Some people take their lucky breaks for granted.
On the strength of 2006's midterm mandate, the Democrats face the first election promised to them since Lyndon B. Johnson rolled over Barry Goldwater. The party is polling well across the country and, with an unpopular Republican president and a looming recession, the Democrats stand to keep soaring.
But if party elites can't get it together soon, they could muddle the best shot they've had in more than 40 years.
While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama squabble over oligarchic superdelegates, Republican nominee John McCain gets to sit back and quietly dig up dirt and funds to prepare for November. Furthermore, as Clinton and Obama hammer away at one another, they chip away their electability, slimming the odds for a Democratic victory come election day. Factor in that the candidates promise to keep fighting until the August convention, and you have a recipe for grand-scale political embarrassment.
If Gov. Howard Dean, the party's chairman, wants to keep the Democrats in the game - and keep his job - he needs to cut the party's losses before it's too late.
Someone needs to convince Clinton that Florida and Michigan broke the rules and don't get to play. If Clinton can't amass 2,025 delegates from rule-abiding states, then she's not the nominee. It's really that simple.
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And to speed up those delegate counts, Dean needs to call for superdelegates to make their votes public in early June, after the last primary is held. That way, the party will have its nominee in time to get McCain on his toes before November.
But before they can present a viable candidate, the Democrats need to mend their fractured base. According to a recent Gallup poll, 28 percent of Clinton backers would vote for McCain if Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 19 percent of Obama's supporters would do the same if the roles were reversed. This pre-election squabble has driven a rift in the party that Ralph Nader could only dream of. The Democrats need to end the primary battle as soon as possible so they can spend the months before November trying to get their disparate constituency back under the same umbrella.
But if the Democrats let their candidates muckrake through the summer, they'll be left with a nominee who has been dragged through the dirt months before the Republicans have taken a single shot. And that could take the party from holding the high card to playing an embarrassing game of 52 pickup.
