The Coming Sharon Angle Fiasco on the Right

There's a Mason-Dixon poll out with Sharon Angle down seven points to Harry Reid in Nevada. I hope she doesn't shoot Reid if she loses. All jokes aside, that's big news because Reid/Angle is such a high profile race. In the end, Sharon Angle could single-handedly kill all the momentum of the Tea-Party movement. Someday I hope to make that kind of contribution to American society.

TPM Not Getting It on Tea Party Racism

Talking Points Memo could have done more, and should have done more, with this story on Tea Party leader Mark Williams and racism.

Jack Conway Did Several Things Well During Forum

Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway did several things well during the candidate's forum with Rand Paul. If he could only find a more exciting, charismatic way to do them though. I'm going to focus on one idea here--the idea of locating oneself in Kentucky.

At the beginning of his prepared remarks, Conway did a good job of locating himself in the context of first his family, then Union County where his father is from, and finally the general population of Kentucky.

It's too bad that Conway didn't contrast himself to Rand Paul on this point though.

Paul is an eye surgeon in Bowling Green. But I've never heard him make a reference to Bowling Green, Warren County, or Western Kentucky. There's a reason for this. Rand Paul's primarily an ideologue who locates himself in relation to debates within libertarian circles on things like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the justification or lack of justification for government regulation, and the constitutionality of the income tax. It's in these kinds of extremist circles and their hypothetical debates where Paul feels most at home. It used to be conservatives who were most rooted in the politics of specific geographical locations and the traditions of those locations. But Rand Paul isn't connected to traditions and he's not connected to traditions and Jack Conway should have hammered this home in the process of locating himself within Kentucky places and traditions.

Eliminate Super-Delegates Altogether

The Democratic Party is proposing to lower the number of party official and office holder "superdelegates" for the 2012 Convention.
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Huffpost claims this will "lower" super-delegate influence.
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However, the super-delegates have never had any influence. So, there's nothing to lose. The idea of super-delegates was to stymy the kind of populist insurgency that resulted in the nomination of George McGovern in 1972.
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But I can't remember an example of that happening.
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If super-delegates were going to have an influence, it would have been in 2008 when they would have tilted the table in favor of Hillary over Obama.
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That would have been disastrous.
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The best idea would be to eliminate super-delegates altogether. All they've ever done is run up bar bills, provide business for prostitutes, and have affairs with each other's wives and husbands. --
There will be fewer scandals if they just stay home.