Gene Lyon's latest comment on candidates if primaries were tomorrow

<snip>
If the primaries took place simultaneously tomorrow, in short, the
likelihood of any candidate securing a majority of the 4318 delegate
votes needed to secure the presidential nomination would be small. (Of
the total, 798 are "super delegates" appointed by party elders; giving
Bill Clinton, interestingly, a bigger role than the average
ex-president.) Fixated upon their ritualized starring roles in New
Hampshire and Iowa, Washington media savants haven't grasped how rule
changes may have changed the game. But come the July convention, the
nation could be in for one hell of a TV show.

(rec'd in email from latest Gene Lyon's article)

walking off the cliff into the abyss.

Clinton and Gore, the only one with any common sense.

<snip>
Maybe it's a good thing a lot more people watched the Yankees-Red
Sox melodrama on TV last week than the Democratic presidential debate
sponsored by CNN. Thanks to the miracle of videotape, I managed to see
both. Staged in Arizona, the latest production of "Nine Candidates in
Search of an Audience" showcased less the candidates' merits than their
party's traditional inability to discipline itself even with the most
crucial presidential election in a generation approaching.

Then over the weekend, I heard a Republican savant on the radio
vending the preposterous theory that Wesley Clark had entered the race
as a "stalking horse" for Hillary Clinton. Invoking the Hillary Monster
has become the GOP's surest means of extracting cash from
Moron-Americans who haven't already flung it away on RV excursions to
Branson, Missouri or yielded to the pleas of faith-healing
televangelists. The Democrat party, the fellow claimed, is being run
entirely by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

If so, here's my advice to Chappaqua, N.Y.'s fun couple: ditch
four or five of these jokers at once. Nine candidates isn't a political
contest, it's a litter. With all nine standing behind podiums in a
semi-circle, the CNN exercise resembled less a debate than a game show,
with emcee Judy Woodruff preening, posing, interrupting, scolding, and
generally acting as if she--as the representative of Washington's
celebrity press corps--were the star, and the candidates hapless
contestants to be discarded in favor of next week's nobodies. On one or
two occasions, Woodruff actually turned her back and walked away from a
candidate giving an answer that evidently displeased her.
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