It’s a fine suggestion . . . but
Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen’s plan outlined in the New York Times yesterday will only work if the primary of superdelegates gives Hillary Clinton enough of a margin to push her over the top. If Barack Obama still has the lead, this won’t be over. And you can expect it to get uglier.
Here’s another suggestion: whomever is the Democratic nominee, Phil Bredesen would be one of the best Vice Presidential choices in the entire Democratic Party. Especially for Hillary.
OTHERS:
Howard Dean reportedly doesn’t like the idea. So? After the August riot I suspect that there won’t be a whole lot of people who like Howard Dean . . . except Republicans.
Tennessee Free thinks that Bredesen is angling for a spot on the ticket. I agree. I also agree that he would be a good choice for Tennessee Democrats–not because it would put Tennessee in play for the presidency, but because it just might help Jimmy Naifeh keep control of the House.
Others liken it to selecting the nominee in a smoke-filled room. But the truth is that with or without the smoke, it’s out of the hands of the people and their elected delegates already. Bredesen’s plan just formulates a way to deal with that reality.
Ann Althouse also deals with reality:
It sounds like a very sensible idea, which is why my sense is that this won’t happen.
The Carpetbagger says: why wait until June?
March 20th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Not exactly, Bob. What the pre-convention meeting would do is free the superdelegates from taking responsbility for their individual voting decisions by removing them from public scrutiny.
March 20th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
These superdelegates are nothing but the feudal aristocracy of Progressivism. Tocqueville taught us:
“. . . the chief permanent achievement of the French Revolution was the suppression of these political institutions, commonly described as feudal, which for many centuries had held unquestioned sway in most European countries. The (French) Revolution set out to replace them with a new social and political order, at once simple and more uniform, based on the concept of equality of all men.” [Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Old Regime and the French Revolution,” translated by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1983 edition; original, 1856), p. 19-20]
For once, why don’t the Progressives try democracy in 2008? Isn’t this America?