Happy June! May was an interesting month, lovely in a lot of ways. It went fast! We watched Chris Matthews, back and forth between ABC Sunday Morning and Meet the Press, and then Face the Nation, as well as watching the Today Show and listening to some NPR.

The Sunday News shows today were of course obsessed with the Presidential race, particularly the never-ending Obama/Clinton contest. The DNC’s Rule’s Committee yesterday determined, at least the mainstream media is reporting, that the full delegations of Michigan and Florida would be seated but each would only have ½ a vote, thus supposedly complying with the rule that a state that didn’t adhere to the scheduling requirements would have half of their delegates taken away at the convention.

There were plenty of interviews of reps from both Obama and Clinton. I still believe that this is moving toward an Obama/Clinton ticket, although I think that Clinton’s comments about staying in the race because something might happen like Robert Kennedy’s assassination could have come close to severing that chance. But, there is going to be so much pressure from “party elders” that are supporting both, such as Gov. Rendell and former Sen. Daschle. Both today spoke in code that I read to say that they were very supportive of such a ticket. It’s going to be interesting to see. I’m sticking with my prediction of May 16, in my entry about the Clinton’s storming across Western Kentucky. http://www.ruralthoughts.net/?q=node/104 I believe that Clinton feels a responsibility to the predominantly female base of her support to keep her boot on Obama’s neck until he finally says, yes, I’ll run with you. If she does anything less, and she doesn’t get the nod, there will always be doubt as to whether or not it was blatant sexism. But if she fights right up to the end and she is just a razor hair behind, and she is still calling for the nomination, the only way to settle that and bring her supporters behind the campaign is to let her join the team.

Let’s get back to the “problem of the moment,” Florida and Michigan. I have been disappointed that the mainstream media seems to have missed an opportunity to keep the important discussion of racism on the front burner where it tries to be but keeps getting missed in sometimes obvious places. Newsweek, to their credit had Obama on the cover recently and published a number of “memos” from various influential people to Obama about dealing with racism. So the issue is still wafting around in society quite significantly.

But with so much coverage of the Michigan/Florida delegate situation, you would have thought that there would have been a widespread analysis of the reasons behind the rule in the first place. And that was....(drum roll)....racism in the presidential selection process. In the past, with Iowa and New Hamphshire, for better or worse, virtually locked into being the 1 and 2 primary states, (and it is possible that this could change but there is an argument that this is “traditional” and therefore should continue, although not everything “traditional” has been good) other primary states that followed on the heels were predominantly white - to the point where the momentum for the campaigns were often well established and the nomination was a foregone conclusion before the primaries started hitting states with a higher than average number of minority voters. Putting South Carolina and Nevada third in the process immediately on the heels of New Hampshire gave a little more diversity into the process. Apparently party leaders felt that this was so important to maintain throughout the process that it imposed these penalties on states that tried to jump in front of South Carolina and Nevada. It’s laudable, but one would have to know the details of the entire plan, which I don’t, to be able to judge whether it was a real plan to share influence or just a sham for the sake of appearances. Maybe a bit of both?

I saw a clip of Sen. Levin talking about how Michigan had come to move their primary up - in response to a rules violation by New Hampshire that the rules committee ignored, and how that created a question over the entire process. I suspect that, as a Clinton supporter, that statement is less than completely accurate, and is shaded by politics. The fact remains though, that if Clinton’s ardent supporters are whipped into a frenzy that the process was fatally flawed, that could hurt Obama in the fall. That’s why the fall back position is the joint ticket. Again, I’m not saying it’s my preference, I’m just seeing the political reality. I certainly think that Clinton supporters, such as Harold Ickes, who got a bit of airtime this morning, are being abrasive and not persuasive in their analysis. How can they say that the results wouldn’t have been different if Obama had put his considerable campaign machine into action in Florida and Michigan? That’s an absurd notion. Perhaps at that time of the campaign, Clinton would have won both states. I’d say there would have been a good chance. But, it would have been close, and the delegate difference, with the proportional representation the Dems use in their presidential primaries, would have been less than it turned out, and the popular vote difference would have been less. For Clinton supporters to now be demanding a full accounting of the existing election results seems desperate and degrading to Clinton herself. Is this her sense of fairness? Let’s hope not. But there’s still a ways to go, and like I said, Clinton is positioning herself as best she can to make it impossible for Obama not to ask her to be on the ticket.

On the Republican side, it was McClellan’s book sucking up their time. And of course, it now must be sinking in to the average viewer because we’ve heard the story now more than the required 6 times for something to soak in, that something was (and is) rotten in the White House. And here’s McCain, seen with Bush this week, talking up the Iraq war, with his gimmick of his clock counting down the days until Obama visits Iraq. The only problem is that he made one more inaccurate statement about Iraq. First he got the Sunni and Shiite sects confused. He got stuff about Iran wrong. Now he doesn’t know how many troops we actually have or have had in Iraq. And he’s calling himself the expert? Not a good week for McCain. I did see a clip of Obama, in a speech, calling McCain on this in a very effective way. I don’t believe those clips made the network news yet, at least I hadn’t seen it yet. So there may be some press hanky panky going on there. But at least it got on today.

Most of the pundits said they did think that Obama was being forced to visit Iraq. Obama’s camp is saying that he probably will. What with Newsweek reporting about racism in the Secret Service, the frightening, but I have to say, significantly widespread belief among a cross section of people that I know both professionally and personally, that they fear for Obama’s safety, and how a major incident in Iraq involving Obama could be internationally politically explosive on a number of fronts, and potentially difficult to assign blame, leading to all kinds of international accusations and counter accusations, and giving a shot in the arm in our country to fear and oppression.

If I was Obama I would plan this trip very carefully, and make sure he has a trusted team of people around him. Maybe he should go with McCain and a number of other senators, and they should stay together at all times in public. I’m not a security expert, but I can see enough to know that it could be a highly dangerous trip, and people who are plotting ill will and conflict could see this as a tremendous opportunity to make trouble. The world does not need that at this time, that's for sure.