It ain’t over until it’s over

People who tire of sports metaphors have my understanding, if not always my sympathy. Even so, watching overwrought Democrats carry on about the extended presidential primary season, it was my wife, a baseball and basketball coach’s daughter, who wondered, “Haven’t any of these people ever seen a seven-game series?”

See, here’s the thing about sports fans: We know the rules, we know how the game’s scored, and we know it ain’t over until it’s over. Some, including respected friends such as Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, were calling for Hillary Clinton to withdraw even before her big Game 5 wins in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island. Alter’s reasoning was that there was no way Clinton could catch up in the delegate count to Barack Obama; hence, she was only hurting Democrats by staying in the race. The problem is that Obama appears equally unlikely to win enough elected delegates to win the contest outright.

A lead’s only a lead, sports fans, until the final out.

Game 6 will be played in Pennsylvania, which strikes many Obama supporters as manifestly unfair. In his Newsweek politics blog, Andrew Romano endorses the reasoning of one “Maggie22,” who argues that “the media isn’t choosing to focus on the uncertain contests. It’s choosing to focus on the contests where Clinton should win. Pennsylvania … has an Ohio demographic and the added handicap for Obama of being a closed primary…The only difference between PA and MS is that Clinton has succeeded in convincing the media that the states that matter are the ones that she happens to have an advantage in.”

As “22” may indicate Maggie’s age, let’s go easy on her. The most obvious difference between Pennsylvania and Mississippi can be expressed as a football score: 21-6. Not a blowout, but decisive. I’m speaking of electoral votes, according to which Pennsylvania’s exactly 3-1/2 times more important than Mississippi. Then, too, Mississippi voted 60 percent-40 percent for President Bush in 2004. It’s a lead-pipe cinch to vote Republican come November.

So, yeah, Pennsylvania, a must-win swing state for Democrats, is far more important — this year and every year. It’s also more important than a bunch of states Obama has won: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, etc. So when the candidate himself, a Harvard Law graduate, talks about how he’s won more states than Clinton, he knows he’s blowing smoke — giving you the old “okie-doke,” as he likes to tell black audiences.

So unless Obama pulls an upset in Pennsylvania, this thing’s going seven, by which I mean, Florida and Michigan, two more crucial swing states Democrats need come November. Do-over primaries are mandatory between now and the Democratic convention.

And if nobody’s won after seven? Well, the rules say the “superdelegates” get to decide.

And when they do, they’ll be looking at the stats: such as Obama losing 83 of Ohio’s 88 counties; the fact that Clinton’s so far won states totalling 263 electoral votes to Obama’s 193, or which one polls ahead of GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain, and where.

My advice? Calm down, everybody. It’s a long season.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].