Will Texas Have Clout In The Primary ?

I guess some people just choose to live in an optimistic world rather than face the real world the rest of us inhabit. Recently, a number of states, including some very big ones, moved their primaries up to the first part of February 2008. The idea was to give them more clout in the choosing of a presidential candidate. It will probably work.

But Texas was not one of these states. Our short-sighted lawmakers decided it would be too much trouble to move up our primary and make sure Texas has a voice in choosing a candidate -- before most of the candidates dropped out.

Parag Mehta is one of those who live in that optimistic world of make-believe. The Democratic National Committee training director and Temple native says he believes that Texas could still have an impact on the choosing of the Democratic candidate. Here is his reasoning.

He says the four current frontrunners have their strength in different regions -- Edwards in the South, Obama in the Midwest, Clinton in California and New York, and Richardson in the Southwest. He says if each of these candidates does well in his specific region, Texas could play king-maker.

There are a couple of things wrong with this logic. First, it assumes that the field will at least be cut in half when it gets to Texas. So if you are a supporter of Kucinich, Dodd, Gravel or Biden -- tough luck. I hope you have a second choice.

The other thing is that it's very unlikely that even four candidates will come to Texas with a real chance of winning. Far more likely is the real chance that only one or two candidates will have such a large delegate lead that Texas, being a proportional state and not a winner-take-all, will just add to that lead.

I once had a dream of being able to choose between all the candidates, but our stupid and short-sighted lawmakers have seen to it that we won't have that opportunity.