Now a Missoula blogger is encouraging Montanans who don't want Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to become the next president of the United States to vote for Clinton in the state primary June 3. And yes, he seems to be completely serious.
Andy B. Hammond described the campaign on his blog, the Hammond Report, as “the creation of Rush Limbaugh to create chaos in the Democratic Primaries ... The goal is to keep Hillary in the race so her and Obama can keep tearing each other up and exposing each other for the unqualified candidates they are.” A similar effort in Pennsylvania, he wrote, helped Clinton win a 9 percentage point lead over Obama.
Of course, Montana is a fiercely independent state. We don't require party registration because we often cross party lines, and it's highly doubtful that many Montana voters will intentionally vote for a candidate they don't support, especially if we have the chance to make a real difference in the national election.
And this time around, at least, it appears we might. Montana and South Dakota will hold the very last primaries in the nation, so if the number of delegate votes remains close, we could be the ones to tip the balance.
Unfortunately, the whole presidential nominee selection process - with its closed primaries and open primaries, delegates and superdelegates - can be confusing. It doesn't help that the rules keep changing.
Once upon a time, Democratic Party leaders wielded a great deal of influence over the nomination system - even more than they do now. Then in 1968, political and antiwar protests broke out into a riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Remember, this is the same year both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.
The Democratic National Convention became a focal point for anti-war protests because one Democratic candidate - Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy - had made the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam a key part of his presidential bid, while his Democratic opponent - Vice President Hubert Humphrey - wanted to basically continue the military operations started under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Humphrey won the nomination, but as everyone knows, he lost the election - to Richard Nixon.
Following the riots and Humphrey's stinging loss, Democratic Party leaders decided to create a new commission to design new rules that would put more of the power into the hands of delegates.
But the next election cycle, in 1972, brought another stinging loss when South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, a co-chairman of the commission that designed the new rules, naturally won the presidential nomination - only to lose the election to Nixon.
In the years following that defeat, yet another commission recommend still more rule changes. That's how we came to have superdelegates, those unpledged delegates who get to vote for whichever candidate they want, regardless of who wins the primaries. And at last count, it looked like Obama has more delegate votes, while Clinton may have more superdelegates. Which will decide who the next nominee will be?
The answer may depend on a relatively small number of voters right here in Montana.
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