Supplemental: State delegate equivalents of the world, unite!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2016

You have nothing to lose but your fractional status: In a chart in this morning's Washington Post, we see that Candidate Clinton beat Candidate Sanders by four SDEs last night—four state delegate equivalents.

How many people have any idea was a "state delegate equivalent" is? In an apparent attempt to help, the Post haplessly added this:

"The Iowa Democratic Party reports only State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs), not vote counts. SDEs predict the share of Iowa’s national delegates that will be pledged to each candidate."

National delegates to what? Beyond that, why can't they just report what share of Iowa’s national delegates "will be pledged to each candidate?"

The Post didn't quite explain.

Meanwhile, early risers were treated to this by CNN's Brianna Keilar. Speaking on videotape, Keilar was telling the world about fractional SDEs:

KEILAR (2/2/16): Look at what the Iowa Democratic Party chair is saying, really highlighting just how close this is, the results tonight the closest in Iowa Democratic caucus history. And here are the numbers, amazing—699.57 state delegate equivalents for Clinton, 695.49 for Sanders. Outstanding at this point is one precinct. That is Des Moines 42. We're waiting to figure out and we'll see what happens there this morning. But at the same time, it is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents...

We'll say those numbers are amazing! If SDEs were confusing to start with, what about fractional SDEs? Historically, only King Solomon would have dreamed of splitting Iowa's delegate equivalents into their hundredth parts. Only King Solomon and the utterly daffy, and utterly hopeless, Democratic Party of Iowa.

Last night's events were an orgy of sheer inanity—in part on the part of the nation's pundits, who spent roughly eight hours "discussing" five minutes worth of election returns; in part on the part of the Iowa caucus system which, especially on the Democratic side, is the ultimate, bureaucratically crazy, Rube Goldberg-inspired machine.

An electoral Goldberg equivalent!

This morning, a range of pundits are taking turns telling us the people who "actually won" last night. These are the dumbest people alive, and they're happy to let us know it.

Meanwhile, we're so old that we can remember when people were pretending to be concerned about a problem in Flint. In the face of the current group inanity, we're going to postpone our next discussion of same until tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we'll offer a list of basic questions which remain unanswered concerning Flint. Truthfully, though, no one is going to talk about Flint until things get boring again.

Forgive us, but the "mass poisoning" of "the whole town" is perhaps in part a way to chase the mid-winter blues away. Last night, someone was chatting inanely with "my friend Brian" while, it seemed to us, poking at Chris perhaps just a bit. Did we sniff office politics?

The chatter extended on into the night. Mass poison may seem light-years away at glorious moments like these.