Wampum

Mid-November my co-workers at CORE asked me over lunch about the election. I explained that it then appeared that Hilary Clinton had enough endorsements and polling numbers to win, but that the national numbers didn't mean as much as the local numbers -- the 1st, 2nd and especially 3rd CDs in Iowa, the southern third of New Hampshire, Clark County Nevada ... "But", they asked, "Who will win?"

I said we have proportional delegate accumulation in the Democratic Party's presidential primaries and caucuses, I think John Edwards will get above 15% in most contests, the American "left", and Obama and Clinton will split the "non-left", and how that split will go -- 40/60 or 50/50 or 60/40 -- will be mostly accident and opportunity, but it won't actually matter, because neither will accumulate enough delegates to win, so it will come down to super-delegates or a brokered convention.

My friends had flights to catch, so "super delegates" and "bound-till-which-ballot" were passed over in favor of coffee and dessert. Geneva is a beautiful city, with beautiful desserts.

This morning during a lull in our conference call someone asked about today and which one of the two remaining candidates I supported. I pointed out that the American "left" no longer had a candidate, and that after today we'd know about as much tomorrow as we did yesterday, the ratios of delegates not really being changed. My friend rejoined, "Yes, but better than a Republican." So I'd a chance to explain to my Swiss friend, that it really came down to the vote next November, but only in Florida and Ohio, and perhaps Pennsylvania, in European (but not Swiss!) terms, the vote in Germany or France, who becomes the next "President" of the European Union, because the rest of Europe, the other 25 countries, aren't competitive. Only in France and Germany was the balance of forces between the Liberals and the Socialists, in our moment of non-work chat hypotheticals, even.

After a moment he replied "So the series (of election outcomes) isn't going to converge?"

I left it at that, we got back to the work, and we'll be able to chat in New Dehli next week, but baring accident, no, the series isn't going to converge. The next call was about the economic news and the Euro to Dollar problem we face, all of our expenses (except me) are in Euros, and all of our income is in Dollars.