Dionne on the Democratic dilemma

From E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post (hat tip: C-J)...

There they go again. Democrats have contrived a nominating contest that even Rube Goldberg would have considered too convoluted, too dysfunctional and too improbable to name as his own.

The happiest people in the country right now are Hillary Clinton and Rush Limbaugh -- Clinton because she has survived, and Limbaugh, because he's eager for the contest to go on so Barack Obama can be "bloodied up." Talk about a vast and unexpected conspiracy....

The quotation of the week came from Clinton adviser Harold Ickes. "Too much is yet unknown about Senator Obama," he said during a campaign conference call on Wednesday. Now that raises fascinating philosophical issues we have not pondered since the philosopher Donald Rumsfeld instructed us that while there are "known knowns," there are also "unknown unknowns," those we "do not know we don't know."

Where do Ickes' comments fit into the Rumsfeld Uncertainty Principle? At what point will there be enough known about Obama to satisfy Ickes? Exactly what is unknown about the senator that so bothers Ickes? I guess he can't know....

The party has three problems. Its excruciatingly proportional system of delegate selection is so fair to the losers of primaries that no primary winner can ever get a big bounce in convention delegates, thus the problem both Obama and Clinton face in assembling a majority.

Second, an absolutely maniacal dispute over when each state should vote means that the delegations from Florida and Michigan are now illegitimate. Clinton claims them, having won primaries that all the candidates agreed not to contest. Democrats know that they can't just seat the disputed Clinton delegates, yet they must have delegations from these two crucial states. Please, guys, schedule fresh primaries, fast.

And then there are the superdelegates, the established politicians who are supposed to know how to pick winners....This is where the problem gets really serious. Clinton has shown that she is willing to say anything necessary about Obama to bring him down...

Think of where this leaves the Democrats: The success of Clinton's tough anti-media, anti-Obama campaign means that Obama will have to get just as rough on her. All the incentives are for Democrats to pound each other until the April 22 Pennsylvania primary....