A Modest Proposal

A few days after Super Tuesday II provides an opportunity for some reflection on the increasingly murky Democratic nominating process.

The first and most important conclusion to draw is that the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is, fundamentally, in stasis. Obama bounced back yesterday and won the tiny Wyoming caucus. He’s likely to win big again in a couple of days in the Mississippi primary. After Mississippi, there are no primaries for six weeks, until Pennsylvania on April 22. Absent some big change in dynamics, Clinton is likely to win there substantially but not overwhelmingly (55-45% or less). Thereafter, you can go through the remaining nine events, stretching to June 7 and, in almost every instance, predict the winner right now with considerable certainty.

The end result, when all is said and done? Obama will hold onto a modest lead in the pledged delegate count. That lead is likely to be around 150 delegates, plus or minus. Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. Right before last Tuesday, according to www.realclearpolitics.com, Obama led Clinton by 155 pledged delegates. Now, five days later, after Clinton’s “big” wins in Ohio, Texas (the primary), and Rhode Island and Obama’s victories in Vermont, Texas (the caucus), and Wyoming, the Obama lead, according to the same source, stands at – you guessed it – 155.

So? The battle drones on, becoming increasingly nasty and vicious. Clinton’s a “monster,” Obama’s “acting like Ken Starr.” Absent an unexpected knockout blow, the whole mess (including the Michigan and Florida controversy) gets dumped on the super delegates at the Denver convention at the end of August. Meanwhile, John McCain and the Republicans cheer on the madness from the sidelines, throwing, whenever they can, fuel on the Democratic fire. The longer the internecine knife fight continues, the more the Democrats may succeed at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Which ever side loses at Denver – African Americans and young, previously uninterested young voters on the one hand, women, working class white males on the other -- walks away embittered at the entire process.

Therefore, let me offer a modest proposal. Others have hinted, vaguely, at this general concept but these specific details are presented (again, modestly) here for the first time.
OK, here goes. The Clinton and Obama camps meet and agree (binding, written, legally enforceable language that subsequently gets published for the world to see) on the following:

Clinton gets the Democratic presidential nomination; Obama agrees to run as her Vice-President. Yikes! What’s in it for Obama? Why, given that he’s the front-runner, would he ever agree to such an arrangement? The answer…

Clinton agrees irrevocably, on a thousand Bibles, to NOT run for President in 2012 and, if Obama does run that year, wins, and runs for re-election four years later, to not run in 2016 either.

In other words, Clinton agrees to serve, if elected, as a one-term President. Would she ever agree to this? Probably not. Obama agrees potentially to serve for four long and no doubt painful years, in the same White House as Hillary Rodham and William Jefferson Clinton, building up his supposedly thin foreign policy quals and getting ready, whether the Democratic ticket is elected this year or not, for 2012. Would Obama agree to this? Probably not, at least not until after Pennsylvania, his last real opportunity to sew things up before the convention.

Does this modest proposal have any legs in the cutthroat world of Democratic Party politics, circa March 2008? Almost certainly not. John McCain, for one, definitely hopes not. And so the blood letting among Democrats is likely to continue through the last days of winter, all of spring, and a good bit of summer. What do you think?