And the winner is…

Perhaps it has come down to the wire and, absent any gross chicanery or hitherto undisclosed scandal, the Democrats will have a nominee -- and, if the fates are kind -- a running-mate as well, all within the first week or two in the new month of June, 2008. And so the historic primary season fifteen months long will at long last come to a close, and we can now get to the business of back-and-forth between the rival forces until our final deliverance comes with selecting a new President a scant five months more down the campaign trail. It looks at this point as if the selectees will be Obama and Clinton in that order. The mathematics is unforgiving. In this too-long session of applied civics and representative government, it will happen that pledged delegates totals will not select the nominee, but the "super-delegates" -- the party elders -- will do so to create finality. Thus the endless exercises in rhetoric will not last the entire summer long. We need a rest, too.

The convention in Denver will serve as the imprimatur of the party and also as the place where all the hard-working delegates and their staffs will have a place to play and relax, while getting along with the business of laying out the platform and sitting in private rooms to make deals and do some plain and fancy politicking. Up-and-coming youngsters will give speeches and make their mark (as did a charismatic bright young politician from Illinois in 2004).

The DNC made an arbitrary and silly decision carrying out one of its arcane rules this past season. In effect, it punished the states of Florida and Michigan for moving up their primary elections and negating the votes of millions of citizens in those two states. A special session of the appropriate committee met this past weekend and cut off its nose to spite its face. The delegates from the offending -- but electorally important -- states will be seated, but will have only half a vote. Did no one from that self-important body start to think that these disaffected citizens will perhaps be pleased to cast their votes in the general election for the other side? (They just don't make James Roosevelts and Harold Ickes like they used to -- their grandfathers devised and ran the New Deal to a fare-the-well. Reckon the apple fell too far from the main trees, down the generations.)

AREN'T YOU GLAD IT'S OVER?