The Clinton Endgame

As I mentioned yesterday, Mr. Obama is currently leading Ms. Clinton in hard pledged delegates by about 100. This lead is likely to grow as they will probably split Wisconsin but he will take a lead in Hawaii. Ms. Clinton has staked her political life on winning Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In addition to the notoriety of winning such large states, the numbers allow her to close back the gap between her and Mr. Obama fairly quickly.

Ohio: 92 delegates are allocated proportionally through the various congressional districts. Even with Ms. Clinton’s large lead in the polls, it is likely that the two candidates will split these in some close fashion (50-42 would be the edge of a very good night for Ms. Clinton). However, Ohio also allocates an additional 49 delegates based on the overall primary vote statewide. If she maintains her lead (and winning or losing very closely in Wisconsin will help her maintain that lead), she could take the lion’s share of these delegates.

Texas: 126 delegates are allocated proportionally through the state senate districts. Ms. Clinton will probably dominate most of these with Mr. Obama only taking the heavily African-American districts around Dallas. On a really good night, Ms. Clinton could take as many as 80 delegates this way. An additional 67 delegates are assigned via state convention in early June, by which point, some backroom deals might be going on. If not, the delegate allocation will probably follow the statewide results.

Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania operations just as Ohio with 103 delegates awarded through congressional districts and 55 delegates awarded statewide. Mr. Obama will clean up around Philadelphia, but Ms. Clinton is likely to win most of the rest of the state (with the exception of the enclave around State College). Again, if current polls hold, she could take a 20 to 30-delegate advantage in the state.

These may not sound like much but piled up, Ms. Clinton could close the gap between her and Mr. Obama quickly. Coupled with wins in Vermont and Rhode Island, Ms. Clinton could come out of March 4th tied in the pledged delegate count with only the Superdelegates providing a difference again. Then it comes down to the argument of who does better in the key battleground states. With wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida (plus close seconds in Missouri, Wisconsin, and New Mexico), Ms. Clinton will have a pretty good argument that she is the candidate who has the best chance to beat Mr. McCain where it actually counts. Winning the African-American vote by 90-10 margins in the South is impressive, but it doesn’t change the fact that nearly all of the Old Confederacy is going to be won by the Republicans.

Still, we have a long way to go. Perhaps the numbers in the large states will change once Mr. Obama starts devoting major resources to the big states. I’ve seen his commercial quite a few times, but nothing sways voters like up close and personal contact (one of the reasons I’ve advocated Ms. Clinton camping in Wisconsin all week).

Some have tried to compare Ms. Clinton’s strategy to Mr. Giuliani’s Florida strategy and declared her dead already. There is some truth to this, but there are a number of key differences. First, unlike Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Clinton already has several big wins under her belt. Second, it’s a two-person race, unlike Mr. Giuliani, who had to contend with four or five other candidates (including one who was a lot like him in Mr. McCain). Third, Ms. Clinton, unlike Mr. Giuliani, is not fading from the media spotlight. If anything, the media is starting to take a harder look and Mr. Obama and what his actual ideas are. She constantly gets put up in contrast to see how the two are different. Fourth, Ms. Clinton has a core constituency that is constant and viable across many states. Mr. Giuliani was heavily banking on Florida being South New York and didn’t appeal to many people outside this group.

So, I think it would behoove us all to not draw any conclusions as of just yet. Perhaps Mr. Obama will go on to win handily, but perhaps not. It is rather strange that the media is seeming very quick to proclaim this contest as almost done when their wet dream would be to go all the way to a brokered convention. Of course, this might be a function of employing nothing but talking heads rather than actual reporters and data analysts.

The End and the Beginning

If the Republican race was almost over a week and a half ago when Mr. Romney suspended his campaign, it is certainly over now. News reports indicate that Mr. Romney will officially endorse Mr. McCain and pledge his delegates to him. This will rocket Mr. McCain’s totals from around 825 to over 1100, leaving him less than 90 delegates away from victory.

On Saturday, Louisiana will meet in state convention and will probably pledge anywhere from 15 to 24 delegates to Mr. McCain based on a caucus held back in January. Meanwhile, Guam will allocate 6 delegates based on a caucus.

On Tuesday, Washington State and Wisconsin go to the polls to allocate 19 and 40 delegates respectively. Both of these states allocate delegates based on the winner of each congressional district and the state overall. Thus, by the end of the night on Tuesday, it is possible that Mr. McCain could have racked up an additional 89 delegates. Coupled with Mr. Romney’s gift, Mr. McCain might break through to 1,191 right there.

Now, Mr. Huckabee might take away some of these delegates leaving Mr. McCain just short. Then he would have to wait until the weekend of February 23-24 when the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico allocate their 26 pledged delegates. Either way, Mr. McCain should become the official nominee before the month of February is over, rendering Mr. Huckabee’s planned last stand in Texas and Mississippi moot.

Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton seems to have finally woken up and smelled the coffee. Unfortunately, she is still reacting slowly as she is only planning on spending the last three days before the primary in Wisconsin rather than the whole week, as I would have advised her to do. She may still lose Wisconsin, but if she forces the news networks to wait an hour or more before calling the state, she will have thwarted the notion that Mr. Obama is an unstoppable force.

Ms. Clinton has also dispatched her daughter to Hawaii along with the messages of Sen. Inouye (who has endorsed Ms. Clinton) to blunt the loss in that state. Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii so there is little chance that she can win the state, but if she loses by less than 10-points it will keep the delegate count close.

Given this, I think that reports of Ms. Clinton’s political death have been greatly exaggerated. She still may not catch Mr. Obama in the pledged delegate count (1050-952 in hard numbers), but Mr. Obama needs momentum as well as a delegate lead to capture the majority of the Superdelegates. The road is still long and windy.

Election Foolishness

For a breakdown of why it is foolish to officially declare a frontrunner in the Democratic race, I give you the following numbers:

Mr. Obama currently has 1043 firmly pledged delegates to Ms. Clinton’s 947 delegates. There are an additional 20 pledged delegates that haven’t been assigned because the votes are still being counted in four locations (MD, VA, NM and Dems Abroad). There are 156 delegates from states that have had caucuses but will not actually assign national delegates until the state conventions sometime in late spring and early summer. A majority of these (probably 60-40) will go to Mr. Obama. This leaves 1,074 delegates left to be assigned in the remaining contests from February 19 through June 7. Then of course you have the 796 Superdelegates, bringing the overall total to 4,048 delegates.

I give all these numbers because with the losses that Ms. Clinton has suffered in the past eight contests (potentially 10), there has been a slow chorus of cries for her to concede defeat to Mr. Obama. However, that would be premature at the moment. She is nowhere near mathematically eliminated and the structure of the Democratic primaries strongly suggests that she will finish within striking distance (1700-1550 possibly). This would confirm Democratic fears that things would need to be decided by the Superdelegates.

The thought processes of the Superdelegates are difficult to ascertain. Some have firmly committed themselves to one candidate or another and will probably not back down until defeat is inevitable. Others might go the way of their state or congressional district (essentially punting on a decision and following the electorate). Still others are sitting back and waiting to see how the situation will best benefit them. Mr. Gore appears to be one of these as he has refused to pick either side and is clearly trying to retain his role as elder statesman and minor deity.

Ms. Clinton might bow to perceived momentum if she loses Texas and Ohio, but I highly doubt it. Both Clintons are not known for giving up and there are too many political favors still out there for her to throw in the towel just because Mr. Obama has a flashy statistic that ultimately doesn’t mean anything. This is a scrum that will continue for a while, despite the hysterical shrieks from party insiders to end things quickly.

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain added over 100 delegates to his total leaving him a little over 350 delegates short of the outright majority. Mr. Huckabee has said he’ll stay in to offer a choice to Republicans and I expect him to now stay in until the March 10th Mississippi primary. However, after that, his money should be about exhausted and there won’t be another primary until the Virgin Islands contest on April 4th. What’s more, 376 delegates will be assigned over the next month. If Mr. McCain breaks 60-40 with Mr. Huckabee, he will take about 226 delegates, which will put him around 1,050 or only 150 short of the majority. Given the nature of the states and the delegate allocation style that the Republicans will be competing in, it is even possible that Mr. McCain could gather even higher totals and be within spitting distance of the nomination by this point.

Despite this, I believe that Mr. Huckabee has the right to stay in as long as he wants and if people want to give him money to continue in this quest, that is their business. No one should withdraw until they are comfortable with the decision to do so.

Hard Delegate Math

To give an idea of how fluid things are, these are the delegate totals for the Democrats. Many of the caucuses have been won by Mr. Obama, but the national delegates won't be awarded until the state conventions. These are the hard numbers of committed delegates that each candidate has:

State Clinton Obama Edwards Uncommitted
IA June 14 - 45 delegates avail
NH 9 9 9
MI 0 0 0
NV April 20 - 25 delegates avail
SC 12 25 8
FL 0 0 0
AL 25 27 0
AK May 24 - 13 delegates avail
A Sam 2 1 0
AZ 31 25 0
AR 27 8 0
CA 207 163 0
CO May 17 - 55 delegates avail
CT 22 26 0
DE 6 9 0
Dem Abroad Feb 12 - 22 delegates avail
GA 27 57 0
ID June 14 - 18 delegates avail
IL 45 91 0
KS 9 23 0
MA 54 37 0
MN 24 48 0
MO 36 36 0
NJ 59 48 0
NM 13 12 0
NY 139 93 0
ND 5 8 0
OK 24 14 0
TN 34 21 0
UT 9 14 0
LA 15 23 0
NE 8 16 0
Vir Is 0 3 0
WA 24 53 0 1
ME 9 15 0
DC Feb 12 - 15 delegates avail
MD Feb 12 - 70 delegates avail
VA Feb 12 - 83 delegates avail
HI Feb 19 - 20 delegates avail
WI Feb 19 - 74 delegates avail
OH Mar 4 - 141 delegates avail
RI Mar 4 - 21 delegates avail
TX Mar 4 - 193 delegates avail
VT Mar 4 - 15 delegates avail
WY Mar 8 - 7 delegates avail
MS Mar 11 - 33 delegates avail
PA Apr 22 - 158 delegates avail
Guam May 3 - 3 delegates avail
IN May 6 - 72 delegates avail
NC May 6 - 155 delegates avail
WV May 13 - 28 delegates avail
KS May 17 - 11 delegates avail
KY May 20 - 51 delegates avail
OR May 20 - 52 delegates avail
WY May 24 - 5 delegates avail
MT Jun 3 - 16 delegates avail
SD Jun 3 - 15 delegates avail
PR Jun 7 - 55 delegates avail

A few places are on twice as they allocate delegates at two different events. A quick sum of the committed delegates shows Mr. Obama ahead 905 to 875 with Mr. Edwards retaining 17 delegates and 1 Uncommitted. Mr. Obama will gain more delegates as he won most of the caucuses that will meet in May and June to allocate delegates, but as I posted earlier, Ms. Clinton could snag more than she expects. She could also lose more delegates than she thought if she is percieved as weak or Mr. Obama makes better deals. Ms. Clinton does have the lead in pledged Superdelegates, but those don't mean much as they may change their mind once the convention rolls around.

Ultimately, no decisions should be made by either party until quite a few more of these contests have been decided. I would be very surprised if one candidate withdrew before June.

Clear as Mud

I never took statistics in college so I am not overwhelmingly familiar with the various nuances of patterns. However, one of the political blogs I read does a pretty good job sifting the data and has come up with a decent breakdown of Democratic voting patterns so far. The one major caveat in all this analysis is that it assumes that voting trends stay static. After today, Mr. Obama will likely have won eight contests in a row and perception can dictate reality. There is a possibility that many of the people who are in the Clinton camp, may start to vote for Mr. Obama simply because of the perceived wave of momentum and the belief that they need to pick a candidate now to counter Mr. McCain.

However, if the patterns do remain static, we should be able to apply this measure and see how things will break in the near future. As we noted, Mr. Obama will probably sweep the three Potomac primaries today, although Ms. Clinton could do better in Virginia than many are expecting her to.

One week later, Wisconsin and Hawaii will vote. Hawaii will probably go to Mr. Obama due to its being the state of his birth and its being a caucus state. Ms. Clinton has a shot at Wisconsin due to its heavy union and manufacturing base, but that might be offset by the influence of Chicago on the Milwaukee media market as well as the heavily liberal university areas in the center of the state. But with a week of time to play with, Ms. Clinton could make things close if she spends a lot of time in the state.

Texas is almost sure to go Ms. Clinton’s way although Mr. Obama will do very well in the Dallas region and will take a number of delegates due to this area. Ohio is the real question. Ms. Clinton should do well in the union areas of Cleveland, Toledo, and Youngstown while Mr. Obama will do well in Columbus and Cincinnati. The nominally Republican areas of southeast Ohio will probably favor Ms. Clinton due to the low income and largely white nature of the region. She also has the strong backing of Gov. Strickland, which might swing a few fence sitters. Still, Mr. Obama will do well enough in some congressional districts to win a few delegates. Ms. Clinton should also win Rhode Island although I think Vermont might trend towards Mr. Obama.

These should blunt Mr. Obama’s momentum if the models hold although he will pick up steam again with likely victories in Wyoming and Mississippi a few days later. Then there is a long layoff until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Mr. Obama should be ahead in overall delegate count, although the margin may not be that large if Ms. Clinton does as well as the models suggest she should. The long layoff should help Ms. Clinton really work the state and she should take it, although Mr. Obama is likely to do very well in the Philadelphia region.

After this come a string of lesser primaries, many of which will favor Mr. Obama. Going with my gut and the numbers suggested by the model, I would guess the breakdown of the remaining states and territories would be:

Indiana – Obama
North Carolina – Obama
West Virginia – Clinton
Kentucky – Clinton
Oregon – Obama
Montana – Obama
South Dakota – Obama
Puerto Rico – Clinton

All total, it is unlikely that either candidate will get the 2,025 delegates necessary to win. So it comes down to the Superdelegates.

Some Superdelegates have already pledged, but they have the right to change their minds. Some will probably take the safe way out and go with the way their district or state voted. However, that would still leave upwards of 300-400 Superdelegates unaccounted for.

We also still have the nastiness that could emerge from seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. Some accommodation could probably be made with Florida since all names were on the ballot and Ms. Clinton did not break the non-campaign pledge until the day of the primary so those results are probably close to the real numbers for the state. Michigan on the other hand, did not have Mr. Obama or Mr. Edwards on the ballot and trying to award those delegates based on the voting results would be drastically inaccurate. If it does come down to a floor fight, the two states might be allowed to sit after the first ballot is inconclusive, although who knows how things will actually go.

One other little wrinkle in the picture is that many of the caucus states do not directly elect delegates to the national convention. Instead, they elect delegates to the state convention who then elect delegate to the national convention. So, while Mr. Obama might have won the majority of delegates to a state convention, it is not inconceivable that Ms. Clinton and her delegates could convince some of those to change position and she would take more delegates to the national convention.

With all these variables going on, I strongly suspect that any rumors that Ms. Clinton will withdraw if she loses Texas and Ohio are strongly overblown. Mr. Obama might have the momentum at the moment, but Ms. Clinton will fight back. It may get ugly before it’s all done, but it will get done eventually.

Swing States

Now that the Republican race is all but decided (I suspect that Mr. Huckabee will withdraw following losses in Washington, Kansas, DC and Maryland (and maybe Louisiana and Virginia) on Tuesday) most of the media attention will shift over to the Democrats, who won’t have anything decided until April or May at the earliest. Pundits are already looking at national polls to try and determine who best matches up with Mr. McCain as if to use those to break the outcome one way or the other.

However, the media’s love of national polls consistently overlooks the reality of our elections and why most of this type of talk is useless. We do not hold a national election for President. We hold 50 state elections for President. It only matters how each nominee does in the states and most of those states are already forgone conclusions. For example, despite Mr. Obama’s heavy draw of the African-American vote, there is little doubt that Mr. McCain will win most of the south. Perhaps he will be competitive in Georgia, but the numbers favor a Republican sweep unless there is a southern Democrat at the top of the ticket (and Ms. Clinton doesn’t count). Conversely, despite his appeals to independents and moderates, there is very little chance that Mr. McCain will take any states in New England or the mid-Atlantic outside of New Hampshire. He may have a chance in Pennsylvania if the African-American turnout in Philadelphia is depressed, but the Democrats should hold most of these states with a little effort.

Ultimately this election will probably turn on the same states as the last two:

Florida might be in play, but due to its high military population and Republican administration, Florida is trending strongly towards Mr. McCain at the moment.

Iowa will fall back to the Democrats due to Mr. McCain’s opposition to AG subsidies. This will more than offset the likely loss of New Hampshire to the Republicans, which is a more conservative state and likes Mr. McCain very much.

Colorado has been waving back and forth for a while. The Democrats have their convention in Denver and will be pushing hard to take this state.

Wisconsin will also be in play due to the narrow margins that have been showing up in the state in the past few years. Enough independents could be swayed to turn the state red for this election.

Connecticut would not normally be in play but it seems clear that Mr. Lieberman is endorsing Mr. McCain at the moment, although I don’t know what will happen when the general election comes. If he sticks by Mr. McCain’s side, it could put the state in play, although I still expect it to go blue.

The big one is probably Ohio. There is a Democratic government in power and the numbers have been narrow for a number of years. High turnout and Democratic mobility could turn the state blue with the proper amount of prompting. I would expect Mr. McCain to organize a deep grassroots base here early to try and overcome these natural Democratic advantages. I would also expect a prominent Ohio politician like Rob Portman to lead the team in the hopes of using that for his own purposes of challenging Mr. Strickland for the governor’s mansion in 2010.

Perhaps I’ll be wrong and more states will be in play for the election, but I’d be willing to bet that these will be the states that get the most discussion in terms of swing.

One Side Set

Well, the Republican race is effectively over. Mr. Romney has suspended his campaign. He has not released his delegates just yet. He probably won’t do that until after Mr. McCain has officially clinched. Mr. Romney will still get some votes out of protest, but I sincerely doubt that his voters will rally to Mr. Huckabee. More likely, many Republican primary voters will just stay home since the race is no longer in doubt. We can say this because despite his noble speech about staying in the race, Mr. Huckabee is almost completely mathematically eliminated based on his current delegate totals and the remaining delegates available. 2,380 Republican delegates are available so a candidate needs 1,191 to win. Mr. Huckabee currently has not quite 200 while Mr. McCain has over 700 and Mr. Romney has almost 300. This leaves about 1,200 delegates in the remaining states. Mr. Huckabee would need 5/6th of those delegates that would mean just about every Republican voter going to him. Not going to happen.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are in a sticky mess. Mr. Obama is ahead of Ms. Clinton in the pledged delegates while she is ahead in the Superdelegate count. The net result is that Ms. Clinton has about an 80-delegate lead out of a total of 4,048 delegates. Even though Mr. Obama has momentum and will likely win most of the states prior the March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio, proportional delegate allocation will keep these two candidates neck and neck probably through all the primaries. That means that winner will have to be decided through the tiebreaker of either Superdelegates or even by reallocating the lost delegates from Michigan and Florida. Both of these would favor Ms. Clinton, although there are rumors that the Democratic Party may hold caucuses in Florida and Michigan to allocate the delegates properly. This would displease Ms. Clinton who won those states (although in an underhanded way in Michigan) and typically does not do as well as Mr. Obama in caucus style venues.

Either way, there is a very real possibility that neither candidate wins a majority based on the votes of the people. Then it suddenly becomes a game among the party elites and bosses. Who does each campaign owe the most favors to, who will make the better deals, etc. This favors Ms. Clinton due the sixteen years that the Clinton machine has been moving things in the party. This starts to give off the air of the smoky backroom that caused so much anger among the populace back in 1968.

The worst-case scenario is that Ms. Clinton emerges from the fray and Mr. Obama lets it be known that he did not agree to the deal. This would alienate African-Americans (already a little miffed at Ms. Clinton) and drive independents into Mr. McCain’s arms. It’s actually in Mr. Obama’s best interests not to have Ms. Clinton win as it sets him up as the betrayed man ready to lead the charge in 2012. A better scenario would be Mr. Obama emerging from the fray leading a united party, but I’m not sure the Clinton machine will relinquish power that easily. Plus, it might drive Latinos further towards Mr. McCain. Latinos are not block voters, but if enough of them are unhappy with Mr. Obama and mollified towards Mr. McCain’s immigration policy, it could keep the Democrats from taking back New Mexico or challenging Mr. McCain in Texas. Even worse would be a defection in mass to cause the numbers to waver in California, but this is an extreme scenario.

Also complicating things for the Democrats is that Mr. McCain can now sit back; gather up a lot of money while he makes nice with the conservatives. Then he can run lots of positive messages about his plans for the country and why we should vote for him. Meanwhile, the Democrats can’t run any positive messages because they don’t have a candidate and will be forced to only run negative ads against Mr. McCain through various 529s.

Now, make no mistake, the Democrats can win this election, but their road keeps becoming harder and harder to climb. If Mr. McCain can make peace with conservatives and bring the base out in reasonable numbers, he will retain most of the states Mr. Bush won and will only need to fight in places like Ohio, Iowa, and Florida. What’s more, with enough resources and fracture among the Democrats, Mr. McCain could even challenge Democratic weak points such as New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (possibly even Pennsylvania if he makes inroads with the African-American community). If the Democrats want the White House, they are going to need to make nice before the convention and hope that Mr. McCain is unable to mend his fences with the Right Wing. Otherwise, it might be a long and bitter four years.

Giants Triumphant

I didn’t really have a dog in this fight, but I was rather happy to see the NY Giants defeat the NE Patriots in the Super Bowl. As much as Mrs. X and I dislike Eli Manning’s audacity and presumption (“Shut up, Eli”), I was more tired of the arrogance of the Patriots. Amazon even posted a listing a book for two hours earlier in the week called “19-0,” to say nothing of Tom Brady’s look of insult when Plexico Burress stated that the Patriots were only going to score 17 points.

It was an entertaining game at the end, but not so much at the beginning. One was left with the feeling that a breakout was possible, but a good defensive struggle does not capture the imagination that well. It got really good when both teams finally managed to stand up to tired defenses and run down the field to score touchdowns. So the fourth quarter made up for a lack luster first three. Although one did get a sense that things were coming apart for the Patriots when Belichick made the stupid call to go for it on a 4th and 13 when it was a makeable 49-yard field goal kick. At the time I remember thinking that the Patriots were starting to panic a little in their offensive frustration.

I have no real problem with Eli being named MVP if only for that great escape and throw (although the receiver deserved equal credit for the play). However, I think one could easily have made an argument that someone on the defensive line should have won it. But since you can’t split the MVP into 4 parts (or at least three between Strahan, Uminyoura, and Tuck), the writers fell back to the old quarterback standby, which is fine.

Now, on to the commercials. Mrs. X and I both think that the ads have jumped the shark as none of them showed any depth of imagination and some were just outright bad (Planters, Careerbuilder and Sales Genie: Pandas were particularly bad). Very few were worth mentioning, but I will say that I liked the balloon Coke ad best. Simple, good music and a mildly amusing concept. I didn’t see all of the Garmin commercial, but based on the descriptions, I think I would have liked it as “Napoleon is short” jokes are always amusing to me (but I like to make fun of the French). I also liked the NFL oboe player one. Budweiser didn't do very well as only the end joke of the Caveman ad was funny (I thought the Rocky ad was a bit tired and predictable). I missed one or two others, but reading the brief review of each ad on Time this morning, leads me to believe that I didn’t miss much. Maybe advertisers will clue in a little next year.

Two Elephants, Two Donkeys

Well, it is all but over for the Republican primaries. Mr. McCain won Florida by 5 points and that seems like a significant margin to me. What’s more, Mr. Giuliani pulled out and is going to endorse McCain. Not all of Mr. Giuliani’s supporters will flock to Mr. McCain, but enough of them will that the lead will be padded a bit, especially in the northeast states of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, which are all winner take all (total 183 delegates). Mr. McCain also has a sizable lead in California and will probably take a majority of those delegates (173) in addition to winner-take-all Arizona (53).

Mr. Romney will probably win Utah and Massachusetts, however Massachusetts is not a winner take all (Utah is) and he will have to split those 43 delegates with Mr. McCain. I’m not sure how the South will go. Mr. Huckabee is out of money and can’t move much beyond the Deep South, although he will probably try to make a push at Missouri (58 winner take all delegates) to keep himself viable. However, victory is not assured for him anywhere other than Arkansas (34 delegates).

Other Super Tuesday states and their standings are as follows:

Georgia – 72 delegates
Illinois – 70 delegates
Tennessee – 55 delegates
Alabama – 48 delegates
Colorado – 46 delegates
Minnesota – 41 delegates
Oklahoma – 41 delegates
West Virginia – 30 delegates
Alaska – 29 delegates
North Dakota – 26 delegates
Montana – 25 delegates (WTA)
Delaware – 18 delegates (WTA)

Maine has their primary on Friday (2/1) for 21 delegates. Taking an average 40% split of the loose delegates and most of the WTA delegates and Mr. McCain could walk away from Super Tuesday with anywhere from 500 to 600 delegates. Conversely, Mr. Romney is looking at a prize of only 300 to 350 delegates unless he can somehow dislodge Mr. McCain from the northeast. Thus, by next week, Mr. McCain will probably have a 2-1 advantage in the delegate count and have over half of the total needed to secure the nomination.

On the Democratic side, Mr. Edwards is dropping out. Its difficult to say whom this will help, but it does mean that the Democrats will probably select a nominee before the convention. So the media’s pipe dream will disappear, but it could still be a very vicious, nasty battle before things are all said and done.

One Side Crystalizing

Well things are going to get a little more interesting after today. Not on the Democratic side though. Ms. Clinton will probably win Florida by a reasonable margin due to her actually spending a little time in the state (despite it having no delegates). This will be her attempt to change the news story, trying to get the bad taste of her 28-point loss in South Carolina and loss of the Kennedy endorsement out of her mouth. I don’t think she will be that successful though.

On the Republican side, things could be very interesting. Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney are neck and neck and will probably finish within a few points of each other. This will be a devastating blow to Mr. Giuliani who may withdraw before Super Tuesday just to avoid the humiliation of possibly losing New York to Mr. McCain. If Mr. Romney is to win tonight, he will have to maintain a 3-5 point lead through the early returns and most of the night. The heavily Cuban-American counties around Miami are usually the last to report and Mr. McCain will probably win those decisively. So if Mr. McCain is leading or only down by 1-2 points, before those areas report, he will most likely win Florida.

If Mr. McCain wins Florida, he will probably all but lock the nomination. Even if he loses, he will probably get major delegate draws, if not outright state wins, from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Arizona, and California. These states alone could provide him with one-quarter of the delegates needed to win the nomination and a victory in Florida will probably make him even more viable in other states.

If Mr. Romney wins, he can compete harder in other states in addition to sitting on wins in Utah and Massachusetts. A Florida win will give the impression of momentum that Mr. Romney could use to rack up delegate totals similar to Mr. McCain and try to make it two-man fight heading into the later states of Texas and Ohio.

One significant problem for Mr. Romney though is the fact that when Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Huckabee drop out of the race, they will likely release their delegates in favor of Mr. McCain, with whom they have been cordial. Mr. Romney’s relationship with the rest of the field has been rather unpleasant, much of it originating with his early descent into mud slinging.

If Mr. McCain does win in Florida and then use that to essentially secure the nomination on Super Tuesday, speculation will immediately turn to whom he will pick as his running mate. My early money would be on Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida. Mr. McCain would draw the greatest strength in picking a Southern Governor. He is already known to be very friendly and respectful of Mr. Crist, even helping him at a rally to elect Mr. Crist as governor. Mr. Crist is also well liked in Florida and very popular with the African-American community. I personally can’t think of a better fit for Mr. McCain at the moment.

Returning to the Democratic side, it is quite clear that Super Tuesday will not decide anything for them. The nightmare scenario for them (and the dream for the media) is that Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama each draw roughly 40% of the delegates each and the remaining 20% are taken by Mr. Edwards. This trend would mean that with over half the states decided, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama will have not come anywhere close to securing the nomination and Mr. Edwards gets to sit back and make himself kingmaker. This will also allow him to bargain for a major position within the new administration. There is even a remote possibility that once the first ballot fails at the convention that Mr. Edwards is able to convince the delegates that he is the best candidate to defeat the Republican contender. But this would mean 5-6 months of Democratic infighting while the Republican candidate sits back and just makes himself look presidential.

Post Wolverine

So now Mitt Romney has won Michigan, a state he grew up in and on a day where many Independents stayed home due to snowy conditions. Mr. McCain won a solid second place and spun things that it’s hard to overcome a favorite son candidate. This may be true, but its also true that many people in Michigan didn’t like hearing that the auto manufacturer jobs aren’t coming back and need to be replaced by other jobs. People want to hear that the jobs they like and are used to, are coming back, which is what Mr. Romney seemed to be selling the people.

Things now take an interesting turn as we move into South Carolina. Mr. Romney flew from Michigan to Nevada so he is essentially ceding probably a fourth place finish at best in South Carolina. That leaves a race between Mr. McCain, Mr. Huckabee, and Mr. Thompson. Mr. McCain has been polling in first place, with Mr. Huckabee second, and Mr. Thompson running third. However, there is a large undecided faction and Mr. Thompson has been working the state harder than the other two, who were distracted by Michigan. It is not out of the question that Mr. Thompson could surge ahead and win South Carolina. That would please Mr. Giuliani who needs McCain to take another defeat and clear things for him in Florida.

However, Mr. McCain does have a large network in South Carolina and Sen. Lindsey Graham working for him, so a McCain victory in South Carolina is possible. I’m betting that Mr. Huckabee’s distant third place showing in Michigan will hurt him in South Carolina, especially with Mr. Thompson’s highlights of his liberal record.

Given that, I lean towards two outcomes for the South Carolina race. A Thompson win throws the race into additional chaos, could give Mr. Giuliani the momentum going into Super Tuesday with a Florida win. If Mr. McCain wins, he could use that to eke out a win in Florida. That will practically destroy Mr. Giuliani and cripple Mr. Romney. Mr. McCain would then only have to deal with either Mr. Huckabee or Mr. Thompson, whichever one of them emerges from the south with the most wins.

On the Democratic side, Ms. Clinton won against undecided, but not quite by the margin that she should have (55-40). What’s more, exit polls suggest that she is losing the African-American vote by a startlingly large amount. This recent tiff with Mr. Obama on race has not been flattering to her. All the good she earned from the New Hampshire win will evaporate if she loses South Carolina and Nevada. Mr. Obama is averaging a 10-point lead in South Carolina at the moment and appears to be up by 2 in Nevada. Nevada will be the watched race on the donkey side come Saturday.

Primary Betting

Well, Ms. Clinton got her comeback kid moment and unlike her husband’s self anointed version, this one seemed to be legitimate. What this will mean first and foremost is that Edwards is a dead candidate (unless he wins South Carolina – unlikely) and that the Democratic race is going to stay a two-person race for a while. Delegates in Democratic primaries are allotted based on congressional districts so if Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama continue to beat each other and go back and forth in wins, the two of them will have a nearly the same number of regular delegates come convention time. This means that the Superdelegates, who are congressmen and other Democratic bigwigs who are allowed to decide on their own, decide the race. Ms. Clinton has a large advantage among those at the moment. Ultimately, the Democratic race might not be decided until the primaries are effectively wrapped up.

On the Republican side, things aren’t quite so simple. Republican primaries tend to be more winner-take-all affairs and any one candidate who can squeak through will decimate his rivals quickly. At the moment, things favor Mr. McCain very well. Michigan is the next primary and because Michigan moved things up, the Democratic Party pulled the Michigan delegates and the candidates were removed from the ballot, except for Ms. Clinton for some reason. This means that all the independents that would normally have to decide between voting Democrat and Republican now have no real choices on the Democratic side. A large volume of independent voters favors Mr. McCain who does very well among that group.

If Mr. McCain pulls out a victory in Michigan, it will destroy Mr. Romney and could give him enough push to take South Carolina. South Carolina is not as evangelical heavy as Iowa was and Mr. McCain’s strong organization and popularity there could counter Mr. Huckabee’s seeming advantage as a southern governor. The only real question is who Mr. Thompson steals votes away from in this primary. He will do well, but still may only finish third, but he could have a strong impact on who actually wins the race.

If Mr. McCain wins South Carolina, it will probably only be a two-person race by that point. If Mr. McCain could use that momentum to take Florida or a majority of the Super Tuesday states, the race will be over. This is a long shot but its possible. If Mr. Huckabee wins South Carolina, he will stick around longer and Mr. McCain’s chances of ending it quickly will be gone. Instead, it will be a dogfight between those two and Mr. Giuliani. But, at the very least, I think the race will whittle down to no more than three credible candidates before the Super Tuesday primaries.

One Possible Solution

I’m a little late in formulating my thoughts on this, but a discussion I heard on Mike & Mike this morning jarred my memory. Much discussion has been made regarding a playoff for Div. 1-A football and how that would work with the bowls and how to fit it all in and so forth. Well, I’ve come up with a reasonable idea, although I’m sure many others have come up with something similar.

My thought involves keeping the BCS rankings to determine seeding for 8 teams: the 6 major conference winners and two at-large berths. We could even keep the stipulation regarding Notre Dame and the minor conference bowls automatic berth if they finish in the top 12 of the BCS ranks. Based on this past year, the seeds would have most likely been: (1) Ohio St., (2) LSU, (3) Georgia, (4) Virginia Tech, (5) USC, (6) Oklahoma, (7) West Virginia, and (8) Hawaii. We might quibble over placement based off what we know now, but at the end of the regular season, this was pretty much how things were going to line up.

Now that we have seeds, they match up 1-8 in four bowl games that are placed around Christmas. Colleges will all be off by then and these four games will be given exclusive airing around the 23rd or the 24th depending on where this would fall relative to NFL football. For this past year, you could have loaded up Christmas Eve with the bowl games since it was a Monday and would not have been heavy with NFL games. What’s more, I think the four bowl games should be geographically oriented with the top four seeds allowed to select the bowl of their choice.

My initial thought has been that the first round bowl games would be something like the Holiday Bowl (San Diego), the Cotton Bowl (Dallas), the Liberty Bowl (Memphis), and the Motor City Bowl (Detroit). All of these either play in NFL stadiums or are large venues used to handling huge crowds. The top four seeds could then pick the venue they think would be the most favorable to them. So, in our mythical scenario, Ohio St. would have selected the Motor City Bowl and played Hawaii; LSU would have selected the Cotton Bowl and played West Virginia, Georgia would have selected the Liberty Bowl and played Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech would have been left with the Holiday Bowl and played USC (an ironic, nasty twist for them).

Once the first round was finished, the remaining for teams would have met in two New Year’s Bowls. I’m inclined towards the Sugar and the Fiesta, but I’m sure the Orange wouldn’t mind. The Rose would probably opt out of the whole thing so that it could at least have the Pac 10 #2 vs. the Big 10 #2. Let’s say that the winners of the previous four games were Ohio St., LSU, Georgia, and USC. Ohio St. could have matched up against USC in the Fiesta Bowl and LSU would have taken Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. The two winners would have then faced off in the National Championship Bowl Game as they do now, about a week after New Year’s. I think it would have been USC vs. LSU and I personally think that USC would have won, but I think everyone would have been satisfied with the result. I think this is the best option. It allows the bowls to stay in place and also works in a bit of a playoff. Obviously some teams would be left out (like Missouri and Kansas) but those things happen in any playoff scenario.

Some might argue that the great games such as the 2002 Ohio St.-Miami or 2005 USC-Texas would have been lost, but under this scenario, there is no reason to believe that having a playoff would have reduced the chance that these teams would not have met in the finals. As the 1 and 2 seeds, they would have been at the opposite ends of the bracket anyway. It would also have settled things regarding the undefeated Auburn team that should have gotten a crack at things in 2004.

Some of the other bowl games would have to be restructured to account for the losses that the first round games would be in, but hopefully the same number of smaller conference teams would be allowed in and we wouldn’t have to worry about the #6 Big 10 team vs. the #5 Big East team (games that very few watch anyway).

The current system is in place until 2010, but I’m hoping that something like this will get developed starting in the 2011.

Panic Time?

A few months ago, I wrote about which person Ms. Clinton should be picking as her running mate. Well, that seems to have been a bit premature. Mr. Obama seems to have passed his case of foot-in-mouth disease to Ms. Clinton, who has compounded it with a bad case of panic attack.

The wheels started to come off about 5 weeks ago when Ms. Clinton was caught in a flip-flop of position only 90 seconds after supporting the other position. She can thank the new governor of New York, Mr. Spitzer (D) for raising the issue (driver’s licenses for illegals) in the first place. Since then, Ms. Clinton’s team has gone nasty and attacked using the basest and meanest of tactics. As such, her lead in Iowa and New Hampshire is gone. Her lead is less than 8 points in South Carolina (some are as close as two) and Mr. Obama may soon pick up the endorsement of a major service union in Nevada. Ultimately, this could mean that Ms. Clinton loses three of the four (possibly even all four) of the first primary races. That could all but kill her chances even before the primary moves to the large states.

On the other side, Mr. Huckabee has surged. No one can quite tell how, but the current theory is that the Evangelical faction has latched on to him for his conservative social values (he’s a former pastor). This surge may sustain itself, or it may peter out. When examined closely, Mr. Huckabee is very vague on economic policy and his foreign policy seems to have been taken out of Mr. Jimmy Carter’s playbook, a position that won’t sit well at all with war crowd.

Mr. McCain has picked up some major endorsements and Mr. Giuliani still seems to be the consensus frontrunner, but things are very mixed up right now. Unlike the Democratic nomination, this will definitely not be over after the first four states. The real question is how long will all the candidates stick it out. It’s assumed that if he fails to win Iowa or New Hampshire, Mr. Romney will drop out. Mr. Giuliani seems to have put his bets on a later, big state strategy. If the Huckabee boom is a dud, will he last past Nevada? What of Mr. Thompson, who seems to be sitting anywhere from second to fourth in most of the early primaries? Only time will tell.

I can only say this, I have never voted for a third party candidate, but if it is an Obama vs. Huckabee race, I might think very seriously about it.

Go ahead! Throw your vote away! *Orwellian laughter*

Lifting Mists

In my haste to get back to projecting the major bowls, I completely forgot the rules that were introduced last year. The Sugar Bowl will host the National Championship game a week after the four BCS bowls play. In addition, no conference can have more than two teams in these five games and only the top 14 teams in the BCS poll are eligible. So the projections change a little bit. The BCS standings of eligible teams are as follows:

1. Missouri
2. West Virginia
3. Ohio St.
4. Georgia
5. Kansas
6. Virginia Tech
7. LSU
8. USC
9. Oklahoma
10. Florida
11. Boston College
12. Hawaii
13. Arizona St.
14. Tennessee

The conference champs and match-ups are as follows:

Big 10 – Ohio St.
Big East – West Virginia
ACC – Virginia Tech vs. Boston College
Big 12 – Missouri vs. Oklahoma
SEC – LSU vs. Tennessee
Pac 10 – USC (if they beat UCLA, else Arizona St. (if they beat Arizona) or UCLA)

The big question is whether or not Missouri will beat Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship. That is the one factor that will determine if the National Championship is West Virginia vs. Missouri or West Virginia vs. Ohio St. West Virginia still has to play Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh is a very poor team this year and the game is at Morgantown so West Virginia has all the advantages.

If Missouri does win, the bowl projections will probably look something like this:

National Title – Missouri vs. West Virginia
Sugar – LSU vs. Hawaii
Orange – Virginia Tech vs. Georgia
Rose – Ohio St. vs. USC
Fiesta – Kansas vs. Arizona St.

Georgia, Kansas are in as they are now finished and can only move up in the rankings (the top six poll spots are automatic berths). Hawaii is guaranteed in if they beat Washington, as any non-BCS school that finishes in the top 12 must be granted a berth. This only leaves one at-large spot available. The Big East is not officially tied to a Bowl game (although traditionally the Big East Champ has gone to the Orange Bowl) so only the Fiesta would get an early selection based on the loss of the Big 12 champ. If Arizona St. beats Arizona then the Sun Devils will be high enough in the BCS standings to warrant selection and the possibility of taking a local team will be quite agreeable to the Fiesta folks. The Orange automatically takes the ACC champ and will probably opt for Georgia as they are close and their fans travel well. The Rose gets its traditional Big 10-Pac 10 match up while the Fiesta opts for Kansas over Hawaii. The Sugar then gets the SEC champ and is stuck with Hawaii.

The other major twist is if Missouri loses to Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. Ohio St. then vaults up and the equation shifts, as it will be the Rose Bowl with the free pick. Illinois is sitting at #15 and will probably move up due to teams above losing their various title games. The Rose Bowl will then probably move to keep its Big 10-Pac 10 match up and select Illinois as the one remaining at-large. Thus the standings would be as follows:

National Title – Ohio St. vs. West Virginia
Sugar – LSU vs. Kansas
Orange – Virginia Tech vs. Georgia
Rose – Illinois vs. USC
Fiesta – Oklahoma vs. Hawaii.

The Fiesta Bowl, faced with the possibility of an all Big 12 match up, might opt for Hawaii over Kansas. But Missouri would drop out as they would drop below Kansas in the polls and only two Big 12 teams are allowed. The thing that might upset the Rose Bowl’s plans to take Illinois would be if both the SEC and the ACC title game are upsets and LSU and Virginia Tech fall in the polls, but stay ahead of Illinois (keeping them at #15 in the standings). If this happened, the Rose would probably decide between Hawaii and Kansas, leaving the Fiesta free to take Arizona St.

If Hawaii loses to Washington, they drop out of the BCS picture and Arizona St. and Illinois’ chances look much brighter.

Bowl Game Headaches

So this is about the time of year that we start plotting who is going to what BCS bowl game. Except that it’s not going to be that easy this year. At the moment, the top 10 teams are:

1. LSU
2. Kansas (undefeated)
3. West Virginia
4. Missouri
5. Ohio St. (finished regular season)
6. Arizona St.
7. Georgia
8. Virginia Tech
9. Oregon
10. Oklahoma

One still cannot predict anything from this list because at least two of these teams will still play each other. Next week Kansas will face Missouri for the Big 12 North crown. After that, the winner will probably play Oklahoma for the overall Big 12 title. LSU and Georgia will also probably square off for the SEC crown (there is a small possibility that Tennessee could get in ahead of Georgia but LSU has already won the SEC West).

The headaches get even bigger when you look at bowl order selection. The national title game is the Sugar Bowl this year. Once the Sugar has taken its two picks, it would normally go Orange, Rose, and then Fiesta. If the Sugar takes from another bowl’s rightful selection (like the Fiesta’s Big 12 champion), then that bowl gets a replacement pick before the other bowls make their picks.

For example, if the list stays the same and LSU wins the SEC and Kansas wins the Big 12, both would go to the Sugar Bowl to face each other. The Sugar Bowl is the nominal bowl for the SEC champ, but the Fiesta would then get a pick to replace Kansas before the selection moves to the Orange. It is possible, that the Fiesta could take Ohio St. (whom they have had 4 times in the last 7 years), rather than letting the Rose Bowl have its traditional Big 10-Pac 10 match up.

Then you have the chaos that comes from upsets coming around. If LSU loses next week to Arkansas, they could still win the SEC, but no longer be in the title game, or Georgia could win the SEC title and be too low in the standings to get to the title game. Kansas could defeat Missouri, but lose to Oklahoma (or Texas if Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma St.) in the Big 12 title game. West Virginia still has to face off against UConn and Pitt and could easily lose either of those games (more likely to UConn). These loses would vault Ohio St. back up to no. 1 or 2 and put them in the title game. Much the same could go for Arizona St. as well.

But, for the moment, we’ll take the easy path and try to plot based on everyone winning what they are supposed to:

Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. Kansas
Orange Bowl: West Virginia vs. Virginia Tech.
Fiesta Bowl: Ohio St. vs. Missouri
Rose Bowl: Arizona St. vs. Florida

Florida and Missouri are complete guesses on my part based on the current polls and who would lose in certain match ups. Texas could replace Missouri if Missouri gets beaten badly by Kansas and drops far in the polls. I’m also assuming that Virginia Tech beats Virginia next week and then beats BC in the ACC title game.

Next week will give us a firmer picture, but there is still a very reasonable possibility that Ohio St. could be the title game. In fact, there is even a chance that the Rose Bowl’s Big 10-Pac 10 match up could end up in the Sugar Bowl as the title game if the cards fell right. But that would require a lot of shifting around.

Preparing the Hooks

Sorry about the long layoff. Things have been busy at work and it’s been hard to think of things to write about while giving them my own twist. Recapping the woes of the Bengals and offering predictions about the World Series don’t give a lot of source material. Although, a Cleveland-Denver World Series would provide a couple of interesting talking points.

But, what finally drew me out of my malaise is the mutual defense pact signed by Russia, Iran, and the various –stans around the Caspian Sea. Russia has even upped the ante by pledging significant assistance to aiding Iran complete their nuclear reactor. President Bush has apparently gone so far as to say that if Iran goes nuclear, global war would occur (presumably he is referring to Iran’s planned strike against Israel).

On top of this, Turkey is seething about both Congress’ proposed condemnation of the Armenian Massacre and Iraq’s failure to stop Kurdish terrorists from crossing the border. Given that Iran also hates the Kurds, Europe is telling them to get lost, and Russia is planning major energy developments (including a huge oil and gas pipeline) in the area, its really only a matter of time before Turkey joins in with this Russo-Persian alliance. Turkey having also just swept Islamist parties into office should make the alliance with Iran that much more palatable.

Meanwhile, Iran is supporting Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian factions within Israel. They have pacts of mutual understanding with the Islamic government of Sudan and there have been rumors of a reach out to Libya as well, with a promise to restore the nuclear program Libya gave up to a US bluff.

All of this equates to a very nasty situation brewing. At the moment, the alliances are still forming and I also believe that this grand alliance would prefer to attack economically first (Russia and Iran’s ties with China make that possibility much more formidable). However, while the US might sit with their head in the sand, the Israeli military does not appear to willing to take that chance. Despite Olmert’s boobery, the military as well as the conservative parties (even members of Labor as well) are forming plans for a significant strike against Iran. The destruction of the Syrian nuclear installation was most likely a dry run against Iran as well as an actual hit against Syria. In the end, Israel might do what the US is unwilling to and that is try to cripple the Iranian threat. But if it does, that would activate the Russo-Persian alliance and could bring the full wrath of Gog against them. I’m not sure the US has the political will to stand up for Israel in the face of such a retaliation, especially if we are still stretched thin across Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, we are not dealing with fully rational people here so I do not see any way to avoid a major conflict within Israel sometime in the next couple of years. I’ve read on several boards that Putin doesn’t have the stomach to pull the trigger. I disagree. I think the threat is very real and very dangerous.

Democratic VP Sweepstakes

Ever since Barak Obama made a few foot in mouth moments a few weeks ago, the feeling around the country is that Hillary Clinton is steadily solidifying her base and will secure the Democratic nomination. Granted, major gaffes are still possible to open doors for other candidates, but most of the Democratic field has been hurting themselves in one way or another, leaving Ms. Clinton in the dominant power position.

As such, talk among political activists has started to turn from who will win the Democratic nomination to who will Ms. Clinton choose as her running mate. Many pundits have argued that Ms. Clinton should take Mr. Obama as her running mate. A little while ago that might have seemed like a good idea, but his recent mistakes have made him appear to be a political lightweight. His other attributes are of no need to Ms. Clinton. She already has good inroads with the African-American community through her husband and the Democratic candidate is probably going to win Illinois anyway so there is no need to bring in the senator from that state. Ms. Clinton having been raised in Illinois doesn’t hurt her chances in that state as well.

So, who does that leave? There are several choices being bantered about right now. The first is to take a strong southern Democrat. No Democratic ticket has won without a southerner since 1944 and one could make arguments that Truman would have qualified as a southerner being from Missouri (a border state). The problem with this is that there are no real strong southern Democrats. Most have been wiped out by the relentless Republican attacks to strengthen their base. Probably the only viable candidate is Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia and he is unlikely to buy Ms. Clinton much outside of Virginia. Indeed, even his selection might not be enough to carry Virginia into the Democratic column.

Option two would be to take another also ran: Bill Richardson of New Mexico. This would probably swing New Mexico back into the Democratic column and make some strong inroads into the Hispanic community. Conversely, Mr. Richardson has had some personal scandals that have hurt him lately. He also is not overly popular with the strongly liberal set as he is a bit more to the center than other candidates (with exceptions in immigration and health care). But probably the biggest problem is that Hispanics do not vote in large blocks the way African-American voters do. So picking a Hispanic candidate does not motivate large groups to your side the way other constituencies would. Plus, the option of a Hispanic over an African-American might alienate large percentages of the African-American block, leading them to abstain or vote third party (possibly even Republican in some critical areas).

Option three would be former governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa. Iowa narrowly went Republican last election and Mr. Vilsack is very popular there. In addition to Iowa, the selection of an upper Midwest governor might enable the Democrats to secure their sagging flanks in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Wisconsin almost went Republican in 2004 and there have been strong rumors that only voter fraud is what prevented it from swinging. There are additional rumors that if Mr. Kerry had challenged the Ohio vote, Mr. Bush would have challenged Wisconsin, undermining Mr. Kerry’s attack. Even Minnesota did not vote as heavily Democratic as it has in the past and the Republicans are hosting their convention in Minneapolis (under the auspices of a Republican governor who is considered to be a strong VP choice). The selection of Mr. Vilsack might help secure these three states and give the Democrats additional play in the plain states.

Option four would be to try for a magic bullet. If the Democrats can hold the states that Mr. Kerry won in 2004, Ms. Clinton would only need 18 electoral votes to win. This means that her primary focus of attack is going to be Ohio and Florida. Florida has a lot of former New York residents (to say nothing of elderly people) who might be strongly influenced by Ms. Clinton’s populist message. The selection of a Florida Democrat as VP might swing the state just enough to the Democratic side.

Ohio is an even better target though than Florida. The victory margin for Mr. Bush was quite narrow in 2004 and voters threw out the corrupt Republican regime wholesale in 2006. Ohio has a strong potential to trend Democrat, especially if Ms. Clinton can make any hay out of job losses that have hit the state. She also could try to select an Ohio politician to secure it. But, like Florida and most of the south, there aren’t many strong Democrats to choose from. If he hadn’t just been elected a year ago, Gov. Strickland might have been a good choice. But he and all the other Democrats in power are a bit wet behind the ears for a VP slot.

Out of all the options, I think Mr. Vilsack is probably the best choice. He will secure Iowa (bringing 7 electoral votes back into the Democratic column) and should help offset Democratic weakness in the Midwest. With that, Ms. Clinton can march around to secure the states that Mr. Kerry won and then pour every last dollar and ounce of strength she has to spare into taking either Florida or Ohio (I’m betting Ohio will take the principle focus). Only if she is facing Mr. Giuliani will she have to worry about any flack in New York or Michigan. Most other Republican candidates will not fare too well up in those areas.

So the board is set and the opening moves are just about over for the Democrats, barring a nasty surprise. Thus we move into the VP sweepstakes and then the full game.

I'm an Uncle

My sister Mrs. S has finally given birth to my nephew after going into the hospital late Tuesday morning. Things were a bit complicated and he didn't want to seem to come out so they eventually extracted him by C-section this morning. He seems to be doing well although my sister is apparently very out of it. I'm hoping her husband gets a chance to post some pictures soon.

On another note, the casting rumors I posted yesterday have been debunked by Mugglenet so please disregard.

Deathly Hallows Thoughts - Spoiler Warning!

So the final Harry Potter novel was released this weekend. Mrs. X was very excited and as it was a very nice day outside, we happened to be outside playing with Toddler X when it arrived in the mail. She finished in about 24 hours, but this is also with sleeping and attending a little shindig with some former office co-workers. So I actually got to start reading the book before she had finished it.

Overall, I would say that it is a very good book. Very different from the six previous works, but I don’t think anyone would be overly surprised by that. Voldemort is not going to quietly die off while Harry preps for his NEWTs and captains Gryffindor to another Quidditch Championship. Instead, we get the classic hero quest.

I only have a few quibbles with the book. The middle is a little slow and I think if some of the things from the later portions of the book were placed in the middle, it might have alleviated some of the monotony. Granted, this gave her another opportunity to make Ron look like a moron, but I think we all have seen this in Ron before and it doesn’t gain us a whole lot.

Contrasting the middle, the end of the book races along and at times, it feels a tad bit rushed. Some of this is just the pacing of the action, but after 6 books of slow modified development, a racing ending feels a little out of place. Granted, it would have made the book longer, but I don’t think anyone but Rowling would have had a problem with that.

Continuing with length, I think a follow up chapter would have been good. I know the Epilogue was supposed to cover that, but I would have liked to seen a little attention paid to both the fruits of victory and the accompanying mourning of those who fell in the final battle. Of course, I would have also liked to seen Percy go apeshit on Rookwood after he killed Fred, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I can’t help but imagine a scene where after Percy realizes that Fred is dead, jumps up and attacks Rookwood in a blind rage, preferably killing him while screaming with bloodlust. Would have made a very interesting comeback for Percy.

Most people’s biggest flaw with the book is the Epilogue. I got a double hit on this, because I misinterpreted how it was to be done. I was expecting a listing of what happened to all major characters (similar to the Epilogue in Band of Brothers or similar tales) rather than a scene concerning a few of the main characters that didn’t really tell us anything (other than that Neville was the Herbology professor now). The other quibble with the Epilogue is that it really wasn’t that well written. Mrs. X pointed out that it felt like really poorly written fan fiction and that Rowling probably wrote it a very long time ago and never really bothered to rewrite it. As such, she hadn’t really applied what she had learned as an author to this section.

Despite these little quirks, I did thoroughly enjoy the book and I think the way the series ended was quite satisfying. I was quite amused reading through the book, how many times it felt like Rowling was deliberately answering a question someone had posed to her before the release of the book, or just shooting down elaborate theories spun by other people. Before the book was released, I read a great deal of elaborate back-stories that people invented on Red Hen. Many of them were quite good and a few of them were even validated. However, many more, especially the more outlandish ones, were blown to pieces. I have to say, this did not overly bother me. Sometimes the simplest way to tell a story is take the straightest path and I think that’s pretty much what Rowling did.

I haven’t caught the Today show interview yet, but I did read a release of it this morning. Apparently, Mr. Weasley was actually supposed to die from the bits Nagini gave him in OotP, but Rowling simply couldn’t kill him. This actually addresses a bit of a sticky point that Mrs. X pointed out as to how Mr. Weasley survived but Snape died, despite suffering almost the same injuries. We’ll just have to leave it as one of those plot points that authors are allowed to get away with once in a while.

The interview did not specifically state the follow up question as to who the two who died instead were, but some of the phrasing around the original question made me think that Lupin and Tonks deaths might have been the two she hadn’t originally been planning to kill. She did apparently say that she would go ahead and write the encyclopedia, although she plans to take a little break before taking that up. Given that she already has reams of material lying in various boxes, I don’t think it will much a writing effort, as it will be more of a compiling of what she already has. I know that she has repeatedly mentioned Dean Thomas’ back-story as one that she wants to tell. So we can now look forward to that and it will shoot down all the theories we will now formulate as to what happened to everyone after Deathly Hallows.

If you had to make me predict what everyone was doing, I would say that Harry takes to the academic circuit. He doesn’t teach at Hogwarts, but he guest lectures every once in a while. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Ministry encourages him to write the Defense Against the Dark Arts standard textbook. Compiled with his inherited wealth, one can imagine Harry living quite comfortably while staying at home quite a lot. This would leave Ginny free to pursue her own career. Perhaps as an auror, although we’ve never seen enough of Ginny’s other side to wonder what her interests are.

I like to imagine Ron getting in with Magical Games and Sports Division of the ministry, especially once he realizes that he doesn’t quite have the temperament to be an auror. Hermione will probably agitate for Elvish rights and equal treatment for all creatures in some fashion. I’m sure she will continue SPEW as an outside force but some point she might try to work within the ministry to enact change, especially in the House-Elf Liaison office.

In her interview, Rowling mentioned that McGonagall would probably be passed over as headmistress due to her age. One could make the argument that the ministry decides to go the healing route and appoint a Hufflepuff headmistress and Prof. Sprout gets vaulted into the top job. This would clear the way for Neville to get appointed to the Herbology post immediately. However, it’s more likely that the ministry appoints an outside headmaster as an interim leader until things get settled down. This would give Neville time to either work out in the real world for a bit, or to stay on as Prof. Sprout’s assistant, until he gets the job when she retires.

Luna will eventually take over as editor of the Quibbler once her father retires, that much is just about certain. The only real question is whether she marries. I know some have liked the idea of her marrying Neville and I wouldn’t put it past them, given the friendship that they formed as being the leaders of the DA. I could also see Dumbledore’s Army being incorporated as an official group for advanced defense magic education and to be called on to defend Hogwarts if the need arises. Sort of like a wizard national guard. It would just be one more thing that Neville oversees during his tenure as professor.

I have a harder time imagining things for other characters, but I’m certain I could come up with good theories for each of them. I will say that I think that Kingsley should remain Minister of Magic for as long as he wants as he seems like he would be the most fair and honest MoM that has been seen for a while.

On a side note, Naomi Watts has been cast to play Narcissa Malfoy and Stuart Townsend has been cast to play Bill Weasley. Joseph Fiennes (Ralph Fiennes younger brother) has also been cast although his role has not been released. My guess is that he will be playing Tom Riddle Sr. Morfin Gaunt has also been speculated, but this would require a departure from the books since Voldemort is supposed to strongly favor his father in appearance. Having a strong resemblance to your mother’s brother would be a bit odd in that light; but in movies you can pick and choose how you do things.

Harry Potter addendum

Well, I will concede that I was wrong about Neville being Harry’s third cousin, once removed. I took a look at a copy of the Black Family Tapestry that had dates on it and used a few logical clues that were in the book and figured out that Harfang Longbottom could not be Neville’s great-grandfather. Most likely, he is Neville’s great uncle, a brother to his grandfather.

Probably the most fun way of determining this was to treat it as a logic puzzle. Neville was born in July 1980 (one day before Harry) and his father and mother were both aurors. Auror training takes three years upon graduation from Hogwarts and information from Mad-Eye Moody in OotP strongly suggests that Frank and Alice were already well-established and popular as aurors by the time they were killed (most likely in 1982). This suggests they were at least 21 and probably older than that when Neville was born.

In HBP we are told that Neville’s grandmother failed her Charms OWL, as was observed by Prof. McGonagall. Prof. McGonagall started teaching in December 1956, per OotP, so if she were observing Augusta as a teacher, Augusta would have had her OWLs in 1957 at the earliest, placing her graduation in 1959. For Frank to be 21 in 1980, Augusta would have had to give birth to him the same year she graduated, possible, but unlikely.

Given the way Neville’s grandmother is described, she seems to be about the same age as Prof. McGonagall, which would place the two of them right around the same year at Hogwarts. Rowling has described Prof. McGonagall as being in her 70’s and she has also stated as having no memory regarding the Chamber of Secrets being opened (1942-43 school year). In fact, given that she had no memory of Tom Riddle at all, it is likely that she graduated around 1938-39 or so, before Riddle came or after his first year.

Knowing a person’s OWL results (especially fails) indicates closeness in age; such that we might guess that Augusta and Minerva were possibly even in the same class. Thus, we might surmise that Augusta also graduated in the late 1930’s, marrying Mr. Longbottom sometime in the 1940’s. Frank was probably born around 1950 or even a little later given his status as a prized only child that Neville must emulate. This would make Frank nearly 30 when Neville was born.

Augusta would then have been born sometime around 1920 and one might surmise that her husband was also born around this time. No dates are given for Harfang Longbottom, but Callidora Black was born in 1915. At only 5 years older than Augusta, it seems likely that Callidora married the older brother of Neville’s grandfather, unless Augusta has a taste for much younger men and I don’t particularly buy that argument.

Some might speculate that there were at least 3 brothers, given that Neville frequently mentions a great-uncle Algie (probably Algernon). However, Algie’s surname is never given. He is portrayed with the air of a slightly crazy old bachelor. No evidence is given, but my own gut feeling is that rather than being Harfang and Mr. Longbottom’s brother, I think Algie is Augusta’s brother who lives near or with his older sister now that her husband has passed away. One can easily imagine Augusta deciding that Neville needed a practical male role model in addition to the ideal of his father that she would give him and invited her brother to visit regularly.

Now, all of this won’t amount to a hill of beans in the last novel, but it does make for fun logic problems.

Speaking of the last book, Mrs. X and I are waiting patiently for our copy, which will be delivered on Saturday sometime. She gets to read it first as she is the faster reader and can take advantage of times when Toddler X is napping to forage ahead. I’ll get to read it after that, although I do at least get to read the table of contents to speculate on when it arrives. We are also filling out our speculation sheets as was forwarded by Mrs. X’s brother. Most are pretty straightforward, but it will be amusing to look at our “predictions” in comparison to what actually happens.

Idle Harry Potter Thoughts

With the soon advent of the final Harry Potter novel, I’ve been roaming around, looking up interesting information to refresh myself with about various things that aren’t extremely obvious in the books. One of the really interesting things is plotting out how everyone is linked to each other (this was greatly aided by Rowling’s release of a segment of the Black Family Tapestry last year).

Ron has a line (I think in Chamber of Secrets) where he mentions that it was important for wizards to marry Muggles or Muggle-born wizards or the line would have died out. When one examines the genealogy of the various pureblood (or near pureblood) families, one can easily see how correct Ron is. Nearly all the principle characters that hail from pureblood lineages (including Harry) are related in some fashion to each other. In fact, nearly all these characters share descent from Phineas Nigellus Black.

Looking at things from Harry’s point of view, we note that Sirius Black (his godfather) is also his second cousin, as is Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy. This in turn makes both Tonks and Draco Malfoy his second cousins, once removed. Turning over to the Weasleys, Harry’s best friend (Ron) and his girlfriend (Ginny) are his third cousins. There is also speculation that Neville Longbottom is Harry’s third cousin, once removed; but it is not absolutely clear if the Harfang Longbottom mentioned in the tapestry is in fact Neville’s great-grandfather. It is also possible that Barty Crouch Jr. was Harry’s third cousin as well, but again, the tapestry stops when it comes to naming descendents not tied strongly to the male Black line.

Its also interesting to see the strong Slythern link that runs through the family lines. Draco’s grandmother was a Rosier, his great grandmother was a Crabbe, his great, great grandmother was a Bulstrode, and his great, great, great grandmother was a Flint. One could easily imagine these various families swirling in and out of each other with relative ease. The female Bulstrode and Flint are Harry’s ancestors as well, although one generation back.

Another thing to speculate about is who will take over for the various offices (assuming Hogwarts stays open). Given the problems the Ministry generated by stepping in with Umbridge, it’s likely that Professor McGonagall will be appointed Headmistress. This leaves vacancies in Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, the Deputy Head position, and the head of Gryffindor House (assuming that Professor Slughorn stays on). It is possible that one of the minor class teachers (Prof. Sinistra, Madam Hooch, Prof. Vector, Prof. Babbling, the Muggle Studies teacher) could be of Gryffindor House and could take over, but its also possible that McGonagall could just appoint the new Transfiguration teacher as the head of the house.

Given the history of the DADA job, I would think it somewhat unlikely that whoever gets that job would be appointed to be a head of house, until there is some evidence that the curse against it has been broken. Some circles have suggested that Hagrid might be the most senior Gryffindor and could get the head of house nod, but his lack of being a qualified wizard would probably count against him. What’s more, Prof. McGonagall, while fond of Hagrid, has been shown to be highly dubious of Hagrid’s decision making capabilities and is unlikely to place him in a position of heavy responsibility and power. Likewise, Prof. Binns is probably out of the running due to his being a ghost.

My own personal guess is that Prof. Flitwick is probably on the inside track to being appointed Deputy Headmaster.

Sopranos Thoughts

So Mrs. X and I finished up with the final season of The Sopranos the other night. We don’t have HBO so Mrs. X’s brother Mr. A recorded the season on tape for us. We had tried to avoid spoilers but Mrs. X had learned about Chris’ death and I had learned about the attack on Bobby and Silvio. Even beyond that, it was very hard to avoid learning about the last 5 minutes of the last episode. Although I can say that we were both surprised at the manor of Phil’s death (yuck).

Obviously I’m late to the game when it comes to how the show ended. I actually didn’t mind it, but I had been prepared for it. If I had been watching, I think I would have been a little irritated. I like threads coming to conclusions, even if you disagree with how they choose to end it. The abruptness of the ending leads me to believe that something specific happened at that moment. I would probably have to go back to season 1 and see how the series began to garner a couple of extra clues regarding the ending. I believe it ended with Tony coming into Dr. Malfi’s office, but I’m not sure.

I haven’t had a chance to read EW’s article on the subject, but I’ve seen several theories already about what the ending meant. The first is obviously that the show just ended and life goes on, though we are no longer privy to it. Mrs. X leans more in this camp.

Second theory is that the fellow in the Members Only jacket comes out of the bathroom and kills Tony. There are shades of the Godfather in the set up of the scene and it would give an added point to the flashback scene in the previous episode where Bobby noted that you probably don’t even hear your death coming.

Third theory was that the whole thing was a dream sequence and Tony is still out on the run from Phil. This comment was based on the person noting that Tony went to bed in an unmade bed and without any other comforts. However, I think it’s obvious that some time has passed and once the first night was over, Tony would have made the bed and put in a few things. The fact that he took up his AR-15 in a later scene showed that he was still carrying it around with him whenever he went upstairs into the bedroom. So I don’t agree with this theory.

A fourth theory, which I believe has some merit is that, it wasn’t Tony that died, but his dream of a normal family life. The whole series has been about justifying his mob life and trying to get a normal family. The fantasy segment began when he entered the restaurant and saw himself sitting at a booth like a normal man. His family comes in and they try to act normal, but Carmella brings up the Carlo business and AJ also reminds him that he now works for him in a way (since Little Carmine shares his interests with Jersey and New York). The music reminds Tony to not stop believing in the dream, but he does and everything ends. My only quibble with this theory is that I don’t like the timing on the ending if he is letting the dream die. The shot ends with him looking up as someone comes in the front door. If he was letting the dream die, I would have expected a sigh or other sign of dejection come over him before looking up. So I’m still on the fence about this one.

Still, its been an entertaining series and one can only hope that a new series comes along with this much entertainment value.

The Erised Trap

Mrs. X and I have been spending the last few months rereading the various Harry Potter books in preparation for the 7th book being released in July. I’ve also been reading a series of essays over on Red Hen. Most are interesting, although the author does have some serious issues about what to what to expect out of Rowling’s work. Of course, anyone who is going to write in that volume about a series is probably a bit over the top. But there have been some interesting points made in various essays.

One of the most interesting is the argument made over the labyrinth in Sorcerer’s Stone. Mrs. X has been quite vocal about her annoyance that the series of obstacles guarding the sorcerer’s stone were too easy and that the teachers could have done a much better job than put up some tasks that three first year’s could have gotten through. However, it has been argued that the point of the various obstacles was actually not to stop Voldemort but to merely delay him.

Dumbledore’s method of hiding the stone in the mirror was all the protection the stone really needed. Quirrell/Voldemort had no way of getting to the stone in the mirror so all the other tasks were quite meaningless. What’s more, Dumbledore could have simply put the stone in the mirror and set it up in his office if he was really interested in keeping the stone out of Voldemort’s hands. Voldemort would never have been able to get the stone and getting into Dumbledore’s office would have been even harder than getting through the third floor corridor. So why the elaborate defenses?

The answer is rather simple. The labyrinth was a trap. The majority of the tasks were not difficult, but they were time consuming. Catching a flying key would have taken time (presumably the keys would have been immune to Accio), the chess match would have taken a lot of time, and even the logic puzzle would have required some time to sort out. Fluffy and the Devil’s Snare wouldn’t have taken a lot of time, but they were also the first tasks and Voldemort would have been suspicious if the entrance tasks weren’t dangerous. Quirrell’s troll obviously is something he knew he could get past quickly and doesn’t factor into the equation.

Dumbledore would have known that when he was taken away from Hogwarts and Voldemort went down into the labyrinth, he could return and find Voldemort and Quirrell still trying to get the stone out of the mirror. There Dumbledore could have neutralized Quirrell and tried to find some way of trapping Voldemort in an object or some other sort of prison. Once done, Dumbledore could have destroyed Voldemort’s horcruxes at his leisure and then dealt with Voldemort as he saw fit.

The trap probably had evolved over the course of the summer. Quirrell had probably been hired as the DADA teacher during the ’89-‘90 term and then left to get some practical experience (and keeping with the curse on the job). When he came back at the end of the ’90-’91 term he was already putting on his twitch performance to disguise any idiosyncrasies in his behavior. Voldemort had not taken physical possession of Quirrell yet (he wasn’t wearing his turban until the start of the ’91-’92 term) but his mind had already been bent to Voldemort’s will. Dumbledore knew that Quirrell had been wandering in Voldemort’s rumored territory and was probably able to scan Quirrell’s mind and get a bead on things.

Dumbledore quickly hatched a daring plan. He contacted his friend Flamel and convinced him to give up the stone as bait. Dumbledore then made an announcement to his staff about hearing rumors of a danger to the stone and had offered to keep it at Hogwarts for safekeeping. Dumbledore probably went to individual teachers and asked for a specific guardian in their specialty. Once Hagrid arrived with the stone, the trap was set. Voldemort jumped at the opportunity, but decided to make a grab for the stone before it was in place.

Something that gets overlooked is the fact the Quirrell was already at Diagon Alley before Hagrid arrived. He also met Hagrid in the pub and could probably guess that he was there to collect the stone. Quirrell might have been fighting back against Voldemort’s power by delaying just long enough to know that his attempt on the vault would be too late. It would seem that after this, Voldemort took no more chances and directly possessed Quirrell. This also was a dangerous gambit since Voldemort’s possession would have drained Quirrell’s life and forced Voldemort to supplement with unicorn blood within 6 months of taking control of Quirrell.

The only other question is given that Quirrell was dying on him, why did Voldemort wait until June to make a grab for the stone? Voldemort was always very cautious and never makes a move if he can make others do it for him. He floated a test balloon of the castle’s defenses over Halloween by letting a troll into the building, but then ran into Snape and Fluffy. Voldemort then waited for the dust to settle and see if Snape blew the whistle on him. When he didn’t, Voldemort set about tricking Hagrid to get past Fluffy. Voldemort probably could have gotten past the dog without Hagrid’s information, but he was determined to be as unobtrusive as possible. At the same time he was trying to get the information from Hagrid, Voldemort was probably also trying to get information on the other obstacles from the other teachers.

Voldemort had the information from Hagrid and probably the other teachers by spring, but he waited even longer. Voldemort was cautious, but he also had been unable to gather what obstacle that Dumbledore himself had put in the labyrinth. Finally, he decided that he couldn’t wait any longer as term was about it end and decided to go for it. Dumbledore was lured out of the castle and Quirrell went down into the labyrinth.

But Dumbledore made one small mistake. He underestimated Harry and co.’s determination to muddle in. Some have suggested that Voldemort waited to go down until Harry decided to go down the trapdoor to stop Snape so that he could use him to get the stone. However, if this were the case, I think we would have seen Quirrell offer Harry more hints about what he knew and tried to nudge him down the trapdoor sooner (much as Barty Crouch Jr. did in GoF). Instead, Harry goes down of his own accord and nearly screws everything by pulling the stone out of the mirror.

I suspect that Dumbledore had two other little tricks that would have aided him in trapping Voldemort that are implied in the text. First, he had some sort of warning system in place if the stone actually came out of the mirror. Dumbledore mentioned that he suddenly felt that he was needed back at Hogwarts. This probably coincided with Harry getting the stone out of the mirror.

Second, Dumbledore might have set up an apparition tunnel into the mirror chamber. Dumbledore arrived in the chamber in time to pull Quirrell off of Harry and Harry heard Dumbledore’s voice before he passed out. If Dumbledore’s intention was to trap Voldemort and deal with him in the mirror room, it makes sense that he would have set up a method to bypass the other tasks. House elves seem to be able to ignore the anti-apparition spells that are placed on Hogwarts and Dumbledore consistently lifts the restriction in the great hall during apparition lessons. Given this kind of flexibility, it makes sense that Dumbledore might have created a spot where you could apparate into the mirror room, but only from one other point in the castle (like his office).

Thus, when Dumbledore got his warning about the stone at the ministry, he immediately apparated to gates of Hogwarts and then ran inside. He then ran to his office and apparated from the point he had designated, to the window point in the mirror room, arriving in time to pull Quirrell off Harry.

The only other fly in the ointment regarding this is why Dumbledore showed Harry how the mirror works if it wasn’t to remove the stone. Dumbledore probably had two objectives. He did want Harry to know how the mirror works so that he could have recovered the stone for Dumbledore if necessary. Dumbledore might have been unable to retrieve the stone due to his desire to destroy the stone and he would have needed a third party to get it out of the mirror.

But I think the main reason that Harry was shown the mirror was to test him. Dumbledore hoped that Harry was not coming to Hogwarts with the attitudes of Tom Riddle, but he couldn’t be sure. Only by observing his reaction to the mirror and what he saw could Dumbledore judge Harry’s character. Rather than showing him power and then keeping it a secret as Tom Riddle would have seen and done, Harry saw his family and immediately ran off to show Ron.

Harry passed the test with flying colors, but also was now equipped with the information that almost allowed Voldemort to acquire the stone. Thanks to Harry’s involvement, Voldemort escaped and Dumbledore stepped hard into the trap he had hoped to avoid as mentioned in Order of the Phoenix: helping and hoping that Harry could have a normal life.

Into the Valley of Elah

The Israeli government just released a preliminary report that is highly critical of Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz in the recent war with Lebanon. The final report is due in July, but the even the preliminary report is so scathing that the two men will probably be forced to resign their posts sometime in the next two months.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Hamas are starting to get a little more desperate. Things haven’t gone that smoothly for them and their own local populaces are starting to get testy. Syria recently was forced to put down a minor uprising among its Kurdish population and even Iran is clamping down on protesters. All these things indicate that the leaders of these various movements are going to need a good distraction.

The always-obvious choice is to attack Israel and unite in a broad war. This prospect gets even juicier when you realize that at the point of resignation, the Israeli leadership will be in a state of chaos. The Arabs will not want to wait too long to attack following the resignations because there is a legitimate chance that Israel could call new elections and Benjamin Netinyahu will come into power. He will organize the military to fight back in ways that are more detrimental to the Arabs and a key opportunity will have been lost.

Couple this with the fact that Israel will celebrate Jerusalem Day in a couple of weeks (May 16), marking the 40th anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem. This type of celebration will stick heavily in the craw of the Arabs. I would look for some kind of incident anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks from now, touching off another conflict, perhaps trying another sneak attack on a Jewish holiday such as Pentacost. The wheels are in motion.

Leaving Turtle Bay?

Every once in a while when you peruse the news, certain articles just jump out at you for totally different reasons.

Most people know that many in the US want nothing more than to kick the UN out of Turtle Bay and back across the pond. Many outside the US would like that as well. But its quite another thing to see a couple of academics propose to move the UN out and into a place specifically mentioned in Biblical fiction.

For those of you who haven't read them, in the Left Behind series, the antichrist (Nicolae Carpathia) moves the UN out of Turtle Bay after becoming UN Secretary-General and moves it to a refurbished Babylon (called New Babylon). There has been speculation among Biblical prophecy scholars that Babylon might be rebuilt and become the world capital (I've wrote about it before) but there has been equal speculation about the spiritually corrupt Babylon refering to Rome, New York, and a host of other cities.

Despite the author's good points, I doubt the UN will leave Turtle Bay soon. New York is cushy and UN diplomats are not bold people. If they ever did move to Babylon, the city would become the most heavily defended fortress the world has ever seen, although they would balance this out with some of the nicest places to eat in the world. I can only imagine what that would cost.

Still, I would keep an eye on this story. I firmly believe that the UN will pull out of Turtle Bay some day and relocation to a place in the Middle East does make a good deal of sense given where the functioning mission of the UN is likely to be focused.