Obama -- The South Dakota Candidate?

I'm still a Kucinich man rooting for a brokered convention and a Cleveland insurgency. As Spock unflappably reminds us, "There are always possibilities."

But Vulcan philosophy also demands adherence to logic, which tells me that I probably have a better chance of getting Dennis and Elizabeth to come over for dinner than of seeing Dennis at the top of the Democratic ticket. So what's a passionate Dem to do?

My penchant for political drama leans me toward Obama. The possible upending of the political landscape by a young Illinois Senator rising from obscurity to topple the established political machine of a popular former President and his wife is the most satisfying political narrative of the season.* The coronation of a former President's wife as our leader following the rule of a former President's son feels more like the dynasty politics of old monarchies or banana republics than the democracy our founders had in mind.

Mrs. Madville Times and I were pretty focused on Kucinich's superior policy stances, so ee're still working on a full analysis of the policy differences between Obama and Clinton. In terms of what matters to South Dakota, Mrs. Madville Times is preparing an analysis of Obama's rural policies. I'll note that Obama is the one campaigning as if all 50 states, including us rural states, make a difference, getting an early (and as we see now, successful) jump on campaigning in relatively small North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Idaho while Clinton plays big-city, big-state politics and will start pouring resources into the rest of the country only now that it looks like she needs us. Obama also has Tom Daschle at his side to help keep South Dakota issues on the front burner.

I'll work on the Obama-Clinton comparison as the primary season progresses. We'd all better be ready by May, when the campaigns and CNN trucks will be swarming the state wanting to know whom South Dakota will crown as the nominee. Let's look smart on TV, South Dakota!

And right now, I'm tentatively banking my smarts on Obama. He's giving rural America a little more attention than is Clinton. He says things about religion that sound more aimed at doing God's work in the world than proving his piety (expect more on that from Mrs. Madville Times as well). He avoids the racial politics that the Clintons seem all too willing to play (see Frank Rich's NY Times column today on the Clintons' "bigoted lie" of Hispanic-Black voter antipathy, plus a description of the Clinton campaign as an "imploding Potemkin village" kept alive only by Mr. Clinton's "murky" business deals).

Now if Obama would just name Kucinich as his running mate, or at least promise to make Dennis and Elizabeth co-chiefs of a new Department of Peace, then he'd have me for sure.

*Please, Mr. Penn and other Clinton aides, spare us the near-Orwellian assertions that Clinton is the underdog. I don't buy it, and neither do her own voters:

At Clinton's campaign events, the idea of her as an underdog or "anti-establishment" candidate drew puzzled looks from voters, many of whom admire what they see as her years of seasoning and exposure in Washington.

"It seems to me that she is the one who is more established," said Penny Nutting, a 53-year-old teacher who attended a rally for Clinton in Lewiston, Maine [Caren Bohan, "Clinton Seeks to Cast Herself as Underdog vs Obama," Reuters via Yahoo, 2008.02.10].