Tuesday's primarys aren't likely to help Obama -- or make any real difference to Hillary Clinton.  The Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting on Saturday will bring delegations from Florida and Michigan into the convention -- but the likely result will not make any real difference to either Obama or Hillary.

So where are we? 

Neither candidate has a clear majority and a substantial portion of the Super-Delegates have gone AWOL --content to watch the festivities from the sidelines.  Obama, believing that he is the likely nominee and that he must avoid alienating Clinton's supporters, stands frozen like a deer in the poacher's spotlight.  Hillary, believing that any Democratic nominee will be elected and that she has nothing to lose but the nomination, is giving new meaning to scorched-earth politics.

The plain truth is that the Super-Delegates will annoint the nominee -- and they should do so soon.  The corrosive combination of Hillary's continued assertions that Obama cannot be elected and Obama's protracted inaction are likely to make Hillary's prophecy of an Obama loss to McCain self-fulfilling -- unless the Super-Delegates realize that the time has come to end the primary season and begin the campaign for the White House.

Although I have taken the position that, if necessary to elect a Democrat, I will pinch my nostrils and vote for Hillary, I am beginning to wonder whether I actually will do so.   The continued inaction of the Super-Delegates convinces me that the elected official considered to be the leaders of the Democratic Party are unable or unwilling to take a stand for one nominee or the other.   

Maybe, just maybe, I'll hold my nose and for the first time in my life vote for a Republican presidential candidate to send the elected leaders of the Democratic Party the message that the time has come to end the era of bitter partisan warfare that delights in electoral politics but despises the principled and reasoned action need to lead and govern effectively.

Hillary Clinton is the poster child for our national need to change the way business is being done in Washington. 

More than anything else (even a national health care system) we need to hold a rational discussion and reach a national consensus on a responsible national energy policy.  For over twenty five years our Presidents and political leaders in Congress have avoided tackling the need to reform our national energy non-policy and its pernicious effects.  Our transportation infrastructure quite literally has crumbled; our debt to China and other nations has grown off the charts; our automakers have produced a national fleet of gas guzzlers so large that we can afford neither to operate fleet at today's gas prices nor replace it with fuel-efficient vehicles; our options in conducting a rational foreign policy have been distorted by our need to import oil; and our competition for oil has showered some of the world's most reprehensible regimes with dollars.

We have reached this sorry state as a result of the inability of our political leaders to speak frankly to the American people about the need to curtail oil consumption, support the development of renewable energy sources and adjust to the sacrifices that such a policy would entail.

Hillary has continued the failed approach of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush-Cheney administrations.  She supports anything that would reduce the price at the pump and virtually nothing that would sharply curtail demand at pump.  This creates the illusion that we can continue with life as usual and avoid the sacrifices that a sensible energy policy would entail.  She can't take McCain to task on the failure of our national energy non-policy because she too advocates its continuation.

Will Obama be able to end the politics that have prevented any rational discussion of a national energy policy?  I, for one, hope he will have the opportunity to serve as President and enable us to reach a national consensus.