Superdelegate Scorecard

As Barack Obama sweeps through the primaries and caucuses, Hillary Clinton is still leading among the party faithful by an estimated 60 votes among the more than half of the 796 superdelegates who have made a commitment.

While the candidates are virtually tied among governors and members of Congress, the Clinton lead comes almost entirely from the Democratic National Committee, the insiders who set the organization's rules, raise the money and are likely to have long-standing ties to a family that gave them power in the 1990s.

"Change" is not the most appealing theme for this group but, if they turn out to be the deciders at the convention in August, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plea that they not overrule voters in choosing the nominee, Chairman Howard Dean will have a mess on his hands.

According to The Hill today, "Acrimony gathering inside the party has spurred some Democrats to begin discussing reforming the nominating process and perhaps getting rid of superdelegates altogether."

But as for now, most superdelegates are standing firm about their choices. One of them, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri vows to stick with Clinton and "would vote for her unless he died first."

If he does and she loses in November, his constituents may arrange for his political funeral later.

Howard Dean's Democratic Solution

The Party Chairman, the Internet candidate of 2004 who flamed out in Iowa with a primal scream, has appointed himself to mediate who the candidate will be this year if the voters can't decide between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by the end of summer.

"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April," Dean told an interviewer before Tuesday's results were in. "But if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don’t think we can afford to have a brokered convention.”

A few weeks ago, Dean was saying about the campaigns, "The truth is, it's not that ferocious yet, and I hope it doesn't get ferocious, and I obviously have some responsibility to make sure it doesn't...I don't want it to get personal, and we have a protocol for what to do if it does."

A protocol? Is washing mouths out with soap involved?

Let's see if we have this straight: After Clinton and Obama have spent umpteen millions and a year criss-crossing the country, if the voters can't make up their minds in time for an orderly convention in late August, Uncle Howard will get them together and do what? Toss a coin?

Never mind that the original purpose of conventions was to pick a candidate not put on a TV special for the party, it takes a special kind of hubris for Dean to suggest that he will get the candidates together and "make some kind of arrangement."

At least, in the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms, it took a gaggle of party bosses to anoint the nominee. Has Dean decided to streamline the process down to just one?

Ron Paul Money Bombs

In 2004, Howard Dean was an Internet meteor flashing briefly across the political sky. Ron Paul is beginning to look like a new planet.

Yesterday his supporters broke their own record by raising $6 million to celebrate the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Last month, on Guy Fawkes Day, they collected $4.3 million in 24 hours.

What's going on here? Howard Dean was a spontaneous expression of Americans turning against the war in Iraq. Ron Paul is an uprising against everything government does, prompting an explosion of money on the anniversaries of dumping ships' cargoes and trying to blow up legislative bodies.

Chief fundraiser for the Paul insurrection is a college dropout who subsists on junk food and has never voted but was so distressed by the Democratic Congress' failure to get US troops out of Iraq that he has put his digital know-how into backing the only Republican who wants to do it.

"I know my tax dollars are being used to kill people," Trevor Lyman says. "It makes me feel horrible."

As Ron Paul goes his eccentric libertarian way, there is no knowing what he will do with the money, aside from running commercials that may lift his Presidential candidacy into low double digits in some primaries.

What's clear is that the intensity of anger with the status quo this season is rising above Nader and Perot levels. Throwing money at Ron Paul is a more benign expression than heaving casks of tea or bombs, but where do the 21st century revolutionaries go from there?

Exposed! Obama's Kindergarten Secret!

Is it sexist to say Hillary Clinton is getting shrill? If you think piercing screams only come from women, remember Howard Dean in 2004. But that was after the vote in Iowa. Clinton's tone there now is rising in pitch as her poll numbers go down.

What's disturbing about the decision to attack Obama is not that Clinton is doing it but doing it so lamely. "I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks," she announced stiffly. "Well, now the fun part starts. We're into the last month, and we're going to start drawing the contrasts."

Obama took the opening: "This presidential campaign isn't about attacking people for fun, it's about solving people's problems, like ending this war and creating a universal health care system. Washington insiders might think throwing mud is fun, but the American people are looking for leadership that can unite this country around a common purpose."

The official "Hillary for President" web site went after Obama for saying, "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for."

This heinous untruth is exposed by quoting Obama's law school classmates, brother-in-law, third-grade teacher and, most damning of all, his kindergarten teacher, who discloses he wrote an essay, "I Want to Become President," proving that he was an ambitious tyke even back then.

As this pathetic attack is released on the official Clinton site, over at the gloves-off "Hillary Is 44" location, which has been vilifying Obama for months, the leadoff fusillade accuses him of "lying" seven times in the first ten lines.

On his blog, Robert Reich, who was in Bill Clinton's Cabinet, asks, "Why Is HRC Stooping So Low?" while refuting a "series of slurs" against Obama over Social Security and health care

Why indeed and, if the former First Lady feels she must stoop to conquer, why isn't she doing a better job of it?