The Errant Æsthete

Citing the bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination, Paul Krugman, NY Times calls it “Nixonland,” a term coined by Adlai Stevenson in 1956 for the politics of “slander and scare.” Nixonland “is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.”

Sen. Barack Obama’s dominant coast-to-coast performance this weekend set a new tone for the post-Super Tuesday phase of an unprecedented struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination. Five weeks and more than 30 contests after Iowa, the race for delegates between Obama and Clinton remains a virtual tie. Both candidates are roughly halfway to the magic number of 2,025 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s national convention in Denver this summer. The prospect of a brokered convention is no longer dismissed as a far-fetched scenario.

How will it all end? Walter Shapiro of Salon who is never shy in advancing predictions offers several that include an Obama avalanche, a Clinton comeback, a Florida Fandango, and the always reliable coin flip. Either way, with the delegate count agonizingly close — and proportional representation likely to keep it that way — all bets are off.