Dems don’t practice right for big game

I’ve always been told to practice like I play so that when the real game rolls around I will be ready.
I’ve passed that philosophy on to the kids I coach in various sports, pointing out that you’ll never be any better in the actual game than you are in practice because there are additional pressures during the game that make the actual game more complicated than practice. For instance, in a game you have the pressure of winning and losing, you have parents and friends shouting from every direction and you have to make your own decisions without the coach being right there to tell you the next move to make. So, if you cannot perform properly in the controlled rehearsal of practice, the chances are slim to none you will do any better when the bright lights of the real game are bearing down on you.
Duane, have you mixed up your sports column with your Wednesday column? Nope, because I used that illustration to transition into politics because politics is a game just like any other, you just don’t use a ball. And, just like any other game or sport, there is a pre-season where you hone your skills and qualify yourself by winning against pre-season challengers. In the case of Barrack Obama, he earned himself a ticket to the big game by finally defeating scrappy challenger Hillary Clinton.
However, in achieving the nomination, he did not practice like he needs to play, but this was not his fault. Instead it is the fault of a flawed candidate selection system used by the Democratic Party which must have been thrown together over the years using cardboard and Elmer’s glue.
As I’ve said before, the reason behind this messed up primary system is an attempt by the Democratic party elite to keep control on who gets nominated, thus the superdelegates, which are a hold-over from the old times when the party bosses made the selection of a candidate before they decided to make the people feel empowered by allowing them to ‘select’ their candidate by state primaries.
This inability by the party to settle on a good system has also left a fatal flaw in its process, that being it awards delegates proportionally in each state according to the vote totals. This is where practice like you play comes in.
During the presidential election against Republican nominee John McCain, it will be winner take all in each state as dictated by the Electoral College. This means if you win a state by a single vote, you get all the votes of that state.
How does this affect Obama? Well, had he been running against Clinton under Electoral College rules he would have lost, pure and simple as Clinton carried all the big-vote states without exception. Of the 270 electoral votes needed to nominate, Clinton would have gleaned 210 of those from the big ones, including California, New York, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and yes even Michigan and Florida.
Yes, Obama won at least 28 states, but the biggest one of those was Illinois, his home state. And, history shows us no one has ever won the White House without carrying a least a couple of the aforementioned big states simply because they are so Electoral College rich.
Does this mean Obama will lose in November? No, since Clinton can probably deliver states like New York for her new ‘friend.’ But it does show Clinton may have run stronger when it comes to the Electoral College, had the Democrats practice like they play. To me, it’s kind of like practicing baseball to get ready for a basketball game. I guess it’ll come down to how tough the opponent is since, in this case, he barely had to practice at all as he waltzed to the Republican nomination.
Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191.