It's like a band-aid...

A little pain and then you're done.

And least that's what I'm telling myself about this blog post - a post I know I have to write, but am not in the least looking forward to. Unlike a host of bloggers like me who have lamented in "poor me" fashion their exhaustion with the current Democratic presidential primary complete with gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes, and have demanded an end to the contest posthaste, I feel that the potential annoyance factor of the ongoing primary is a useful part of the democratic process. As much as I might be sick of hearing the endless speculation surrounding this primary season, I ultimately think that Senator Clinton's refusal to allow the pundits to force her early withdrawal from the race has made Senator Obama a better candidate by forcing him to stand up to more intense scrutiny in the last few weeks and has allowed all of the nation's voters to feel as if their ballot actually matters.

I have acknowledged in past posts the fact that Clinton is numerically doomed in her efforts to secure the nomination, and that any further campaigning she does as this point is unlikely to advance her attempt to become the party's nominee. However, it is her money she's spending, she's not hurting anybody, and - hell - if we're going to use the horse race metaphor when talking about presidential elections in this country, we might as well make it real: nothing like a filly who gives her all from pole to pole only to die, battered and broken, following a valiant effort that nevertheless leaves her in second place. Eight Belles, anyone?

Still, I am getting more than a little sick of talking about the whole thing. So I'm going to run through some quick points and be done with it for a while.

First, a rundown of my last predictions for the primaries in Oregon and Kentucky. I give myself half credit for this one: I called the outcome but undershot wildly on the margin. I had given Kentucky to Clinton and Oregon to Obama; however, I had suggested Clinton would win by 25 to 30 points and Obama would win by 5 to 10. Wrong on both accounts there. Clinton smacked Obama by an even larger margin of 35 points, 65% to 30%. Obama dealt Clinton just as powerful a blow by defeating her by 18 points (59% to 41%) in Oregon.

Did this make much difference in the overall campaign. Not really. Short of famine and pestilence, it's hard to say that anything Clinton did really could make a difference. Nevertheless, I can't overstate enough how much outcomes like Kentucky should send shivers down the collective spine of the Obama camp when looking towards November. That Clinton can still beat him that handily - especially when for all intents and purposes it looks as if those votes will be moot and, worse, the voters knew that at the time - makes clear that there is still a large portion of the population that has deep reservations about him as a candidate. It would be easy to say that these reservations stem from his race, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the racial argument is not all there is to this problem. Unless the campaign figures out what's behind these loses and starts allaying voter fears now, I think there's a good chance those folks will just stay home come election day.

Next, the latest news is the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegates. The DNC has chosen to allow both seats to be seated at the August convention although each delegates vote has been given only half credit. That they were seated wasn't really the news; it would have been a travesty of the democratic process had they not been. Equally, the fact that the votes will only count by half is hardly news - the idea had been kicking around for weeks. In Florida, this decision gives Clinton 105 half delegates to Obama's 67, a net gain of 19 delegates for Clinton.

What's interesting here is Michigan, a state in which Obama's did not even bother to place his name on the ballot. Much gnashing of teeth has gone into the decision on how to allocate Michigan's voters (Clinton initially won the Michigan primaries with 55% of the vote; 40% were uncommitted) who may or may not have voted as uncommitted because they couldn't vote for Obama. In the end, the Michigan delegates were split 69/59 with Clinton getting the larger number. For her, this means a net gain of 5 delegates.

I can't say enough about how disappointed I am in this outcome. There was no need for the type of voter mind reading that the DNC attempted to accomplish in deciding how to allocate Michigan's delegates. The voters made their choice (or their lack of choice) extremely clear. Fifty-five percent in favor of Clinton. Forty percent undecided. The fact that some of those undecideds might have been Obama supporters is a moot point because Obama's name wasn't on the ballot. Just as the 4% of Michigan voters who supported Kucinich are effectively meaningless because their candidate didn't make it this far into the contest, the 40% of Michigan voters who checked the box next to undecided should not have de facto advanced Obama's cause. Either all of the 128 half delegates should have gone to Clinton, or the 59 Obama delegates should not have been awarded. I find it appalling that Obama's money saving efforts to avoid campaigning in Michigan have advanced his cause.

Finally, yesterday's primary in Puerto Rico. Generally, this would have been a primary for which nobody gave a tinker's damn. The fact that people do care is, as I mentioned above, a credit to Senator Clinton. If she's done nothing else, she's made the folks who vote in these final primaries really matter. The reason why she's made them matter, however, is more a testament to her own campaign strategy than any kind of acknowledgement that their votes will actually influence the outcome of Obama v. Clinton.

Clinton's campaign strategy has been centered for the last several weeks on the contention that she's winning the popular vote if not the delegate count. This is not an uninspired contention to make; since the 2000 election there has been an inordinate amount of political gnashing of teeth surrounding the election process in the United States and understandably so. It has always seemed spectacularly wrong to me that national election outcomes in this country have only the most esoteric connection to the winner of the popular vote, and I am hardly the only person who thinks this way.

Of course, there is zero chance that the election process is going to be changed to a one person/one vote system in time to do Senator Clinton any good. There is, however, a slightly better chance that Clinton's trumpeting of her popular vote lead might sway the allegiance of a few superdelegates. And, of course, Puerto Rico was all part of this strategy. Unfortunately, it looks as if her success in Puerto Rico is a case of winning the battle but losing the war. It was always more or less assured that she would win Puerto Rico. What mattered, though, was the percentage by which she won, but the overall voter turnout. She's reached a point where more delegates don't really help her; she needs to have won over Senator Obama by a significant enough number of voters to strengthen her claims of a popular vote lead. Despite her win, the low voter turnout (some estimates put it below 400,000) does almost nothing to bolster her popular vote tally.