MSNBC has canned Buchanan and Press, according to the Associated Press (via the Miami Herald). Unfortunately, though, it’s just the silly Crossfire knockoff—they’ll still be on the GE/Microsoft payroll:

Both men will continue to be contributors to MSNBC, said Erik Sorenson, the network’s president.

Just when you thought it was safe to watch MSNBC again…

As Brock notes below, the gay marriage debate has spawned some odd threads, including a discussion of the constitutionality of non-procreative marriage by Jacob Levy. While, in general, I’m not particularly interested in this debate*, I think there are a couple of plausible interpretations of the constitutionality of marriage:

• A textualist argument would say the Constitution has nothing to say on the issue, either way; marriage is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Pure strict constructionalism would argue that this gives Congress no right to legislate on marriage, as that is not an enumerated power of Congress. An expansive reading of the “necessary and proper” clause would argue that Congress can regulate marriage, at least between residents of different states (under the interstate commerce clause), or in all circumstances, as marriage may be part of the “general welfare.” Neither interpretation seems to suggest that marriage would be a constitutional right, though.
• An originalist argument would say that the Constitution is only construed to protect marriages that were permitted under English common law at the time of independence (under the meaning of “liberty” at the time). This would probably limit constitutionally protected marriage to marriages involving one man and one woman, within a single race, and instituted by a religious ceremony of some form. Clearly, an originalist argument would no longer be supported by precedent, as interracial marriage is constitutionally protected (see Loving v. Virginia) and so, presumably, are civil marriages.
• An argument based on the majority holding in Lawrence v. Texas would probably consider marriage as a constitutionally protected “liberty interest” absent a compelling state interest to the contrary. This would place the burden on the state to show there is an overwhelming interest that isn’t based on prejudice against gay marriage, something that I think would be very hard to show.

There’s also a second argument surrounding gay marriage: whether the “full faith and credit” clause requires states where certain marriages are not constitutionally protected to acknowledge those marriages if they were conducted under the laws of another state (say, Massachussetts). Absent a clear textual command to the contrary, I, like Matt Stinson, suspect you could find at least some state or federal courts that would say “yes,” although I don’t think the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually concur. However, some state supreme courts probably would.

What worries me is that, like abortion, this will become one of those interminable debates that paralyzes the judiciary—and by extension, politics at large—because the Supreme Court takes sides too soon in the wider political debate. The last thing this country needs is another “culture war” where the Supreme Court has essentially placed a highly controversial issue beyond ordinary politics. It’s the sort of thing that leads to both parties taking absurdly extreme positions and is ripe fodder for demagoguery by the likes of Roy Moore and the Buchananites.

Jacob Levy continues to sift through his email box, looking at rationalizations for anti-gay discrimination in marriage laws.

The most popular rationalization is that a gay or lesbian couple is incapable of biological reproduction. But, of course, so are many straight couples, voluntarily or involuntarily. And many couples, although physically capable of reproducing, have chosen not to reproduce. [Obligatory disclosure: my wife and I are among the latter group.] We do not deny marriage licenses to these couples.

Several of Jacob’s readers have espoused the position that we should, indeed, deny non-procreative couples the right to marry. An unnamed, “conservative, married” correspondent writes to Jacob:

I’d suggest that only marriages WITH children get extraordinary “protection”. You can call you partner and your arrangement whatever you want but the state should only recognize existing FAMILIES and partners who have reared children as state blessed “marriages” with accompaning rights and benefits.

So, if you’re sterile and marry and don’t have kids…no bene’s. If you adopt, fine, you got a “marriage” in the states eyes and get benes. Until then, call your arrangement whatever you’d like but make all of your legal issues explicit (wills, visitation, powers of attorney) cause the state doesn’t (and shouldn’t) care about helping two, unburdened, free, adults square away their respective responsibilities to each other.

Jacob is mainly interested in the legal question of whether a right to marry would be guaranteed for these couples by the U.S. Constitution (presumably by the Ninth Amendment and the “Privileges and Immunities” clause of the fourteenth). But the public policy position, or the philosophical position, that marriage ought to be reserved for (potential or actual) biological parents is independant of that, and, barring an actual court case, seems more interesting to a non-lawyer such as me.

This political/philosophical position needs a name. Since the position could be summed up succinctly as “Marriage is for breeders”, I propose calling this position “breederism.”

Eugene Volokh notes that Howard Dean’s campaign blog is trumpeting an endorsement from Ted Rall from Rall’s latest Universal Press Syndicate column. For those unfamiliar with Rall, he’s the unthinking man’s Tom Tomorrow. I guess Howard’s still not done tacking left…

Having said that, I agree with Rall* that Dean is the Democrats’ best chance for beating Bush, because (a) he has the plurality support of the party’s base and (b) those plurality supporters won’t stand for anyone else in the field, no matter how much they try to tack to the left. The way I see it, the Dems can get 45% of the national popular vote with Dean, or 35–40% with anyone else, with the remainder either defecting to the Greens or just staying home.

Glenn Reynolds has the reaction from the right, including posts from Eye on the Left, Tim Blair, and Blogs for Bush.

Conrad and Pieter at PeakTalk both make their readers aware of the Indonesian practice of gijzeling, which is apparently often used by Indonesian officials to shake down foreigners. As Pieter points out, not only is gijzeling a Dutch term (which literally means “hostage taking”); it also has its roots in Dutch law. As Pieter writes:

Had this practice not been part of the legal infrastructure that the Dutch left behind in Indonesia, I have little doubt that somehow Indonesian authorities would at some point have discovered this technique of generating additional revenue. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that if ever the country comes under serious international criticism over this practice it will happily point to the old colonial master that introduced the practice in the first place.

It is not just Indonesia that has found this practice, of borrowing from past colonial laws, effective; the neighboring Malaysian government’s notorious Internal Security Act is a direct decendent of British anti-sedition laws enacted under colonial rule to combat communist insurgencies, as are Singapore’s similar internal security laws. In response to criticism, both governments have regularly pointed out that Britain had imposed equally draconian legislation in the past; they have also noted laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act that were enacted by Britain to combat the IRA and “loyalist” terrorist groups in Northern Ireland.

I don’t know if there’s an obvious lesson to be drawn from this pattern. To echo Pieter, authoritarian regimes generally don’t need any help figuring out ways cracking down on disfavored groups. But to the extent vague and open-ended laws are used in democracies to crack down on terrorist groups, authoritarian states can point to those laws to justify similar provisions—even if, in practice, they are targeted at their nonviolent political opponents rather than terrorists.

Venomous Kate has a link to a Honolulu Advertiser piece in which she is interviewed about the continuing disappearance of her back yard at the hands of the Pacific Ocean and the rather callous attitude of the state authorities toward the situation.

At least down in these parts, we’re allowed to do something about the kudzu. Not that you can do much about kudzu over the long term, mind you, but still…

James Joyner of OTB notes that Matt Drudge is reporting that Howard Dean may have exaggerated a medical condition to avoid serving in Vietnam. Like James, I don’t expect it to have much impact on the election; however, if Dean wins the nomination, it will make it more difficult for relatively scrupulous Democrats to trot out the “Bush went AWOL” rumors.

In general, though, I don’t think people care all that much any more; witness the failure of both John F. “I Served in Vietnam” Kerry and Wes Clark to gain much traction with their military histories. Past military service (or the lack thereof) hasn’t really been a meaningful issue in a presidential contest since 1960.*

John Cole thinks the news is a hit piece orchestrated by Kerry and/or Clark; apparently, Drudge’s scoop is based on this New York Times piece by Rick Lyman and Christopher Drew.

Other reactions: Kevin at Wizbang! thinks it was planted by Kerry, while Steve at Tiny Little Lies thinks Dean is screwed regardless of who planted it (or if, in the immortal words of Andy Sipowicz, Dean’s camp launched “preemptive stink”). And Matt Stinson agrees with James and I that the attack probably won't work, while Poliblogger Steven Taylor makes the point that Dean is well-positioned even if the charge does stick with some voters:

[S]ince he is running as essentially the anti-war candidate, in some ways this simply adds to that position in its own kind of way. In other words, the hard-core Democrats who are currently gung-ho for Dean are hardly going to fault him for not wanting to go to Viet Nam, now are they?

Daniel Drezner, fresh off his 300-comment-inducing disagreement with blogosphere folk hero James Lileks, notes both progress and regress on the trade front by the administration, with regress apparently beating out progress quite handily.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here) for pointing out that legalization of gay marriage might lead to a small increase in sham marriages for immigration purposes.

As an advocate of open immigration, I regard this as a positive benefit.

Megan McArdle writes on Howard Dean and his penchant for regulation in her latest piece at TechCentralStation. All I want to know is: when can I get on the VRWC gravy train?

Pejmanesque has more, including links to negative reactions to Dean’s remarks by Tyler Cowen and Stuart Buck.

Larry Sabato has his hokey “crystal ball” schtick, while Steven Taylor again consults his toaster. For what it’s worth, my microwave says Dean has the lead, but the floodlights on my house still think Gephardt and Clark have a chance.

In all seriousness, Steven gets the edge by far, since (a) he’s never injured anyone that got between him and a reporter and (b) he has adopted a metaphor that doesn’t reflect negatively on the discipline.

I’ve already said my piece on this blogospheric navel-gazing exercise in the comments at Dan’s place (in short, I think all the participants are talking past each other); however, Matt Stinson, Robert Garcia Tagorda, James Joyner, and Anticipatory Retaliation have the cream of the reactions—from my POV, at least.

Robert Prather also responds, noting that Salam Pax in particular owes his livelihood to the U.S. forces who liberated Iraq.

Steven Taylor notes the latest setbacks for Bilbo wannabe Roy Moore, late of the Alabama Supreme Court. First the Alabama convention of the Southern Baptist Church distanced itself from Moore, then the perennially irrelevant Constitution Party invited Moore to be its 2004 presidential nominee. Now all that’s left is for Moore to get an MSNBC talk show with Phil Donahue to complete his deserved slide into pathetic obscurity.

James Joyner links to a John Fund OpinionJournal piece looking at whether or not John F. Kennedy technically received a minority of the popular vote; in 1960, Alabama’s voters decided between Nixon and a slate of 11 Democratic electors, 6 of whom were unpledged—and voted for Harry Byrd—and 5 of whom pledged votes for Kennedy.

In the same election, Mississippi also elected a slate of unpledged electors who voted for Byrd; however, unlike in Alabama, they beat a slate of electors pledged to Kennedy by 7886 votes, according to Presidential Elections: 1789–1996, published by Congressional Quarterly—which still attributes all of Alabama’s votes to Kennedy, despite CQ’s own reallocation of the votes between Byrd and Kennedy based on the behavior of the Alabama electors.

Virginia Postrel comments on a WaPo interview with Howard Dean that gives her the impression that Dean is “the thinking man’s Cruz Bustamante” (which may actually be an oxymoron). It’s fairly clear that Dean’s still tacking left; quoth Virginia:

Dean is running as a guy who wants to control the economy from Washington and who sees business as fundamentally bad. “Any business that offers stock options” covers a lot of companies, including some of the economy’s most promising and dynamic.

Regulation tends to be relatively invisible to the general public, in part because it’s mind-numbingly technical. That makes it much more difficult to reverse, much easier for interest groups to manipulate, and much more dangerous to the general health of the economy than the taxing and spending that attract attention from pundits.

She also has a challenge for the so-called “libertarians for Dean.” Ultimately (assuming Dean gets the nod) they’re going to have to decide whether being pissed off because Bush knocked off Saddam Hussein is sufficient reason to hand the keys of the economy—namely the federal regulatory apparatus—over to a man who barely pays lip service to capitalism.

One of the classic quotes of politics comes from French neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Asked, after losing in the first round of a French presidential contest (in 1988, I believe) to Jacques Chirac and François Mitterand, who he would back in the second round, he described the choice as one between “bad or worse”*; in 2004, hardcore libertarians are going to have to decide which is worse, but for now that honor seems squarely to belong to Dean.

Jacob Levy approvingly notes Joe Lieberman’s response to this nonsense. Like Jacob, I’d hate to see the Democrats return to their bad old protectionist ways, but outside a few DLCers like Clinton, Lieberman, and 1990s-Gore I don’t think the party ever really shed its protectionist bent; when Clinton spearheaded expansion of NAFTA to include Mexico in 1994, he did it with mostly Republican backing on the Hill.

Daniel Drezner comments as well, as does Andrew Sullivan; this is my entry in James’ inaugural Beltway Traffic Jam.

Jeff Taylor and Joy have the latest on our friends at the Santa Cruz Operation; Jeff* characterizes SCO’s business model as “consist[ing] of filing suit against Linux users.” I think he’s being charitable; it’s more like “trying to sell for $200/seat technology written two decades ago by a bunch of kids at Berkeley that’s today worth about 10 cents.”

You know, in 1999 or so, that could have been the basis for a decent IPO. Hell, nobody else back then had a viable business model either…

Following today’s Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, there’s been some predictable noise in the libertarian blogosphere in favor of “privatizing marriage“. Normally, I’m pretty sympathetc toward libertarian utopianism, but I’d like to throw a bit of cold water on this idea.

As Michael Kinsley observes in this pro-privatization article, government sanctions of marriage serves as a “bright-line rule” in legal and employment matters. It generates the right answer in the vast majority of cases, while minimizing economically inefficient negotiations.

If I decide to get a new job, I can ask one simple question regarding benefits: Do you offer health insurance for the spouses of employees? If they say no, I can walk out of the interview right then, since this is a benefit I will not negotiate away. And the employer is free to say “yes” without prying into my spouse’s medical history, because it knows that I’m not just trying to get insurance for some relative or casual friend who has a medical problem. (That is, government sanctioned marriage staves off the problem of adverse selection for the health insurance market.)

If I die from an aortic dissection tomorrow, there will be no costly legal wrangling over who inherits my vast fortune. My wife will. This is exactly what I want, as do most married people. And I didn’t have to hire an attorney to draft a will.

In other words, a universally recognized standard for who is “married” is economically efficient.

Now maybe the question of employer-subsidized health benefits could be solved by an oligopoly of private marriage companies. But the legal questions cannot be. The legislature will have to decide which marriage companies to recognize as legitimate, and then we’re right back to government-sanctioned marriage. Homophobic bigots will try to pass laws saying that their state, or the federal government, will not recognize any marriage sanctioned by a company that sanctions marriages between two individuals of the same sex.

In short, privatizing marriage is not going to work unless we privatize the rule of law itself.

And even if I’m wrong here, and privatized marriage might work in theory, it’s never going to happen. What are you going to tell the millions of couples who are already married? “Sorry, you’ve got to go pay $75 to a company to have your marriage recognized by your employer and by courts of law. And since we don’t know how this business is going to pan out, you should register with all three of the major marriage companies, until the natural monopoly kicks in and picks a winner.” Sorry, libertarians, but you’ll have a much easier time abolishing Social Security and Medicare.

So here’s my challenge to the libertarian proponents of privatized marriage. As Will Baude so eloquently put it, you’re in a second-best world. The lines have been drawn in this particular battle of the culture war, and you didn’t get to draw them. But you have to pick a side.

Will you be with the bigots, or against them?

Update: Lower taxes? What are you talking about, Chris? I'm pretty sure that the marriage penalty is one aspect of marriage that gays are not clambering for.

I won’t try to round up all of the posts on Massachussetts’ decision today (a sampler: Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, Virginia Postrel, One Fine Jay, and James Joyner), but I think Brett Cashman’s post is about the most sensible I’ve seen, in terms of the whole “what happens next” question. However, I can’t see conservatives’ innate desire to use the state as a vehicle for social engineering waning as Cashman (rightly) suggests it should.

Instead, realistically I think we could see a draconian form of the Defense of Marriage Act Federal Marriage Amendment sooner rather than later, because the Democrats in Washington are far too spineless to oppose it, and I reckon you could round up 38 state legislatures—bodies full of people looking for ways to avoid giving voters a good reason to vote them out—to ratify the thing in a big hurry. The bottom line is that conservatives aren’t going to let Roe happen twice, because exactly what Matt Stinson predicted here is just around the corner.

Matthew Stinson has a must-read new post on the topic as well. I think many social moderates would share his viewpoint, expressed here:

For what it's worth, I would be more inclined to support gay marriage nationally (rather than locally) if I believed gays desired marriage for more than just its economic and legal benefits. Yes, one's sense of dignity is benefited by having the right to marry, but what's lost on many gay marriage advocates is that marriage is about fidelity as much as it is sharing resources. Andrew Sullivan, to his credit, has argued that the option of marriage will have a civilizing effect on gay men. But gay men aren't children, and they can choose fidelity now if they want. That the vast majority do not do so suggests to me that gay male marriages, but not necessarily lesbian marriages, will be open marriages.

I’m personally not a big fan of outcome-based arguments for (or against) gay marriage, but this is an argument that will resonate with many fence-sitters. The more it sounds like gay people want marriage for the “free stuff,” like lower taxes* and cheaper healthcare, the more people are going to be turned off by it.

(Nor do I really buy the “civilizing effects” argument articulated by Sullivan; I suspect the number of straight men who’ve actually said, “I’d cheat on my wife with Lulu from the temp pool, but I can’t since I’m married” is within ε of zero. They might say “I’d cheat…, but I can’t since I’m in a committed monogomous relationship,” but you can have one of those without being married. It’s a function of character, not institutions.)

Also, you may enjoy this non-work safe post by Mr. Green, which refers to perennial SN foil Ricky Santorum. (Link via the Wizbang! post trackbacked below.)

Steven Taylor throws cold water on the idea that the Democrats will have a so-called “brokered convention”—i.e. that the plurality winner of the primary process won’t be the ultimate nominee. This isn’t the 1960s, and the Democratic base—particularly the Deanites—isn’t going to accept such meddling from party elites, and no amount of wishful thinking from either the media or anti-Dean forces in the party is going to affect that.

To get someone—anyone—other than Howard Dean as the nominee is going to require a lot of anti-Dean Democrats to swallow their pride and put the party ahead of their own interests before the end of the year (maybe even the end of November), so the designated “anti-Dean” candidate—Dick Gephardt seems like the only alternative with enough Old Left street cred, regional ties in the midwest swing states, and establishment support—can gain sufficient traction against both Dean and the novelty candidates. And if you see John Kerry, John Edwards, or Wes Clark stepping aside to back Gephardt, you’re truly kidding yourself.

My current theory on how the nomination battle will play out is explicated here.

James Joyner essentially agrees.

Both Matt Stinson and Robert Garcia Tagorda note George Will’s Sunday WaPo column on the politics of the steel tariffs—and of the European Union response to them. Like Robert, I hope this development gives the administration the final push it needs to abandon the tariffs, before this escalates to a trade war which neither the U.S. nor foreign states can win.

The local Deanies are congregating tonight in Oxford, according to today’s Daily Mississippian. I pass this along in case you want a warning notice to flee across state lines lest you come into contact with any of these individuals.

Incidentally, the fact that one of Dean’s aides is named—and I truly wish I was kidding—“Zephyr Teachout” will explain everything you need to know about this presidential campaign.

Amanda Butler and Will Baude note some idiocy going on in the comments at The Daily Kos. In fairness to Kos, it looks like the message in question is a comment and not an actual post made by a bona fide Kos article poster, so it’s hard for me to get too upset about it (except to repeat my regular complaint about blog comment sections in general).

That being said, both Amanda and Will have excellent rebuttals to this full-fledged display of ignorance. I won’t pretend that Mississippi doesn’t have its quota of bigots—I’ve had the dubious pleasure of teaching at least a couple of them—but I don’t think I’ve been anywhere in America, “southern” or not, that lacked a few unreconstructed racists running around.

Links via Pejmanesque.

Matthew Stinson, a fellow member of the patriarchy who is similarly burdended with false consciousness, has an entertaining and informative post about on-campus politics at FSU. For some odd reason, far-left identity politics hasn’t gained much of a foothold here at Ole Miss, so it’s nice to see that it’s alive and well elsewhere in the South.

It seems that discussion of the proposed “Defense of Marriage” amendment makes Andrew Sullivan take leave of his senses. He spends a lot of time ranting about “celibacy,” a term that appears nowhere in the amendment’s text. Here’s the text, as presented by Sullivan:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights, or immunities on the existence, recognition, or presumption of sexual conduct or relationships.

Now, let’s deconstruct that paragraph. Sentence one is plain English, so that’s easy. Let’s take a looksee at #2:

Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. [emphasis mine]

Note the “shall” clause. This, in a nutshell, means that anything that doesn’t explicitly say “gay people may marry each other” cannot be construed to mean, well, “gay people may marry each other.” Sounds simple enough. Now onto #3:

Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights, or immunities on the existence, recognition, or presumption of sexual conduct or relationships.

This is apparently where Sullivan goes off on his bizarro rant about celibacy. To put it crudely, this sentence—in English—means, “you aren’t entitled to anything just because you’re fucking someone else.” How on earth Sullivan makes the leap to this sentence creating the precedent for some sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” police force just boggles the mind; if anything, it would seem to preclude it, because having a sexual relationship cannot have any effect on your “benefits, privileges, rights, or immunities.” This sentence says, whether Sully’s fucking his boyfriend or sleeping down the hall in the spare bedroom, it makes absolutely no difference.

Frankly, I agree that this amendment is fundamentally silly, although, unlike Sullivan, I’d rather have the state out of the business of marriage as completely as possible, leaving it to contract law and civil society—hence why he’s a conservative, while I’m a libertarian. And if Sullivan wants to marry his boyfriend, or the hypothetical lesbian commune down the street wants to organize a group marital arrangement, it’s nothing that’s going to cause the end of the universe; even if God cares, I suspect He has more important things to worry about. But I’d expect someone who, you know, writes for a living might actually be capable of reading what’s in front of his face. And, in this case, I think Sullivan’s dislike for the proposal has blinded him to what the actual text says.

And Sullivan’s still obsessing; apparently, what’s important to him aren’t the benefits of marriage; it’s the societal imprimateur that government recognition of gay marriage would convey. The conservative’s complete, and misguided, faith in government as a qualified social engineer emerges yet again.

I don’t have a hokey website like perennial SN foil Larry Sabato, but I do make slightly better predictions than James Joyner and Stephen Green. Quoth James:

I always thought that the race was going to come down to electable candidates because of the dampening effects of the early Southern primaries. I figured Dean could do well in the “retail” contests in Iowa and New Hampshire—although perhaps losing both of them to favorite sons Gephardt and Kerry—by energizing the base. But I thought, and indeed continue to think, that he’s not going to be very appealing in South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states.

... With so many of the primaries stacked at the beginning of the year, fundraising is even more crucial than ever. Right now, the only candidates I can see able to sustain a serious race against Dean are Gephardt—who pretty much HAS to win Iowa or he moves up three shades on the Toast-O-Meter—and Wes Clark, who has a pretty good team thanks to the Clinton Machine. But I don’t know who Clark’s base is at this point and Lieberman’s presumed base, organized labor, seems to be split between him and Dean. So the key is to survive the early primaries and hope there’s an “anybody but Howard Dean” movement. [emphasis mine]

Fundraising, organization, and exciting the base are going to hand this nomination to Howard Dean, and I’ve been saying that to anyone who’d listen to my drunken political ramblings in bars and on rooftops since mid-July. The key to both Iowa and New Hampshire is getting the base on board the campaign, and that’s something that Dean has mastered.

The problem for the anti-Dean forces isn’t that Iowa and New Hampshire will lock the nomination up; instead, the problem is that the post-New Hampshire winnowing process doesn’t effectively winnow candidates—it’s far too time-compressed. Anyone who has enough money in the bank now to last until Iowa can survive until mid-March, on the basis of the money they’re going to get from today until Iowa alone. Fundraising simply won’t dry up fast enough to stop candidates who lose in South Carolina from persisting through Super Tuesday and beyond.

The other problem for the serious anti-Dean candidates is that the weighted PR system adopted by the party for this round—you qualify for delegates if you get 15% of the vote in any congressional district—benefits candidates who can draw clear distinctions between themselves and the other candidates. There’s no clear substitute for Dean in the field. On the other hand, Kerry is essentially interchangeable with half-a-dozen other white guys in suits in the field; the “I like an establishment Democrat” voter has no clear favorite, so they’ll just spread their votes around four or five different ways. The other likely beneficiary from the allocation rules is Al Sharpton, who will get a lot of his delegates from states that are unwinnable by the Democrats in the general election—particularly since the delegates aren’t allocated equally by congressional district, instead extra delegates are allocated to congressional districts that vote for Democratic presidential candidates.

Unless most of the “establishment Democrats” like Clark, Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards can come to an agreement—and soon—that essentially has everyone except one of them drop out to maximize the “anybody but Howard Dean” vote, I don’t see any way for anyone but Dean to capture an overwhelming majority of the elected delegates. And even if Dean fails to capture an outright majority (including the superdelegates), I find it exceptionally unlikely that the Democrats would be able to get away with brokering the convention to nominate either a “white knight” candidate or a candidate who lost head-to-head with Dean in the primary process—frankly, I think the Dean base would abandon the party if it came to that. So, for now, it’s essentially Dean’s nomination to lose.

And Matthew Stinson points out the second half of the Dean Catch-22: his complete and utter unelectability.