Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Are We There Yet?

When I was a little kid I always hated long road trips (which was pretty much the only way my family ever traveled, BTW). I usually started off strong, but after a couple of hours I would get antsy. Every few minutes I felt compelled to ask my parents if "we were there yet." Needless to say, the answer was always the same. I especially remember the anticipation when we'd come close to reaching our destination - minutes seemed like hours, feet seemed like miles. But eventually we'd make it and it would all be worth it.

Tonight I feel like I'm 4 years old again.

Except that the boring car ride has been replaced by the interminable, excruciating democratic primary race. And tonight I'm finally seeing roadsigns suggesting we're near our destination. Which means that the next few days and weeks will be all the more painful.

Hillary got crushed in North Carolina and she's clinging to a minuscule lead in Indiana. It looks like she's finally running out of options. As the pundits like to say, there is no clear path to the nomination for her.

In fact, Tim Russert just called the race for Obama. So maybe it really will be over tomorrow.

But I doubt it. If I learned anything as a four-year-old it's that road trips don't end that quickly or easily. Even after the driving is finished, there's always something else to be done - gas to purchase, keys to pick up, directions to lose, groceries to buy. Something.

And technically speaking, Hillary still has cards to play. She has the so-called nuclear option, where she would use her influence over the Democratic Bylaws Committee to convince them to actually seat the Florida & Michigan delegates as per the original vote tally. It's a pretty crazy plan, since Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan and nobody campaigned in Florida, but she could do it.

And today her campaign asserted that the magic number to clinch the nomination is about 200 delegates higher than the figure (2,025) that everyone else has been using because it doesn't account for Florida & Michigan's delegates.

So we'll have to see where that goes.

As far as I'm concerned, until she withdraws from the race officially I'm assuming she's in. And as long as she's in, she can win.

In other words, we just got off the freeway but the hotel is still nowhere in sight.

Cheers,
Chris

P.S. Apologies for the long gap between posts. Truth be told, I nearly gave up on the project for a variety of reasons. Fortunately Dr. Beeper clued me in to the error of my ways....