Back to the Political Future

"I don't belong to any organized party," Will Rogers liked to say, "I'm a Democrat."

Imagine Jon Stewart in a cowboy hat, twirling a lariat and talking with a nasal twang. That was Will Rogers in the 1930s, the most popular political satirist of his time, who did monologues back then on the idiocy of the Washington power structure.

Imagine what he would have to say about superdelegates, caucuses and the Florida-Michigan brouhaha.

“Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats," Rogers explained. "If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.”

Nothing changes, except to get funnier--and sadder. The cowboy nailed it all by observing, "The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected."

When Washington lawmakers wanted to put up a statue of him, Rogers agreed but only if it were facing the House Chamber, so he could "keep an eye on Congress." It's the only one facing the entrance and, according to Capitol guides, Presidents rub his left shoe for good luck before entering to give the State of the Union Address.

The old cowboy would get a kick out of that.

Stupor Tuesday

If you haven't started the day with a headache, chances are you'll end with one. The mathematics of today's primaries would stupefy Einstein--super delegates, bonus delegates, caucuses, district splits, threshold percentages...

Last night Keith Olbermann and reporter David Shuster started out to explain it all and ended up in Abbott and Costello's Who's-on-First routine. Click on "Deconstructing delegates" and watch.

What ever happened to people going into a booth, pulling a lever and counting up the votes to see who wins?

Democrats Sowing Confusion in Iowa

If you look carefully at the Hawkeye State, you can find polls showing John Edwards is in the lead (b) Barack Obama is ahead (c) Hillary Clinton and Obama are tied or (d) after the "viability rule" excludes candidates with less than 15 percent of the vote, who knows?

Iowans have a reputation for being contrary, but this year they have raised sowing confusion to an art form. Yesterday, three of their journalists wrote a New York Times OpEd, saying "if a poll does manage to precisely forecast the results of the Jan. 3 caucuses, that is probably more coincidence than polling accuracy" because of the arcane, secretive way that Democrats report results of their caucuses:

"Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents--that is, the headline “winner”--did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses. Further, it is possible that a second or third-tier candidate could garner a surprising 10 percent or 12 percent of the popular vote statewide and get zero delegates. (That’s because to be in the running for a delegate a candidate must have support from at least 15 percent of the people at a precinct caucus.) He or she may have done two or three times as well as expected among Iowa’s Democratic voters and get no recognition for it."

Is that clear? For months now, we have been hanging on every word from voters in the Tall Corn State as they ogle butter sculptures, eat fried stuff on a stick and respond to the presence of Oprah, Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson.

But do we get any clear answers from them? Not in your Field of Dreams. Maybe Meredith Willson had it right in the "Music Man" when he had them singing “And we're so by God stubborn/We can stand touchin' noses/For a week at a time/And never see eye-to-eye.”