…and the Winner is…

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Oops! We don’t have a winner, yet.

The New Mexico Democratic Party is still hard at work with its volunteers poring over the more than 17,000 provisional ballots cast in last week’s Super Tuesday caucus.

The candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton, left and Sen. Barak Obama, right, are not standing around waiting for the results.

In politics, a week is an eternity. Four states: Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and Maine, have since held their selection process along with the Virgin Islands. All have given Obama victories.

According to CNN Politics Clinton’s delegate lead is currently 27; Clinton 1,148 to Obama’s 1,121, with 2,025 delegate votes needed to win at the National Convention, August 25-28, in Denver, Colo.

Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia hold their primaries today and Obama is favored in all three.

Clinton visits El Paso tonight in anticipation of the Texas primary held March 4 along with Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

This is Chelsea Clinton at the February 2 campaign event for her mother at Highland High school.

MSNBC’s David Schuster said something, now deemed impolite, about Chelsea joining her mother’s campaign. Schuster apologized and has been suspended for his remarks.

Chelsea Clinton is 28 years old and has a mind of her own. If she didn’t want to help her mom, she wouldn’t. She has learned the political theater and especially the Clinton’s, “I’ve just seen my long lost childhood friend for the first time in forever,” greeting to perfection. It seems that the Clintons do it better than anyone else, and no one seems to mind.

My recollection of adult children helping their father’s presidential election campaigns harkens back to Sept. 3, 1972, after the running of the third annual California 500 at Ontario, Calif. Roger McCluskey won the race and President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, presented the trophy. That’s husband Edward Cox, left of Tricia. She was not the normal enthusiastic trophy girl, so McCluskey stole a kiss.

Nixon won his second presidential term two months later.

Tricia Nixon Cox was 26 at the time. She was the quiet daughter, over shadowed by her younger and more politically and public sister, Julie Nixon Eisenhower. Julie was two years younger and married Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson, David, in 1968, before her father took office.

Tricia’s one great media splash was being married on the White House lawn in 1971.

There have been other political children out on the campaign trail. Schuster deserves his suspension. He took a cheap shot.

And so did I. I just wanted an excuse to use these shots of Chelsea and Tricia.