New York Times: Get In Touch With Your Inner Chicago Pol

The Democratic Party latte elite seems confused after abandoning Hillary Clinton and jumping on the Obama Express to Nowhere. Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s temperature was taken in a New York Times comment:

“Everybody is sort of taking a deep breath right now,” said Kennedy.
I’ll bet. A better translation is that they’re getting a whiff of Chicago Politics Revisited in the realization that the Rezko-Auchi-Obama circle of friendship could be trouble for their guy.

Also in the air is the malodorous wind of the Byzantine superdelegate process which could only have been dreamed up by a Machiavelli. As if the process wasn’t dinged up enough without that. I’m taking about judges who kept Ohio voting open in dry counties and closed them down in flooded Hillary country.

The process, for Democrats, is already besmirched so there’s no need to get exercised in favor of either candidate. What’s needed is a solution. I have a solution: the popular vote. Including Michigan and Florida. And get rid of caucuses entirely—they’re an atavism from the days when voting was more civilized. Nancy Pelosi seems to have taken my advice to heart:

“There are still many voters unheard from,” she commented in the NYT.

It’s kind of sad that Mr. Obama is counting on all the African-American voters in Mississippi to make up for recent delegate losses. Suppose they, like the courageous and articulate Ohio Senator Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, wish to vote for the candidate they most believe in, as did the voters in Iowa?

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat majority leader uttered the unforgettable words: “The sooner obviously this is resolved, it may be the better.” Is that enough make shivers run down Chris Matthews leg?

Pennsylvania’s happening, baby, and they’ve got real people who live there although latte and Starbucks are making inroads along the edges. Hillary’s much loved in the valley around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Governor Rendell will help a lot in Philly, the “main line” and the Northeast, some of Pennsylvania’s more affluent enclaves. Pittsburgh should be Teresa Heinz-Kerry country but that didn’t work so hot the last time around. Pittsburgh has ethnic Slavs, Italian, Poles, and places where whole neighborhoods realize that garlic is a “good thing”, as Martha Stewart says. Pennsylvania has a large African-American population, too, but Barak shouldn't assume that Kensington and North Philly will be impressed enough to roll with a guy who lives as far from their neighborhoods as Obama and the rest of the cafe-au-lait crowd does.

Obama’s painted himself into a corner with his holier-than-thou image and attitude which he now intends to shed. The New York Times reports that Obama might indulge “his inner Chicago pol.” Maybe the NYT should actually start reporting on Obama’s “inner Chicago pol.” I wonder if that will soon occur to them soon.
The thing that kills me the most about the Hillary-Obama “dialogue” is the fatuous public which gushes at the prospect of a “dream ticket.” Obama seems not to understand the Kelly Pavlik effect upon the Hillary camp.

“It’s very premature to start talking about a joint ticket,” said Obama, in a New York Times quote.

I’m reading that to mean that, should his back be against the ropes, Obama would accept second place on the ticket. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton isn’t the kind of fighter who’s going to negotiate her way out of the ring. She might be pressured by circumstances to accept a draw, so long as she’s on the top of the ticket, and it’s not a majority draw.