The kids better straighten up and and quit the horseplay or Mom and Dad might come downstairs. That was the message from Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid this week with the superdelegate situation getting more and more precarious. They’re getting serious: They’re going to write a letter. Maybe even two.

This is what passes for political clout in 2008. You might get a letter. All around the Capital and the country right now, Governors, Congressmen, and Senators are in flopsweats wondering how they can get their mailrooms to run interference for them, lest they get that come-to-Jesus piece of correspondence that tells them to fall in line post haste.

This is the next step in the latest escalation of an intrigue that began percolating last month when Harry Reid intoned, Michael Corleone-like, that the superdelegate situation would be settled. “It will be done.

“Magically?”

“No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean today. Things are being done.”

That was over a month ago when it was stated that things were being done. That must be one hell of a letter.

Never mind that no one is capable of resolving this. Most of the superdelegates are first and foremost concerned about being re-elected, unless there’s a sure thing candidate promising them a diplomatic assignment to Milan or Undersecretary In Charge Of Titties And Beer Affairs. That’s what they’ll answer to–not a Legislative Branch Ma and Pa Kettle. Nancy Pelosi looks like Katherine Harris’ mother, and Harry Reid could be Rene Auberjonois in Coccoon VII. This isn’t the leadership tandem that’s going to strike fear into the hearts of the people down-ticket.

There was a time when political power meant something, and at no time was that truer than during the Senate reign of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson always got what what he wanted, and was notorious for what was known at “The Treatment.” Roland Evans and Robert Novak described “The Treatment” in Lyndon Johnson: The Exercise Of Power:

The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the LBJ Ranch swimming pool, in one of LBJ’s offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself — wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.

Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.

Somewhere in Congressional Heaven, Tip O’Neill is grumbling and ordering a triple bourbon, and Lyndon Johnson is punching some hapless staffer in the face trying to figure out how he can catch a train back to the mortal world and put his hands on this retarded mess. Neither of them would have brooked this nonsense, and a letter would have been the last arrow in their quiver. Speaker O’Neill would have been threatening committee assignments and backing primary challengers, and Johnson as Senate Majority Leader would have been on the phone eighteen hours a day and parading terrified Senators through his office, threatening physical violence or promising to send someone to seduce their wives.

That’s the kind of leadership that’s sorely lacking in the current Congress, and it’s the reason that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are going to be brushed past like a subway preacher. Don’t be surprised to see a palace coup within the party sometime after the next election. It’s time for some new chiefs, and the Congress needs leaders with teeth, not leaders who put their teeth in a glass at night.

Howard Dean is quickly proving he is William Howard Taft to Terry McAuliffe’s Teddy Roosevelt. In other words, he’s not fit to carry the previous head of the DNC’s jock. The decision last year to penalize unruly Florida and Michigan last year when they wanted to move their primaries up to before Ginormous Tuesday made as much sense as the TSA allowing hand grenades on carry-on luggage as long as there’s a piece of Scotch Tape over the pin.

I won’t put this all on Chairman Dean. He merely started the stupid. There are a whole lot of dirty hands in this one, not the least of which belong to Hillary, Barack, Florida, and Michigan. Dumb as the decision was by the DNC to penalize the two states for moving up their primaries, representatives of both states voted last year that only South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Iowa’s contests would come before Super Tuesday. That’s merely stupid.

Almost as stupid as the states’ defiance in moving their primaries up anyway, after they were threatened over and over and over that if they did so their delegates would not be seated at the convention. Then there was the Democratic pledge to honor the DNC not to campaign in either state. You can’t be told repeatedly not to stick your finger in a light socket and then be indignant that you were electrocuted.

Oh, but it gets dumber. Next in the hall of shame is the Democratic candidates decision to pull their names from the ballots in both states and not to campaign in either. That was their idea of defending the voters of Florida and Michigan from their respective states’ mismanagement of the democratic process. That’s like Child Services punishing your parents for custodial neglect by taking away their money to buy you food and clothing.

Then there is Barack. He promised not to campaign in either state, but left his name on the ballot in Florida anyway. He doesn’t get a pass on that one, but there were mitigating circumstances in…

Hillary. Somewhere in the afterworld, between wheelbarrows of coal and the occasional poke of the trident, Lee Atwater has to be nodding and offering an approving thumb-up at the pages a liberal Democratic woman has taken from his playbook. Hillary has already proven that anything that stands between her and a return to the White House is going to get hurt, and that includes the rules.

Yes, these rules stink to high heaven, but they are rules that she agreed to and has defended. She said in October that Michigan’s votes in January’s primary were going to be as useful as a lunchroom in a mothballed Chrysler plant. Yet, curiously, only one top-tier Democratic candidate’s name remained on the Michigan ballot after everyone but Dennis Kucinich pulled out: Hillary Clinton.

On Florida’s ballot, there she was again, joined this time by Senator Obama, who likely took one look at the Michigan ballot and knew exactly what Clintonian shenanigans Hillary was up to and wasn’t about to get sandbagged by them if he could help it. Despite the promise not to campaign in Florida, in the days leading up to the Florida Primary, there was Hillary conspicuously showing up for unrelated events in the Sunshine State, having photos snapped of her with palm trees in the background, and doing everything Floridian except playing jai-alai and wrestling alligators, all the while not campaigning in the state. Then, there she was in Davie, Florida, on election night, celebrating her victory in a contest she promised not to be a part of. And now hers it the loudest voice decrying the disenfranchisement of the state’s voters and demanding that their delegates–mostly her delegates, of course–be seated at the August convention. I haven’t decided if Obama’s foreign policy aide was right in telling The Scotsman that Hillary is a monster, but she does play one on this campaign trail. By the time this campaign is over her approval numbers among women are going to be down in Leona Helmsley territory. She’s turning out to be the Zelig of everything sleazy that happens in this campaign—she’s always there on the spot, looking to all the world like she belongs but at the same time has nothing to do with anything that’s transpired.

But Clinton is as Clinton does. When a bear eats a small child, you can’t blame the bear for being hungry, yet they shoot it anyway. It’s up to the voters to shoot Hillary (figuratively).

The situation she’s manipulating is the mess that Howard Dean has wrought, though. By the time the superdelegates finish deciding between their consciences, their chances for re-election, or throwing it all away on the promise of a job in the next Democratic Presidential administration, there won’t be a big enough gap between Hillary and Obama’s delegates to ride a bicycle through. That means that all roads lead back to Michigan and Florida. And the country is barely recovering from the last time an election came down to Florida.

When the NTSB shows up next winter to investigate the disaster that was the Democratic Party, they’ll pull Hillary from behind the throttle, but the devastation is going to be rotten with the scent of the former Vermont Governor who not only didn’t see this train coming, but for some reason thought it was a good idea to stand in the middle of the railroad tracks and dare a train to face him down.

Inasmuch as he remains committed to any issue he’s ever stood for, John McCain is, for the moment, still riding the campaign financing pony that he’s embraced for much of his recent Senate career. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill particularly sparks the enmity of the Limbaughts, because apparently it’s a boot on the throat of free speech to prevent telecommunications and pharmaceutical executives from donating as much as they please to a given candidate (that has to do with some cynical liberal paranoia that there would ever be a quid pro quo assumed with such an arrangement. Whatever. Like that ever happens).

Obama’s position is a bit rickety on this issue. He took a pledge with Senator McCain last year that, if he were the nominee, he would only accept public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent did the same. You remember last year–when John McCain was moving more pink slips than Victoria’s Secret and shopping school district bus auctions for a new Straight-Talk Express, flying coach and carrying his own luggage? When it looked like Hillary would raise more money than the Gross National Product of Heaven and before tens of millions of Americans galvanized and anointed Barack Obama America’s Piggy Bank, and most polls had him hard-pressed to see Hillary’s backside with binoculars?

Fast-forward to 2008 and…who knew? Look who the last two men standing are probably going to be. And this is where the memories get selective, and the original intents “clarified”. Obama could cure muscular dystrophy as fast as he’s raising money and, at least before the New York Times non-story rallied the GOP to circle the wagons, McCain couldn’t pry Republicans’ wallets open with a Jaws-Of-Life.

This is going to be one situation where political expediency wins out over principle. Obama will continue to dodge the issue or drag his feet on one point or another, and continue to use his own massive war chest rather than accept that much-ballyhooed “level playing field”.

Don’t look for “Senator McClean” to take the high road either. For one thing, as last week’s Times episode proved, there’s no way the Republicans are going to sit on their checkbooks and let Obama walk away with this election. He’s already proving that he can be encouraged to re-evaluate his positions on key issues, and that will only continue as he’s enticed by the opportunity to purchase ad buys against his Democratic opponent.

That kind of talk is apostasy to his alleged true believers. The Arizona Senator is a man of his word, and he’s no more committed to that word than when it comes to the area of campaign finance reform.

Well, sort of. McCain was entitled to accept $6 million in federal funds, but offered a polite, “No thank you, my friend” because it would have placed spending limits on his campaign between now and the convention.

It’s all for the best. Campaign finance reform is a noble idea in the abstract, but Obama can’t very well tell his supporters to stop inundating him with money, can he? And it would be unseemly if he used all that leftover private dough to take Michelle and the kids to Hawaii (a few thousand times).

As for “Senator McCoin” it was a sad enough spectacle watching the Senator have to travel with the great unwashed as he attempted to resurrect his battered and bankrupted campaign, and no one wants to witness the indignity of a major party candidate having to send his surrogates out with empty coffee cans and handwritten signs to stand at freeway exits. Barring any onerous contribution limits, I’ll toss in my two cents for politics-as-usual.

“I’M SORRY. PLEASE LET ME MAKE THIS WHITE….RIGHT!”: I imagine if there’s one place in the country where a lapse in racial sensitivity might be understood in the lily-white context of its makeup, it would probably be Utah. Still, one has to wonder what got into Utah Senator Chris Buttars when he said of a bill making its way through the statehouse that other Senators referred to as “the ugly baby bill”, “This baby is black. It’s a dark, ugly thing.”

He also apparently is unfamiliar with the adage, as Stephanie Miller said of his dilemma, “Once you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” He issued an apology, stunned that what he said could be construed as racist, and then continued to douse himself in gasoline before pulling out his Zippo and complaining of the “hate lynch mob” assailing him. Again stunned at the outrage of using a symbol of racial brutality to attempt to defuse a racial “misunderstanding”, he finally threw up his hands and remarked, “How do I know what words I’m supposed to use in front of those people?”

Back in the kumbaya days of 2007, everything appeared to be shaping up nicely for the Democrats. They had a slate of whip-smart, progressive, telegenic (except for Dennis Kucinich’s marsupian overbite and Joe Biden’s magically-reappeared mystery hair) candidates. Of course, almost everyone assumed that the whole crowd were pale foils for the Fair Ms. Clinton, who’d gentlemanly spar with them all before politely vanquishing each of them one by one with a promise to meet in January 2009 at her first Cabinet meeting or at her inauguration when she wished them well before they left on their ambassadorship to the exotic land of their choosing. Then, come 12:01 AM on February 6, she’d sound the kudu horn and unleash the massed Hillarmy to charge into the valley and lay siege to the poor old bastard who would have the misfortune to be the last Republican standing. Thompson, Romney, Giuliani–it didn’t matter; they’d all bleed the same Kansas Red–and her gilded, well-oiled ground war party would carry her on their mighty shoulders as she gave a Queen’s wave and painted the land blue.

No one from that vaunted Clinton Machine expected that they’d find themselves stumbling punch-drunk out of Super Tuesday, reeling over mere weeks from domination to donnybrook to deadlock to deficit. Nor did anyone foresee the possibility of Hillary not only having to fight her way through Easter and damn near to Arbor Day, in a showdown in the Quaker State and the very real possibility that America’s pre-eminent political sister would be slain or stalemated in the land of brotherly love.

Certainly no one at the Democratic National Committee saw this coming, or they likely wouldn’t have been so quick to pull out the strap and play bad Dad to Michigan and Florida when both states voted defiantly to move their primary contests ahead of Super Tuesday. Granted, the states have the right to choose their nominating process, but they were bucking the tide of carefully choreographed unity that the DeanNC worked so hard to put together, and they were going to be punished for it. It was a poorly-timed and misguided game of chicken where neither side blinked.

The Democratic candidates agreed in protest not to campaign or appear on the ballot in either state, and voters were urged to vote “uncommitted” in both states. The idea was that the nomination would never be in doubt and that the acclaimed nominee would unite the party by encouraging the convention to seat both delegations at the convention.

Well, trouble started early when Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd didn’t take the pledge and appeared on the ballot in Michigan. Obama was not in the ballot and did not campaign in Michigan. Always one to hedge her bets, Hillary showed up on the ballot in both states and happened to squeeze in a few inadvertent and highly-photographed trips to the Sunshine State in the days leading up to and including the January 29 primary–and, of course, she was the first to step up and plead for the Florida Democrats not to be disenfranchised and to have their delegates seated at the convention.

The Democrats have a long and storied history of working against their best interests, but, with the exception of the introduction of Superdelegates, it’s usually in the candidates they choose: McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, and rank-and-file Dems seem to accept that with the same half-hearted optimism masking fatalistic resignation that Chicago Cubs fans must feel every spring. Nothing exemplifies that more than an actual web site that appeared at the beginning of the 2004 Democratic primary cycle: “johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com”.

That’s why it’s so dispiriting this year to have two engaging and electable candidates fighting it out to the end, with young voters engaged, and the Democratic turnout whupping that of the despondent, in-fighting Republicans nearly two and a half to one–only to have the perfect Ali-Foreman slugfest ready to be derailed in the 15th round by the judges and the commission stepping into the ring and joining the fray. Like any unexpected battle royal, it’s all going to be delightful sport to watch, but anyone with a vested interest in either fighter is going to lose.

And as the candidates beat one another to what is surely going to be a judge’s decision, this mess the DNC has created in Florida and Michigan is going to make Florida 2000 look like a model of procedural efficiency. If they don’t fix it now, this is going to be litigated eight ways from Sunday, and in the end no one is going to be happy.

Hillary and Barack are far from pure in this process. And the same goes for all of the Democratic candidates. If they were going to take a pledge, it should have been to tell the DNC to pound it and to announce that they were going to campaign and be on the ballot in both states, because all the voters need to be represented, because that’s what real democracy is about. Ha. Yeah, I know. But in the end, a pledge is a pledge, no matter which way it goes, and if that’s the road they collectively chose, neither Hillary nor Barack should have been anywhere near either state on the day of their primaries.

And yes, the horse has left barn on that, so now the right thing to do would be to convene a do-over with all deliberate speed, before this comes down to Pennsylvania, or Oregon, or even Denver in August. A caucus or a primary in each state as fast as they can put it together, with the voters represented and the delegates chosen. Let’s dig up this landmine and disarm it, and then we can go back to complaining about the superdelegates.

Yeah, sure, that would have been the right thing to, but as I sit here and look at the “Dukakis ’88″ button on my bookshelf, I’m reminded that this isn’t a party accustomed to doing the right thing.

But the Democratic Party establishment is waving around a pin that could pop that soaring balloon with an explosion that’s going to give everyone tinnitus through the conventions and November and beyond.

Just a month ago, hardly any Americans knew what a “superdelegate” was, and very many certainly still don’t. So, this has and will continue to be a wonderful civics lesson for the country. In the end, though, this knowledge might be edifying but it’s going to be very far from comforting. If you want fake reassurance that all is right in the world and everything is going to be okay, go watch a FOX News special on global warming. Rather, this primer on this most arcane element of our electoral process is going to be like your parents telling you there really is a bogeyman in the closet who wants to tear open your chest and eat your organs. These shadowy superdelegates are very real, and they may have friends, but they aren’t yours or mine or democracy’s.

If Florida 2000 was a dispiriting punch to the stomach that left our wind knocked out for the next four years, only to see us get roundhoused by Ohio in 2004, we’d better take great caution in getting up off that canvas, because there’s another sucker punch heading our way that’s going to knock us into the third row, and the ref is too busy in his picayune scolding of the corners to stop it.

So what is a “superdelegate”, if you’ve been too busy watching “American Idol” or in a deep funk wondering why you bet on the Dolphins landing a playoff spot this year? Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: Superdelegates are members of Congress, party luminaries, former Presidents–comprising some 796 of of the Democrats’ available 4,049 delegates, 2,025 of which are needed to win the nomination–who are not selected by party caucus or primary, and are free to pledge their support to the candidate of their choice.

Here’s the cynical Cliff’s Notes version: Superdelegates are party A-listers with large egos who want to not only attend the convention this summer, but want a say in what candidate the party will support for the general election in November. Many of them will toss their support to whomever is going to tap them to be Secretary of Health and Human Services so they can be done with the interminable grind of fund-raising and precinct pancake breakfasts and constituent meetings.

The history that led up to the conception of their position is long and convoluted, but it stems in part from the party backlash and “smoke-filled room” perception after the Democratic nomination in 1968 went to Hubert Humphrey, even though he didn’t win a single primary. The party activists revolted and rallied for reform of the nominating process, which many party officials claimed shut them out in favor of the unwashed rabble who were responsible for presenting George McGovern to be slaughtered like a lamb by the Nixon Machine in 1972.

The superdelegate rule was solidified and made so after the 1980 election, and 1984′s Democratic establishment candidate Walter Mondale used the new rule as a sledgehammer to crush the candidacy of Colorado Senator Gary Hart. The race was close heading into summer, but Mondale played the superdelegate card to strip the bark off of Hart and to put more than enough delegates in his column to win the nomination.

In a normal year, where the nominating race shapes up to be a blowout in the months that voters are still having to shovel their driveways before they can make it to the polling place, this wouldn’t be an issue. 2008 is not a normal year by any stretch of the imagination. If Barack Obama had had the courtesy and good sense to sit this year out and afford Hillary a clear path to use her massive organizational Weed-Eater to mow down Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson as a mere formality on her way to the party coronation, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Here are the numbers that portend big, big trouble for democracy and this “one man, one vote” canard that our well-meaning teachers tried to sell us in school: “Meet The Press” reported Sunday that, excluding Maine and the still-in-play New Mexico, in pledged delegates Barack leads Hillary 1,009 to 944. Hillary is leading Barack 263 to 174 in superdelegates. If you add those together, Hillary is leading Barack 1,207 total delegates to 1,183.

What’s wrong with this picture? Barack has won 18 states to Hillary’ s 10 and is leading Hillary in the popular vote 8,228,785 to 8,028,607. He’s winning. Period. But it’s not that cut-and-dried.

There are still 360 superdelegates who can vote whichever way they want (in fact, there are 796 superdelegates who can vote whichever way they want, but let’s stick with the uncommitted for this example). Obama is still surging among the voters (he had 22,000 show up at tiny Key Arena in Seattle to hear him on Saturday; he drew 14,000 to an event in white-as-rice Idaho; 3,000 in the middle of a Tuesday in lunch-bucket Asbury Park, New Jersey; 8,000 at Pauley Pavilion at UCLA on Super Bowl Sunday, and on and on and on). He can go into summer with an even-more significant lead in the popular vote–and the superdelegates (two of whom are Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe), many of whose years-old chits are being called in by the Clinton campaign, can lay down their cards and hand the nomination to the person who isn’t the popular favorite, the Occasionally Honorable Senator Clinton.

What Obama voter isn’t going to be more than a little miffed at that scenario? With the debacles of the last eight years, “disenfranchised” is the dirtiest of dirty words this year, and one that no Democrat wants to hear. They may take a page from the Republican playbook and vote with their seats. In the latest voter counts, the Democrats have a lead over voting Republicans of about 7 million and change. As mentioned above, over 8 million people have cast their votes for Barack Obama. That can translate into a lot of frustrated asses on the couch come November 4. More than enough to translate into John McCain putting his hand on the bible on January 21, 2009.

For Obama and his voters, then, to paraphrase the joke about competing in the Special Olympics, you can win, but in the end the system is still retarded.

BARACK OGRAMMY: What the hell, it might buy him a few California superdelegates. Barack Obama Sunday night won a Grammy for “Best Spoken Word Recording” for his audiobook version of The Audacity of Hope. Among the competitors he vanquished was…President Bill Clinton.

To deploy another and perhaps more appropriate metaphor, when you’re pinned underneath a thousand-pound bookcase that is slowly squeezing the life out of you, the last phone call you want to be making is to your travel agent to plan a fall trip to Oahu.

But the art of survival is often a bit different in politics. On the most prominent advertising day of the year, America is going to be wooed by more than anthropomorphic animals and those adorable Clydesdales. Justin Timberlake may be selling Pepsi, but Mitt Romney is selling a plea for oxygen and the right to breathe another day, John McCain is selling America a chance to have its first real war hero in the White House since JFK, and Hillary and Obama are desperately trying to out-Kennedy each other with Ted and every one of Bobby and Jack’s surviving children they can lure over to their side.

With America’s preeminent sporting event kicking off at 3:28 PM this afternoon and the closest we’ve ever had to a national primary kicking off in a little over 36 hours, Sunday afternoon could be the greatest confluence of sports, politics, and commerce in American history.

Fat with $32 million in January dollars, the surging Barack Obama is mounting his own vigorous Madison Avenue push for Super Bowl eyeballs, airing a 30-second ad starting Sunday afternoon airing during the game in markets serving 24 states that are voting on Tuesday.

This is survival and a chance in one fell swoop to do for their candidacies what all their boots on the ground simply can’t do: Selling a memorable Presidential product. So you would home for some imagination in this once in a lifetime showcase. If I see another stump speech or a grainy black-and-white shot of one candidate or another with a dripping, snarling voiceover about how much they’ve raised my taxes, I’m going to keep walking to the kitchen. If I’m an average voter and you want my attention–and my vote–I want to see John McCain comparing a watery bowl of soup to the gruel that was forced upon him in the Hanoi Hilton, and demanding a bowl of Campbell’s Chunky Fully Loaded, and marveling, “Now this is the kind of meal that can unchain my tastebuds.”

I want to see Mitt Romney for Eggo Waffles (hell, bring him out for the coin toss–”Heads I’m for the Bush tax cuts, tails against…I’m just kidding! The Giants have called heads…”).

I want to see Senator Obama cavorting with the Miller Lite dalmatian, or sharing a Mountain Dew with a digitally-reanimated Harry S Truman, or the dead President putting a dollar in a 7-Up vending machine, saying to the camera, “The buck stops here“, as he and Barack share a laugh.

I want to see Hillary giving an empassioned address against the Iraq war from the well of the Senate and suddenly segue into a pitch to bring our troops home so they can take advantage of DirecTV’s new Platinum package with more HD channels than ever.

If you’re one of the six Presidential survivors, this isn’t a day to be all about principles and platforms and positions. You’ve got 95 million pairs of eyeballs before you–that’s 95 million potential voters. You want to sell them democracy, you’ve got all spring, summer, and fall to sell them that–assuming you get the nomination first. Today, the people want to be entertained and to have that itch scratched. You can be a leader tomorrow. Today, you’re all about beer, soda, and chips. And there’s no better way to sell yourself as a Good American than by appealing to America’s crassest, basest commercial sensibilities on today, the highest consumer holy day in the land.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to see which of my next potential Presidents is going to sell me a Hot Pocket.

I’ve also done my fair share of gambling through the years. Whenever I’ve tried to apply my workplace regime to my gambling–getting all my bets for the week placed as early as possible, so I can start planning for the following week, and, even better, to think about what I’m going to do with all that money I’m going to win because of my early bird diligence, that’s always earned me a different appellation: Loser.

I should have known better, but truth be told, sometimes I’m just not that smart. As a Portlander, I frequently made this mistake betting on the Trail Blazers throughout the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s, when the team was a rogues’ gallery of rap sheet degenerates and embarrassingly deserving of their nickname, “the Jail Blazers”. I’d look at the roster in August and place my bets on the upcoming season, or make a post draft-day bet on the NBA First-Team All Stars three years hence.

That’s not pro-active and can-do. That’s just stupid. New town, new start, I figured J.R. Rider was a lock to take the Blazers to the Finals. The guy was making over $4 million a year. What the hell is he doing smoking weed from a soda can pipe in the backseat of a car parked on the shoulder of SW Hwy 43??? Take your friends to your sprawling goddamn manse up in Dunthorpe where all your white neighbors keep to themselves. I’ve smoked a lot of weed out of soda cans inside a car, but I had the good sense not to do it on the shoulder of a major arterial.

After the 2002 draft, I laid down $150 on which picks from that year would be on the 2005 NBA All-Star team. How the hell would I have had any clue that Qyntel Woods was going to be found guilty a few years later of staging dog fights in his house. I mean, what goddamned multimillionaire superstar does that??? (This was years before Michael Vick, bear in mind.)

And I don’t know why I ever thought signing Shawn Kemp was a good idea. I guess it was denial: After all, how can you still be that morbidly obese if you’re allegedly snorting all that cocaine?

So you get my point: In a world fraught with shifting interpersonal dynamics, third-party-placed landmines and unforeseeable individual caprice, it just doesn’t make sense to place a single dollar on the line until all the evidence is in and the only thing the principles can do to alter the outcome one way or the other is going to come on the court or the field.

Which brings us to the Florida primary. Granted, no delegates were going to be seated because of the Democratic Party’s foolish, petulant, and typically self-sabotaging decision to penalize Michigan and Florida for moving their primaries up in the calendar, but that didn’t stop Hillary from claiming victory in a 50-33 route of Barack Obama in the Sunshine State.

That seemed an unlikely margin, given the surge in Obama’s popularity after his utter and complete destruction of Hillary in last Saturday’s South Carolina primary. But Florida began sending out its ballots in early December, when Hillary already had Allied Van Lines booked for a trip from Chappequa to Washington, D.C. on January 21, 2009, and Barack was consoling himself with the fact that he’s a young man with a great future and a very hot wife.

When the numbers after Tuesday’s primary were dissected, it turned out that, among voters who had cast their votes from Sunday leading up to live polling on Tuesday, the Senator from Illinois actually beat his New York opponent 46 to 38.

This portends an enormous problem as more and more states have gone toward mail-in elections and the earlier mailing of absentee ballots. In the last several weeks there has been an avalanche of money and endorsements coming in for Senator Obama.

In the case of Florida, it simply doesn’t make sense to send out absentee ballots 45 days before any live votes are cast. 45 days is an eternity in politics. Sure, you have your ballot cast by December 20, and you can devote your attention to things more important than electing the next President of your country–like your last-minute Christmas shopping and whether you’re going with fondue or bruschetta on New Year’s Eve.

So what if, on January 6, Jesus Christ comes back to Earth and holds a press conference on CNN to announce that he’s casting his vote for Barack Obama because he knew all along that part of Hillary’s Whitewater land acquisition was actually a sacred Indian burial ground, and that there was a little known line in her 1994 health care plan to create free vaccines made from the pureed remains of late-term aborted babies, and you’ve already cast your ballot for her? Or what if, on January 8, a 20 year-old photo of a shirtless Barack Obama riding a NAMBLA float in a college gay pride parade suddenly surfaces? You can’t very well switch your vote to Hillary then, can you–or to Chris Dodd, like you should have done in the first place?

We’ll consider this in more detail as the campaign continues, and certainly seeing what the fallout is after Big Throbbing Man Warhead Tuesday, but this is clearly an unsettling scenario where the early bird indeed catches the worst.