Gore on Ballot Two?

What if the democratic superdelegates decide to not decide?  What if on ballot number one, choosing between Clinton and Obama, they choose to abstain?  Absurd?  Maybe.  In that case, though, it is possible neither one of them would have enough votes to secure the nomination.  This idea is apparently being kicked around [ht Derb at NRO] amongst some of them, with the ultimate goal being an introduction of Al Gore on the second ballot with Obama as his veep.

Hey, he has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  He has national security bona fides.  Obama as his veep would be a shoo-in eight years hence in the unlikely event things went well.  Isn’t this almost exactly what those super-delegates are supposed to be there for?  I know if I were a democratic super-delegate I would find this scenario very, very attractive.

PA State GOP Committee: Please Don’t Ask Us To Help

Before the weekend, I contacted the state GOP to ask if they could help me with my project of documenting all people running to be delegates to the GOP national convention.  All these people filed as Republicans, right?  So I figured the state party should have contact information for all of them.

While the particular person I talked to at State GOP HQ was relatively helpful, he had to inform me he was not allowed to give me a full list of those folks with contact information.  Remember:  I am a county level committeeman.

He also unofficially suggested that he suspected the state GOP would be generally unsupportive of my project, and suggested this project was probably a waste of time.  He didn’t even care to receive my list upon its completion!  He did, though, encourage me to advocate one of the reform proposals put forward at the national level, which is good and constructive advice.  But it seems I can’t find any of these reforms on the national party’s web site.  Perhaps they think this will be an issue that really animates people between presidential elections.

I have since contacted my local– and very helpful– state GOP representative to see if I can get from him a list of delegation candidates with associated contact information.  His name is Carmen Battavio.  You can contact him too, if you want, at rmancarmen at aol dot com.

PA GOP Delegate Candidate List Updated: Districts 1, 2, 8, 14, & 18

The list at the bottom of this page identifying those who are running to be Pennsylvania delegates to the GOP national convention and their stated voting inclinations should they be elected has been updated.

General impressions thus far?  All of those running to be delegates agree the system we use to determine the GOP presidential nominee is absurd.  Most, but not all, would be willing to consider a protest abstention if the entire delegation were to do it.

Since many of these folks are party people– GOP party people that is, not 24 hour party people like these– they don’t really want to rock the boat and cheese off the party leadership.  They are all good Republicans.  I am a good Republican, too.

But most of them seem to wish they could.  They agree change is necessary.

UPDATE:  Got a little work done on district 14, too.  Here there be Huckabee supporters!