The most important person in the Obama administration will not be the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, or the Attorney General.  I'm confident that with several experienced advisors and key supporters already on board with him, he will be advised to choose a competent Cabinet.

No, the most important person in the Obama administration will not be a Cabinet secretary or formal officeholder requiring Senate confirmation.  It will be his chief of staff.

I don't think that the SuperDelegates have any obligation to to vote according to the vote in their areas.  They, especially the DNC members, were not elected to represent a position.  The DNC members were elected to help the party function effectively and to succeed in elections.  Congresscritters, Senators, and Governors are in a little different position.

So I return to the philosophical question that has plagued me since I was about sixteen, when I read "Profiles in Courage" and "Advise and Consent."  The question is, when and based on what criteria does a person elected to represent a constituency depart from the "will of the people" and vote the person's conscience, firmly believing that that departure from the will of the people is in the long-term best interest of the country?  Where do you draw the line?  After all, this is a republic, not a pure democracy.  If it were a pure democracy, all legislation would be put up to a plebiscite rather than have representatives decide on our behalf.  

I think that if I were a representative, I would have no problem in voting against the majority of my constituents, if, after studying the issue thoroughly and examining all points of view, I came to believe that the majority were wrong and their "will" would be harmful to the country.  My task then, would be to convince the people that I was right, and if I couldn't do that, they would have a perfect right to replace me with someone else.

Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO

Just suppose, purely as a set of hypotheses, that:

• Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton garner a majority of delegates going into the convention;


• Controversies about Obama continue to fester and perhaps new ones arise, rendering him unelectable in the minds of many Democrats; and


• Delegates, super or not, continue to find Clinton some combination of Bloody Mary, The Wicked Witch of the West, Mata Hari, and the Ugly Stepmother.

No question about it, it was a great speech -- superbly written and delivered.  There was much of great importance and significance in it.  The only problem is that it didn't answer the fundamental questions that made the speech necessary.

One of those questions is why he was silent on Jeremiah Wright's worst remarks for years, and why he only spoke up when Wright's hatred was exposed to the public and risked damage to his presidential campaign.

One of those questions is why he said at first he hadn't heard those remarks and then admitted that he had.  In most circles, that's called a lie.