Nevada (and Daily Life)

I've been a bit hesitant to write what we have come to call a "cat post" since interest in this blog is so political at the moment--but with our usual correspondent away in Memphis on a non-political trip, I figured I can start with the politics and move on to daily life. For those who come for the politics, I'd like to point out that the sidebar called "What Theo is Reading Today" often has links to very interesting political articles so you can use that to keep up in between posts. At the moment he seems focused on travel and leisure but it changes regularly.

To start off, particularly for the non-US reader, it's important to understand or remember that the nomination is actually done at the convention next August. What is happening now is the choice of delegates--the popular vote count may appeal more to journalists but it's delegates that really matter. The CNN website is a good place to track delegate number; check there and you'll find--surprise, surprise--that Obama has 38, Clinton 36. That's because recently elected delegates are allocated on the basis of complicated local formulas; in Nevada Obama did better in the more rural parts of the state while she did better in the cities so he came out of the state with one more new delegate than she did despite his "loss" (some of the newspaper stories confirm that statement; some imply that the delegate count isn't over. ) Good discussions of what this all means can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Slate. It's important to remember, though, that these writers, like the rest of us, haven't really had much time to pour over the results yet.

BUT if you dig a little deeper on the CNN site, which has a lot of interesting facts, you'll find under "Democratic Scorecard" that Hillary currently has 210 delegates to Barack's 123. That is because of the "super delegate" process. This recent story in the LA Times makes the situation at least reasonably clear: 20% of the votes at the convention are "super delegates", Democrats who currently hold office, members of the DNC, etc. Not all of them have announced yet who they support; these larger numbers reflect pledges like Senator Kerry's. You'd expect the Clinton's to do well here but it at least looks to me like Obama is doing very respectably. Super delegates can change their minds as often as they want--and can be expected to be very influenced by the popular vote, including the details of who voted how, since they care a whole lot about the party victory in November.

My view is that South Carolina matters a whole lot--Obama pretty much has to win there in order to stay as viable as he is at the moment. I've also seen hints that he has a better organization in place for Super Duper Tuesday (when, I am happy to report, Roger and I can vote); we'll just have to see.

Family life

Just a quick catch-up. Just after New Year's we had a very pleasant visit with our Swedish friends, Magnus and Lena, and their two sons, Anders and David. (Ardent blog readers may remember David from last August). They came to the US to enjoy New Year's Eve at Times Square and then trundled up for a couple of days with us. We had some very suitably cold weather to make them feel at home. They brought us some glögg (supposed to have an umlaut over the "o" but I can't make it work [Fixed! -Ed.]), a fortified wine with spices that you drink hot with almonds and raisins added. Very tasty but in limited amounts; Lena wanted us to walk around the block in the bitter cold first to get the true Swedish experience but we decided we could pass on freezing in order to enjoy ourselves.

Since then we have settled back into daily life. The cats both have colds and are just like people--sneezing and complaining. They have, however, decided to sleep a little later themselves and almost never bother me any more before 6:30 or so, when I'm ready to get up. Last week we went to New York; in the week coming we are off to Boston to attend a book party for my friend Carol Gilligan, who has just published her first novel, Kyra.

Helen, I have to mention the fact that I am completely taken with the on-line jigsaw puzzles and since you only have a few on your web site I go to JigZone regularly. It's a great--and very entertaining--time killer.