Clinton's Race Card

Why do the South Carolina primaries bring out the worst in some people?

Obama has admirably avoided discussing race in his campaign. I suppose it is just self interest. If he is labeled as 'the black candidate', he cannot possibly win.

For that very reason, the Clintons would like nothing better than to interject race into the campaign. But they have to be pretty subtle. And so they have. Speaking at Benedict College, a historically black college in South Carolina, Hillary praised African American Congressman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., for his political achievements: "He didn't get there you know by leapfrogging - he got there by lots of hard work day in and day out". The term 'leapfrogging' is intended to provoke jealousy of someone who gets ahead without waiting their turn.

This is not the first time they have insinuated this. The 'fairy tale' comment is relevant here. I don't see how people could interpret it as a racial slur, and I also don't believe Bill's claim that it only referred to Obama's inconsistent opposition to the war (which isn't true anyway). Rather it indicates to me that Bill has been obsessing over Obama's 'out of nowhere' rise to political success. Apparently Obama just doesn't know his place.

Superdelegates

From Wikipedia: Superdelegates are delegates to a presidential nominating convention in the United States who are not bound by the decisions of party primaries or caucuses. Superdelegates are elected officeholders and party officials.

In other words in a close contest, after the party rank and file have voted in the primaries, the party establishment gets to decide who really gets nominated. Thus the image of the smoke filled back room. Presumably the superdelegates demand political favors from the winning candidate.

Normally this would not be all that bad, but there is a potential issue this time. One of the Democratic candidates has much better connections with the Washington establishment, and the other is an African American. If Obama gets a majority of the popular delegates, and a back room deal is made to nominate Hillary, it will be very hard to avoid the notion of a racially motivated conspiracy. I don't know how strong the backlash would be, but I would bet many of those superdelegates would lose enough support that they would be vulnerable in their next election. It would certainly be very damaging to the Democratic party.

Between now and the convention, look for both sides to claim to be ahead in the delegate count. Obama will not count the superdelegates. The Clintons will count the ones who have specified a preference. But take it with a grain of salt. A preference is not a commitment.

Electoral College Short Circuit

A number of states are passing legislation that all their presidential electoral votes should go to whoever wins the national popular vote. It only takes a few states doing this to effectively kill the electoral college for everyone: if even one state switches results based on this rule, it would usually be enough to guarantee the popular candidate gets more electoral votes.

This idea is really dumb for several reasons. The first reason is well known. If the popular vote is close enough that hanging chads in Florida can affect the result, then a full national recount will be necessary. An awful lot of lawyers will send their kids to college on the windfall from that one. And you can guarantee the winner will be from the party which has a majority on the Supreme Court. (It's not funny that in Bush v. Gore, the republican justices all voted against states rights and the democrats all voted for it, exactly the opposite of what would be expected.)

The second reason it is dumb is that candidates have no strong reason to campaign in a manner beneficial to those states.

Finally, the only way a state's new law make a difference in the election result would be if the national popular vote overrules the state's own popular vote. Each state's short circuit law can never help the state get its preference elected, it can only hurt.