The Horse Race
I stepped away from looking at the political scene for a few days, but with yesterday's Wisconsin vote behind us, I want to harp on the same points again -- though with updated numbers.
So far the pledged delegates and superdelegates combined give each of the candidates these numbers of votes come the Democratic National Convention:
Kerry—590 (roughly 27 % of the total delegates needed to secure the nomination)
Dean—200
Edwards—186
Sharpton—15
Kucinich—2
Delegates needed to win the nomination: 2,162
I continue to be appalled by the race, and how so many Wisconsins fell into the same line of thinking that last week's states saw: They would have voted for Dean, but they "knew he couldn't win." This is doubly appalling when the media spin is that this has been a Kerry/Edwards race, despite Dean having been ahead of Edwards. It's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as most people only know what they're told.
Part of this comes from the hatchet job that was done on Dean weeks ago, including the media assignment of an aura of "electability" to Kerry and Edwards, and part because the only message the people are getting is a winner take all state by state race -- which isn't how the votes are actually allocated. How different would the thought processes of the voters have been if instead of being told who has and hasn't "won" states so far, they were told how the delegate numbers were stacking up?
In the above (I've gotten those numbers, once more, from ABC's The Note) I've included links to each candidate's website, as I did back on the 5th.
We truly need to have the Primaries held on something closer to a national level in as close to one, broad sweep as we can. Yes, I realize it's something conducted at the state level, but as it's set up we have a handful of states and media sources combining to essentially decide the matter for the rest of us before we get to step in and make a decision based on the platforms of the candidates.
Dealing with the reality, though, we see that Dean has ceased his campaign. I believe he intends to leave his name on the ballot in order to keep his issues alive, but he's pledged to back the eventual nominee. I'm happy that he's not simply throwing his endorsement behind either Kerry or Edwards at this point, and hope that his name's still on the ballot when April 27th rolls around and the people of Pennsylvania pretend to have some tiny impact on the primary...
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