Why the rush to judgment?

If you believe what is reported by hysterical Huffington Post contributors, you would think that the Republican presidential nominating process has been going on longer than the Hundred Years War.

In fact, only three states have passed upon the candidates in the Republican field to date. Fewer than eighty delegates have been awarded to the various candidates. No single candidate has even managed to obtain fifty delegates. No one is poised to wrap up the nomination. Less than a month ago, the media incorrectly reported that Mitch Romney had won the Iowa Caucuses. Rick Santorum actually won by a narrow margin.

To read and to listen to the pundits and prognosticators, many of whom have never requested a Republican primary ballot in their adult lives, the inability of the Grand Old Party to declare its nominee is indicative of the approach of Armageddon. Some have even opined that for the first time since 1948, the Republican Convention will be an open convention where multiple ballots will have to be cast before a nominee is selected! Oh, the horror of it all!

The talking heads have forgotten that during the last contested Democratic presidential contest, less than four years ago, after all of the caucuses and primaries were held, neither of the two top candidates had received a majority of delegates as selected by actual voters. There was similar speculation about an open convention in Denver. Barack Obama ultimately prevailed in early June on the basis of securing the super delegates to the convention and his opponent suspended her campaign. Game over, Hillary.

The unpledged super delegates were a vestigial organ, not unlike an appendix, created as a result of the changed Democratic convention rules created in 1972 when Jesse Jackson and other mischief making radicals unseated the duly elected Illinois delegation to the convention, including Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and his allies. Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton were unable to broker a deal to swing the super delegates into her column since Obama’s handlers raised the threat of the all important African American voting bloc sitting out the November, 2008 election in retaliation.

Many Democratic politicians were far less concerned about the White House race than losing numerous other state and local elections up and down ballots across the country if black voters staged a massive November boycott. It was the last hand dealt in a political card game that had seen Obama’s forces repeatedly dealing from the bottom of the deck. Does anyone remember the Illinois primary being moved from March to February in order to further Obama’s chances?

The ugliness continued even during the convention in Denver, where Obama addressed his followers from a stage that was derisively compared to the Temple of Zeus. Hillary Clinton released her delegates, but this move still failed to produce a unanimous convention vote for Obama. It should also be duly noted that the birth certificate controversy that has dogged Obama was initiated by disgruntled Clinton die hards. It was similar to the Willie Horton furlough issue (initially raised by presidential hopeful Al Gore) that would later be labeled as an extremist right wing conspiracy despite its Democratic origins.

I never understood the media’s obsession with declaring a presidential aspirant the likely nominee on the basis of a handful of precincts in New Hampshire. The Granite State was not even rated a reliable swing state before 1992. In former years, before Democrats made significant political inroads in New Hampshire (gains which were largely reversed in 2010), it seemed silly to have so much time and energy wasted on the opinions and preferences of a handful of Democratic primary voters in a small state with a grand total of four electoral votes.

Let the contest continue. Here’s hoping that some Republican candidates actually have to visit Illinois and spend some time and money here. Our state economy could use the revenue from business
tourism.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.”