This article fits in the "death rattle" category. The patient has entered the terminal phase of the illness, but family members still wonder if somebody shouldn't DO something.

Let's skip the discussion about whether proportional distribution of delegates is "peculiar", or by implication Un-American. Roll back in time about 13 months. Barack Obama declares his run for the presidency, and his team sets out on the quest to topple the most powerful political machine currently in existence in America. Their support? Call it a wing and a prayer. More importantly, their strategy depended on doing a intensely detailed analysis of how to gain delegates, as delegates (Super and otherwise) and ONLY delegates determine the winner. It would have been foolish for the Obama campaign to whine and moan about proportionality versus winner-take-all, they had a job to do. And on 4-7-08, the job they did puts them ahead by 135 delegates, and has closed the super delegate gap to within 29. I'm deeply puzzled, Mr. Wilentz, by why you chose to use your considerable analytical and writing skills to write a "shoulda woulda, coulda" whiney, moaning commentary about a simple fact: The Obama campaign did an excellent WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) analysis 13-14 months ago, got down to work, and took has wrestled a powerful Clinton coalition to the mat. We await the pin, but we won't try to change the rules of wrestling in the middle of the match.

In actual democracies in the world, proportional representation is used to elect Parliament, so it is irrational to conclude the winner take all primaries make Democratic Sense, as the system is almost unique to the U. S. The U. S. is not actually a democracy, but a Democratic Republic, where the democracy is within each state only. In that context though it is reasonable to ask the merits of winner take all primaries versus proportional representation.

The idea of a Democracy is that the majority wins, unless the majority is assaulted Constitutionally guaranteed rights. The problem with winner take all primaries in the U. S. though is that it is rare for any candidate to have 50% plus one vote of the total number of people voting. Winner take all only makes sense with runoff elections in the absence of a candidate winning more than 50% of the vote, or better yet instant runoff primaries where at least 2nd choices count when your first choice doesn't get enough votes.

Remember that Republicans elected their least likely to win candidate in 2008, John McCain, using winner take all primaries where John McCain did not in fact win a majority of votes. One of the results is that the McCain campaign has deserved almost no news coverage since he secured the delegates needed to win the nomination, while the Democratic race for the nomination, done with proportional allocation of delegates, has sparked intense national debate on focus on Democratic candidates. All the excitement in this election is over Democratic candidates.

When primaries and caucuses were winning take all, people just barely participated in the nomination process, but the proportional representation has brought the largest number of people possible with it as active participants. That is exactly why the Democrats have raised more money than Republicans in the current election cycle.

Winner take all primaries were in fact an aberration in our political process. They started only because small states were worried candidates would never even visit their state because of so few delegates being at stake. Then the next tier of states by population decided they had to do the same thing, and so on. It is the need to prevent this sort of escalation that Party rules are for, and it follows that since Florida and Michigan did not follow the rules, they should have no National Convention delegates.

I go farther than rejecting winner take all primaries, we need to stop winner take all allocation of Presidential electors in all but the smallest states. Otherwise, why should any Democrats in Florida have a say about selecting the Democratic nominee? Florida has only sent Democratic electors for President twice in the past more than three decades because of their winner take all voting for President process which has resulted in only Republican votes for President. Both times they sent Democratic electors the President who won was a Southerner. They sent electors once each for Carter and Clinton (one term only).

I reject both winner take all primaries and winner take all elections of electors to the Electoral College, which is who actually selects the President. Both are undemocratic. I am willing to make exceptions only for the smallest ten states so they will be visited by candidates in spite of few delegates and few electors.

Both Barack and Hilary Clinton are playing by the same set of rules. To suggest she would be ahead under the old set of rules or under the Republican rules is unprovable an irrelevant. It also seems improbable.

Barack Obama has proven his ability to win, or at least do better than Hilary, under the rules we now have. It doesn't seem to be a stretch that he would have allocated his resources to do better under the other rules if they were in place. He connects with people and truly unites folks in ways that Clinton and McCain do not. He is also an effective manager and organizer. It shows in his ability to get votes where he needs them based on the rules.

Bottom line: Barack has won the most delegates with the most votes. That strikes me as the democratic way whether you capitalize the 'd' or not!

Sean, you are wasting our time and your time dreaming up scenarios that might have been. The nomination rules will decide the democratic nominee, and to tell you the truth, the longer this process goes on the happier I am with the probable result.

Please take some time to study the democratic party rules, the rules of the electoral college and grow up to the fact that rules are to be followed.