Presidential race narrowing

Here’s what I see happening. Quote me or mark my words or whatever you want to do- the very fact that I’m going on record with this will probably jinx it so it won’t happen anyway:

Mass. Sen. John Kerry sews up the Democratic nomination long before the convention and chooses N.C. Sen. John Edwards as his running mate. Since Edward’s is young and handsome, like Dan Quayle and a Protestant and a Southerner like LBJ, he wins over the young, the South, and the Christian non-conservatives (Black) swing voters that a Catholic from Boston like Kerry needs to defeat President Bush and Vice President Dick “Halaberton/Heart trouble” Cheney in November.

A couple of weeks ago, on February 2, Kerry won 5 of the 7 state primaries, solidifying his lead in a rapidly dwindling field of Democratic candidates. It is important to point out that at the time I write this column, he only has 244 delegates at the convention so far. He needs at least 2,161 to guarantee the nomination. 1,917 is still a long way to go.
Most of us have written of Vermont Gov. Howard Dean since he screamed after the Iowa Caucuses, but he’s got 121 delegates and Edwards has 102. General Wesley Clark only has 79.

If any of these guys can hang in there till spring, maybe they can bring enough leverage to make sure that their voice is at least hear at the convention. That’s what Rev. Al Sharpton claims to be trying to do, although most analysts don’t expect he’ll have much influence. Right now he has a whole five delegates, and that’s after coming in third in South Carolina- his big “double digits win.” That means he got 10 %.

Personally, I’d like to see Dean be able to do that. He successfully activated the party’s progressive base without flying as far to left field as Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. For whatever else anyone thinks of Dean, he is a thinker. He wrote a pamphlet called “Common Sense for the 21st Century,” an homage to Thomas Paine’s Revolutionary War propaganda, that lays out pretty clearly and simply his ideas about who America is, where we came from, and how to get back to fundamental ideas of justice, fairness, progress, world leadership, self-government, and community.

Okay, okay, I’ll give up, I know he’s out. A Time/CNN poll has Bush beating Dean 52% to 45%. I just wish that fixing foreign policy, helping education and a balanced budget were as important to other Democrats as “electability.” Are you happy? I’ll stop betting on a dead horse. But my point is, I think Dean got Kerry and Edwards to talk about the war and the deficit and that’s important.

I predict that Dean will end up hosting his own talk show somewhere and General Clark will be offered either Secretary of State or Defense. Sharpton will go back to neighborhood radical race politics in New York City or obscurity.

Dean’s pinning a lot of hopes on Michigan and Wisconsin this week and next, but the real test will be March 2, when 10 more states hold their primary on what used to be called “Super Tuesday,” including California, Georgia, New York, and Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts. By the time American Samoa has their primary on March 8, I think it will be all over.

That same Time/CNN poll has Kerry beating Bush 53% to 46% or Edwards beating Bush 49% to 48%- of course if that would happen, there’d be all this trouble over ballots somewhere like Florida, where Bush’s brother is governor and it would get decided in the Supreme court by justices appointed by Bush’s father who go duck hunting with Cheney on the weekends.

Of course, if the Army gets a hold of Osama Bin Laden in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan this spring or summer like the CIA thinks they might, all bets are off. Bush will be every body’s hero again and people will be talking about Kerry the way they talk about Dean now.

Mind you, I hope they get him tomorrow, but the massive debt and deficits that Bush has been running may do more harm than terrorism over the next fifty years. When did “conservatives” give up on fiscal responsibility? When I grew up I thought that’s what it meant to be a Republican, but since Reagan and Bush Sr. it seems like all they like to do is tax-and spend.

They accuse Democrats of being tax-and-spend liberals, but it’s who you tax and what you spend it on. I see Bush taxing working people and spending it on Halaberton and Enron.

Kerry and Bush both went to Yale, and both pledged to the infamous, secretive and Masonic “Skull and Bones” fraternity, but I’ll take the old fashioned Boston noblesse oblige over a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people" any day. (Yes I know Dean went to Yale too, what are ya gonna do?)

Disclaimer: These views were my own and do not necessarily represent those of other Democrats, this NEWSpaper, or Lyon Publishing- just thought I'd throw that at ya to cover my tushie.