nomination. Interestingly enough, even if Clinton does receive that large of a turnout, she will not have clinched the nomination as she will have only 1,986 delegates.

So to me the race seems far out of hand for Clinton. That is, unless she knows something I don't, like how many unpledged superdelegates are going to vote for her. Even then she would need a massive amount of the remaining superdelegate votes to make this race go her way. Can someone please sit down with both the candidates, run over the numbers and then make an informed decision as to whether this process should continue, or would the voters be better served with a candidate to support against the GOP nomination.

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