Dr. Potomac's Memo

While not retracting what I said about the "long race" theory, there has been some interesting conjecture today on the impact of the Democratic Party's proportional representation rules regarding delegate selection. The column, by Robert Moran of the GOP polling group Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, argued that unlike the GOP, which has winner-take-all primaries, Democratic caucuses and primaries divide up delegates according to the percentage of votes each candidate receives. Ergo, if Dean, Edwards and Clark stay in for a prolonged period with each picking up a chunk of the vote in each state, together they could deny Kerry the majority he needs for nomination. I remain skeptical in part because I think the money will dry up for some (Edwards and Clark) and votes for others (Dean) but the ill-conceived Democratic rules -- the likes of which are the bane of parliamentary democracies across Europe -- appear to make this outcome technically possible. Frankly, it sounds like the fevered dream of every political junkie (including me): a brokered convention -- Chicago 1968 on steroids. But who am I to question the wisdom of a highly paid political professional?

Kerry's surge naturally makes Republicans, who had gotten used to dreaming of a Dean nomination, a little nervous. Kerry is, after all, within the 40 yard lines of American politics. He gets Al Gore's electoral base without too much trouble and takes a couple close ones the Bush team was eyeing (like Minnesota) out of play. However, assuming the electoral map reverts to form in November and both parties get all the states they got last time around, Bush still wins and by a wider margin than in 2000 due just to population shifts in the last census. It is difficult to see how Kerry, who in the final analysis is a Massachusetts Democrat, breaks into the South, the Border states or the Mountain West -- with or without Edwards as his running mate. And that assumes that Bush doesn't steal Iowa, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Oregon all of which he lost by a whisker last time around.