Indecision...

As the much anticipated Pennsylvania primary approaches tomorrow there is still a great deal of indecision among the Democratic Party. Hopefully by the close of tomorrow night, or early Wednesday morning we should know which candidate captured more of the precious delegates that were up for grabs. So, with a little more than seven months to go before the Presidential general election the Democratic Party has yet to lock a candidate in stone. The democrats seem to still be closely divided between the candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. After forty five primary elections Mr. Obama has won a total of 1636.5 delegates which comes to roughly around eighty percent of the necessary 2025 delegates. Mrs. Clinton on the other hand has won herself 1479.5 total delegate, or around seventy three percent of the needed delegates. The great state of Pennsylvania has a total of one hundred eighty eight delegates that have yet to be distributed to the Democratic candidates. This means that even if either candidate were to win every single delegate, flat out, neither one would have enough to win the nomination. Now, this does not cause a problem because we still have nine primary races to go (all the way up until June 3rd) giving away a grand total of four hundred eight delegates. This means that there are still plenty of delegates to go around in the overall big scheme of things. So with just a bit more than two months until the last primary election, who will win the democratic nomination? I suppose that only time will tell the true answer to this question. One thing is becoming alarmingly clear as the last primary approaches, that the democrats need to hurry up and pick a candidate and focus on beating the their true nemesis, John McCain. The Republicans have it easy at this point, well to an extent. They already have their front runner picked; now they can and are focusing on making sure they win the big game, the Presidency. While the Democrats on the other hand are still distracted by intra-party conflict. If you ask me, I think the Democrats need to just, as Dave Chapell put it so elegantly, “Wrap it up B!!.” They need to finish with all the formalities and decide already; then focus on beating out the Republicans. It might not be such a good idea for us to give the Republicans a significant time advantage over the Democrats just because we cannot decide who is the right candidate for us. So, even though there are still plenty of delegates to go around I would hope that the Democratic candidates do not draw this out until the bitter end as it is just hurting the party as a whole. Oh yeah if you have not figured it out this is written from a Democrats perspective, sorry if I offend anyone.

In Response...

This weekend I read a commentary on one of my peer’s government blogs; and it got me thinking.You can find a direct link to the blog Me,Myself, and My Government, where you can read the commentary.If not, here is the gist of the article. The author proposes that the national government raise the minimum wage to seven dollars an hour to help Americans deal with the rising cost of living. The commentary goes on to say that this increase in the minimum wage will help boost our “economic spending.” This got me thinking, could it really be this simple? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Here are a few reasons why this proposal would have a very minimal, if any effect on our economy. In 2007, about 2.3% of all hourly paid workers here in America reported wages at or below minimum wage ($5.85), or roughly about 1.7 million people. That is a very small number of Americans when compared to the 75.9 million hourly paid workers reported in 2007. These numbers were taken directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By no means do I disagree with a minimum wage change, I just don’t know if it will have a significant impact.

When it comes to rising gas prices: this is a trend that will continue until the day we die. Perhaps we may receive temporary relief from the rising gas prices, but we have to face the ultimate truth. One day our planet will stop yielding crude oil; that is one thing that is almost guaranteed. I am sure that when that day comes; oil will be a luxury, these are the facts. I doubt in our lifetimes we will ever see the day oil production stops completely (at least I hope not), but the day will come.

As for the last comment of the article, “Were going to end up the poorest country in ten years if this keeps up.”, I don’t think that this is the case at all, granted I am no mathematician. The Unites States is ranked tenth in the world for GDP (gross domestic product), with around 45,000. Our economy would have to practically disintegrate in order for us to fall to one of the poorest countries in the world. For example, some African nations have GDP’s less than 500. Now like I said I am no mathematician, but provided Fort Knox doesn’t get robbed, and the dollar collapse: I don’t think we will be one of the poorest nations in the world.