From the newsletter of Christian Exodus (a theocratic, Texas-based secession group believing, among other things, that sex outside of marriage and homosexuality should be “regulate(d) and legislate(d) against”), on their 2007 convention:

(League of the South founder) Michael Hill shared recent happenings from the Secession Convention, and the national publicity that was generated. There was also much talk about distribution of the new League of the South newspaper- the Free Magnolia. Modeled on the Vermont Commons, which has had significant success in promoting the idea of a Second Vermont Republic, this newspaper was a new strategy to bring the ideas of Southern Independence to the public.

“the goal of our secession is not liberty – the goal is obedience to God-and creating the society where that is possible.” – League of the South Board Member and frequent Vermont Commons contributor Franklin Sanders addressing the same convention last year.

The story of The Fall is, in my opinion, the most powerful metaphor in human history. There are so many primal lessons at play in that one simple story, it’s little wonder that it’s resonated so powerfully over the millenia. Its most fundamental lesson, though, is its most meaningful and compelling; when Adam & Eve ate the fruit, it wasn’t just any ol’ forbidden fruit. It was an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After eating it, they became ashamed of their nakedness, became frightened, and were expelled from paradise.

The fact is that with knowledge comes responsibility for your own place within the context of that knowledge. Once we are confronted with the perspective of morality, the nakedness of naivete is gone forever and can never be regained – a bell that cannot be unrung. It may be heretical in some circles, but as metaphor rather than dogma, the symmetry seems clear; Adam and Eve expelled themselves, as the knowledge of right and wrong thrust them into a world of shades of grey, a world where the idyllic utopia of The Garden could only be a distant, unattainable dream. And that single act of disobedience (or was it coming of age?) would forever become our most defining collective quality.

Like all great metaphors, The Fall has application at every level; on the grand, historic and global, as well as the day-to-day and the personal – and in all honesty, there is not a day that passes that I’m not reminded of it.

Case in point (perhaps tragic point): Rob Williams, the editor of the Vermont Commons.

With the Second Vermont Republic and Vermont Commons connections to the white supremacist movement back under the microscope, Williams has retaken his position in the forefront. He continues to characterize his long, personal, and institutional association with SVR guru Thomas Naylor as anywhere from non-existent to parochial, depending on whether or not that association is an albatross around his neck in any given conversation. But his efforts under the current scrutiny are so desperate and so clearly detached from reality they either draw an objective reader to one of two conclusions; Williams either has no compunctions about outright lying, or he is becoming something of a tragic character, desperately clinging to his Utopian Eden despite being confronted with the realities of good and evil.

Or to put it in a perhaps less pretentious way, Williams is in a deep hole, and has resumed digging furiously to get out, leaving many of us looking into this pit asking ourselves “why?”.

In a miserably ineffective attempt to inoculate himself from criticism for his own connections to, and relentless defense of partnering with, some of the purest practitioners of institutional evil you can find, Williams has posted the complete text of a back-and-forth held with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s writer, looking for background on her recently completed expose. In doing so, Williams does himself no favors. One particular line stands out (emphasis added):

I have absolutely no interest, nor does Vermont Commons, in partnering with or publishing the ideas of known racist groups or individuals who openly espouse racist beliefs. We never have and we never will.

What can one say to such a brazenly false statement?

Vermont Commons routinely allows itself to promote the ideas of known racists, homophobes, anti-Semites and misogynists. There is of course, Williams’s “philosophical guru” Donald Livingston, who has been given quite a bit of ink at Vermont Commons, a scholar deeply involved in the early days of the historically theocratic and white nationalist League of the South, and who maintains active ties. There is also the aforementioned Franklin Sanders,  a long time League of the South Board Member who edits the LOS’s quarterly, The Free Magnolia which cites Vermont Commons as its inspiration (see the lead-in to this diary).

The creation of which, as the opening quote of this diary makes clear, people like Williams and all the so-called “progressives” who lend their own talents to (or provide platforms for) Vermont Commons – are freely empowering with their own skills and reputations.

But let’s focus on an example that hasn’t gotten as much attention on the blogs, and is particularly egregious. The case of notorious white supremacist sympathizer and one-time UVM professor Robert Griffin. Here’s only some of what the SPLC has to say about Griffin:

As the essays in Living White proceed, Griffin’s admiration of white supremacist groups becomes more and more open. In one essay, he criticizes Carol Swain, the black author of a book called The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenges to Integration. He attempts to undermine Swain’s ideas — which include her dubious advocacy of opening a dialogue with the white supremacist right — by defending the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), a hate group formerly run by Matt Hale, now serving 40 years in federal prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge….

…Griffin spends a great deal of time describing how the mass media oppresses white nationalists.

Griffin’s persecution complex similarly serves as the backdrop for One Sheaf, One Vine, which features one white nationalist after another expounding upon his or her perceived oppression by mainstream society, and particularly by Jewish-controlled media outlets and institutions.

The interview subjects speak at length about how they have been made to feel guilty and inferior for being white and how being white has become a detriment in today’s multicultural society. They include a former newspaper reporter who complains that he was unfairly passed over for positions because of affirmative action policies and a college student at the University of Texas who blames the media as the indirect cause of the rape of one of her white friends by a black man.

“From that experience, it wasn’t that I learned that all blacks are bad,” the woman says. “What I learned is that this culture and the media and everything inhibit your instincts and your common sense to where you don’t want to say, ‘No, Casey, going off with a carload of black guys is not a good idea.'”

The centerpiece of the book is a chapter titled “News Without Jews,” which revolves around an interview with Alex Linder, the operator of the virulently racist Web site, Vanguard News Network. The notion of a Jewish boogeyman is on full display as Griffin provides Linder with an unfettered venue to explain his racist roots and vent about mainstream news outlets like Newsweek, which Linder describes as “just Jews lying about reality and I hate people who lie about reality.”

Griffin’s work was published in Vermont Commons’ second issue, and the piece was widely re-circulated. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):

Despite the rhetoric, democracy and individual freedom and self-determination are antithetical. There are times when it is practical to put something to a democratic vote. We can?t have one congressman for you and another one for me (I guess). But you have to keep in mind that whenever you have a democratic vote, up to 49% of the people don?t want the result of the election, and probably a good number of people on the winning side wouldn?t do it exactly that way if it were their call. So you can?t assume that democracy is the best way to go, here, there, and everywhere. With schools having become politicized, democratized, don?t be surprised if you feel out of control, because, ironically, democracy is about taking control away from you…

…I think it is fair to say that the victors in the competition to insert their perspective into school programs have been the egalitarians, collectivists, multiculturalists, feminists, gays, environmentalists, internationalists, secularists, and Holocaust promoters.

“Holocaust promoters.”

Does that even qualify as code?

So, was Williams simply lying? His own Vermont Commons bloggers, along with supporting some things we can all get behind, have also been known to be very pro-segregation. There is this from the VT Commons’ blog this last February, as JD reported:

“Those “identity groups” of whatever identity who desire separation to preserve their culture or live out a vision or lifestyle should not have to waste time and resources in defending or fighting discrimination lawsuits and onerous zoning laws and can focus it on building community.”

…and this, even more recently (February 12th):

…wise secessionists, and the various networks and organizations they create, should stress their goal is giving people choice, including, but not limited to, creating homogeneous communities.

(Williams personal response to the return of this blogger to the VT Commons site, printed shortly after those two quotes was simply “We’ve missed you here. Good to see you back in the e-saddle and blogging with us. Keep those links coming!”)

If we are to look at Williams as a tragic character, its possible that his denial is becoming delusional, and in the process he believes what he is saying. How? Well, here is what Williams says about the racist League of the South, that has drawn such inspiration from Vermont Commons:

You state in your question above, Heidi, that the League of the South is “clearly racist,” and would “like to create a racist society in

their seceded state.”

Yet, the League of the South issued a public statement in 2004 specifically denouncing racism, a statement explicitly explaining that

they do not want a racist state in a secessionist nation.

There is an abusrdist sense in which this is true; The League of the South (which, as SPLC writer Beirich notes, “is against interracial marriage, believes the old Confederacy never surrendered, and wants to reestablish ‘the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions’ in a newly seceded South”), did nominally reject racism, but has followed that rejection since with nuggets such as this, originally printed on their website in February of 2007 (since scrubbed, but not before I read it, and the anti-neoconfederate blog quoted it):

…many conservative Christians have unknowingly adopted a term that undermines their own beliefs while promoting the ideology of their enemies. By accepting the term “racism” from the Marxist secular humanists, mainstream Christian conservatives are promoting the radical, anti-Christian ideology that invented it.

Under this re-definition (or un-definition), they then have no problems with declaring themselves non-racist, as the very concept is a Marxist/Atheist plot.

In fact, the comments from the Vermont Commons blog above completely mirror the neo-confederate line; that segregation and neo-theocratic-fascist states would, somehow, be good for blacks, jews and homosexuals – presumably because they would know to steer clear, and could set up their own little homelands/reservations/walled cities (where, exactly, is an open question).

It seems likely that Williams can make his desperate plea that Vermont Commons is a “no racists allowed” based on this un-definition of racism.

But there’s still something that doesn’t sit quietly with me in all this. Williams also makes the claim about the current controversy:

many bloggers – who love to flap their electronic jowls in cyberspace – have attacked us repeatedly without ever once bothering to contact us to find out what we really think.

This too, is not exactly true. After I made the initial post at this site on the matter, which largely repeated what was reported at the Vermont Secession SVR-counter-blog, and used a lot of words like “concerned” and “disturbing” (as the connections between the Vermont left and the Klan-crowd had me concerned and disturbed), Williams contacted me to meet. I agreed. It was an…odd…meeting. At the time, Naylor had already attempted to attack me personally through my employer on the radio in southern Vermont. I insisted as a precondition to talking that he disavow such a sleazy attack on my livelihood. Williams crudely evaded any response, and after multiple attempts, I announced I was leaving – at which point he relented and agreed (it was then the next day that Naylor unloaded in his broadside on my employer that necessitated my stepping down from blogging for about a month… Williams simply ignored my demand for an explanation via email at that time. So much for integrity).

But there was a point at the restaurant where we met when he tried to claim the moral high ground about working with these kinds of people to build a better world, resorting to angry gobbledygook about the enemy of his enemy being his friend, and the evils of the “American empire.”

I got frustrated, and noted how easy this was for him to say as a privileged straight white European male, and was therefore not likely to receive the Matthew Shepherd treatment from any of his buddies he was lending his own reputation and efforts to empower. Noticing a single African American man in the restaurant, I gestured to him and said something to the effect of “if you’re so sure of your moral superiority on this, why don’t we go over there and tell him the situation, and see what he has to say about it. Maybe he’ll sign on and write you a check. Let’s go!”

I was met with a frozen stare and stony silence, followed by some stammering. Williams clearly knew that I was dead serious, and was already making motions to walk across the room and ask the stranger for his opinion. The prospect left him like a deer in the headlights.

The meeting ended shortly thereafter.

That reaction spoke volumes. There was self-consciousness. Realization. Whether at that moment, or sometime before, it seemed clear to me that he’d had the apple. The knowledge of good and evil was at least somewhat in play.

So, does that make him a tragic character in denial as Eden collapses around him, or just a garden variety confidence man peddling the worst that humanity has to offer?

I for one, will obviously never really know, but he could still wrap up any questions by doing the obvious; condemning groups like the League of the South, refusing to hold hands with them, and expunging the creepy segregationist stuff from the website. After all, for a “clean,” bigot-free model of a movement like the one Vermont Commons purports to envision, they need look no further than Vermont’s own Institute for Social Ecology for a start.

Or he could follow the advice of Commons-contributor and neonazi-sympathizer Griffin from last December:

Get in the best shape you can.  Figure you are in a war.  Get battle-ready.  Put your mind and body in the best condition possible.  If you have some physical or mental issue, habit, addiction, whatever it is, that is getting in your way, get it out of your way, starting now.  

Don’t buy the nonsense they tell you about yourself. The people doing the talking in this country tell you that being pro-minority is good but being pro-white is bad, that you are bad, that they are the action and you should kowtow to them and keep your mouth shut over in the corner.  Constantly tell yourself another, more positive, story: you are the action, you are as central – as much as anyone is in this world.  

Find likeminded people.  You aren’t alone.  There are people that think as you do and who will like and encourage you.  They may be right around you or you might have to go looking for them.  You might have to contact them on the sly.

As always, it’s all about choices. What you believe, whether you want to leave the world better than how you found it.

And who you choose to stand with.

Contrary to much of the scuttlebutt, Howard Dean will be staying on as Democratic Party Chair. The 50-State Strategy (including the funding going to beef up Vermont’s Party staff) should remain intact. And if you think that would be the case had Clinton won this thing, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…

Sorry I’ve been light on the content lately. Been tired. Will be re-engaged soon. Got this via email…

Despite an unexpected Clinton victory in South Dakota, all the networks are announcing that the primaries are over. Obama has clinched the nomination. He’s kept slim-to-decent leads in pledged delegates, superdelegates, and an honest read of the popular vote (to the extent its readable, given the caucuses and the lack of a tally of Obama voters in Michigan).

So, although he wasn’t my first choice by a long shot, I am content with him as the nominee, and he has certainly earned the Spongebob victory moment that I’ve traditionally posted for election-night victories for the success of his hard-fought and historic (in many ways) primary campaign. Here ya go:

Wanted to take a break from politics for a moment to remember Bo Diddley, who just died from heart failure at the age of 79. It’s impossible to overstate the influence Diddley, with his trademark square guitars, had on everyone from Buddy Holly to The Clash. Although clearly embittered by not being sufficiently appreciated – either in terms of acknowledgement or financials – for his part in the very invention of rock and roll, Diddley kept on playing, and many of us remain grateful.

From Huffpo (video via Firedoglake with h/t to HuffPo):

…the mood outside (the meeting of the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee), where signs read, “At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen,” and some pamphlets detailed Obama’s supposed dealings in drugs and gay sex.

“Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?” Eve Fairbanks, a reporter with The New Republic, was asked by one protester….

…I approached a group of Clinton supporters sitting at the bar to pinpoint, exactly, the foundation of their emotions. Almost unanimously they agreed that if Florida and Michigan weren’t seated in their entirety, they would never vote for Obama.

As women, were they comfortable with a candidate like John McCain who could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade?

“Oh don’t pull that argument,” said Valerie Duhaime of Florida….

…Shortly after revealing my publication, I was turned away. No worries, my lunch, a Reuben sandwich, had arrived. I pulled up my chair to the table and sat down to eat. Minutes later a chant began around me.

“HuffPost sucks! HuffPost sucks!” and later, “Fox News, fair and balanced! Fox News, fair and balanced!”

TPM is liveblogging the R&B Committee meeting (oh, if only it were truly an R&B Committee). Here’s a taste from Greg Sargent’s first post:

Howard Dean delivered some strong words in his opening remarks at Rules and Bylaws, telling an anecdote about his bitter, hard-fought loss in 2004.

“I was very very angry at my party for some of the things that had been done,” Dean said, going on to recall getting a phone call in the middle of the night from Al Gore, to whom Dean ranted and raved about his loss.

“What do I owe the Democratic Party,” Dean recalled telling Gore. “Why should I be a Democrat after what the party did to me?”

According to Dean, Gore responded: “Howard, you know, this is not about you. It’s about your country.”

“Nobody could have said that to me except for Al Gore,” Dean continued, since Gore had had the presidency snatched from him by “five intellectually bankrupt Supreme Court justices who did the wrong thing.”

“This is not about Barack Obama,” Dean went on, speaking about the current primary. “This is not about Hillary Clinton. This is about our country. This is about restoring America to its greatness” and “moral authority.”

(addendum from JD: Open Left has a live video stream of the meeting here.)

About a half hour ago, all Democratic eyes turned to the meeting of the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is hearing complaints filed by Clinton supporters in Michigan and Florida regarding the seating of their delegates. The Clinton campaign has famously been working to gin up a demonstration, and worked to fill up the public spaces in the meeting facility with supporters (presumably vocal ones). It would seem to have the makings of an ugly scene, but with all the pre-meeting hubbub, it’ll be likely just to elicit eye-rolling.

But what can be accomplished? Word is that, according to a DNC lawyer, the Rules & Bylaws Committee cannot fully restore the delegations after the two states moved their primaries up in defiance of DNC rules – that the delegations must at least be halved (a result which would alter the Primary delegate math only negligibly). The growing scuttlebutt is that this will be it for Clinton’s now-quixotic quest for the nomination, as heavy hitters are preparing to step in and call for resolution.

But what if she doesn’t? What’s next? Failing in the RBC with the DNC rules, She could next try her hand with the Convention Credentials Committee, which has the authority to make decisions on who gets into the Convention. It is this body that had the Vermont State Democratic Committee concerned enough to pass a resolution, aimed squarely at National Committeewoman Billi Gosh, a Clinton Supporter appointed by the State Committee to a temporary position on the CCC – directing its representatives to vote in support of the rules and the process and deny Clinton her victory.

(You may wonder… why have temporary committee appointments? Who knows? All I can assume is that the DNC wanted a functioning committee in place before the period their own process is slated to create that committee, just in case they needed it… I guess.)

The question is – is Gosh (or any elected representative to the DNC) obliged to obey?

It’s a moot point, really. For one thing, the CC Committee won’t be meeting before June 7th, which is the date that permanent members will be elected by the Vermont Convention Delegation, replacing temporary member Gosh. And those representatives will be elected in a way that proportionally allocates them by candidate support based on Vermont’s primary. And although a lot of blog attention has been paid to the handful of appointed members and their allegiances, the full committee will have a whopping 187 members, and will likely be stacked with Obama supporters. Now, its true that the full Convention could vote to reject the recommendations of both committees – even voting to suspend the rules if necessary, but again, most of the initially seated delegation will be Obama supporters.

So Clinton’s mischief is going nowhere in a practical sense, the question is whether she wants to proceed with mischief for its own sake.

But given that the State Committee passed a resolution directing one of its National Committeepeople to vote a certain way, does that resolution have any force whatsoever?

Nope. According to the DNC bylaws, the State Committee’s influence on their elected representatives to the DNC begins and ends with their election. Committeemembers can only be removed by the DNC proper, and only with a supermajority vote.

So would the State Committee have any recourse whatsoever if a National Committeeman or woman went rogue?

The only role the State Committees play is in the appointment of its representatives, and the DNC bylaws give them broad authority to make that appointment, so long as that appointment is made “within the Calendar year” of the National Convention. A creatively literal read of these rules could allow for, rather than some sort of impeachment, a second appointment by a State Committee within the time frame, requiring the DNC to accept that appointment so long as it was within that required timeframe.

At the State Committee level, this would mean suspending the rules for temporary passage of some radical changes to their own bylaws regarding the election of these DNC positions, but it’d seem to be technically legal and possible, and the DNC would likely be stuck with this second appointment of someone more palatable to the State Committee than their Convention’s initial choice.

Short of something that wacky though, there is no opportunity for oversight or to demand accountability. The State Committee’s admonitions to their DNC representatives amount to an exercise in sound & fury, signifying nothing.

• UPDATE: Forgot a bullet… major kudos to Terri Hallenbeck for liveblogging the Pollina event yesterday at vtbuzz. Would love to see more of this kind of stuff.
• Where not to go on vacation:
  

  The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty… If you’re interested and willing to attempt to literally change the world one community at a time then please Join us if your interested.

• Must’ve been that other Vermont Democratic Convention. Shay Totten writes:
  

  The bad blood between the Obama and Clinton camps is real. Efforts by Kunin, who spoke in support of Clinton, and Obama surrogate Joe Andrews to preach unity were met with hisses and moans from the crowd.

  Interesting. As I review my memory (and video), the unity calls always met with applause – even sustained applause. The only time I heard boos was when Kunin invoked Michigan and Florida using the inflammatory rhetoric of the Clinton campaign. During Joe Andrew’s speech, one heckler popped up calling out Hillary Clinton’s name after he generically invoked the qualities Dems are looking for in a candidate – and there were some moans at that point. But that was it. Maybe I was in the wrong place (the front of the room?).

• Haik notes that BurlingtonPol is the “11th most influential blog in Vermont” according to BlogNetNews. You’re selling yourself short, Haik, as BNN is a faux objective site that promotes right wing sites under a paper thin veneer of objectivity. Maybe kestrel will chime in with their adventures in Virginia. Here’s a bio of its admin:
  

  David Mastio, formerly an editorial writer for USA Today and speechwriter for the Bush administration, has written for National Review, The Weekly Standard and The Washington Monthly. Mastio is the founder of InOpinion.com, an opinion syndicate aimed at helping newspapers attract young, net-savvy readers.

  That’s a man with a mission (so yes, I have little doubt that BurlingtonPol is more influential than Cool Blue Blog…).

Pollina is in a tough spot going into tomorrow’s press conference (see CL’s diary below), as he needs to get his message back on track (after letting it fall apart into garden variety Dem-bashing following Symington’s announcement) lest he again fall prey to the dreaded spoiler narrative. Progressives are even trying to use that previously dismissed term themselves, in order to try and steal some of its rhetorical power.

Which begs the question – what do you think makes a “spoiler?”  

In a two-party system, is any third party candidate potentially a spoiler? What if, like Pollina, the third party candidate gets in first? Does the Major Party candidate on the same side of the political divide then become the spoiler? Does it matter if the third party candidate has no chance in hell? Is it fair to say any candidate has no chance in hell? If the Anarcho-Syndicalist-Marxist-Vegan-Druid-Prius Party put up their candidate first, would the Progs and the Dems then be spoilers for following?

What about Chris’s contention that spoiling is a function of intent? That what may make Pollina a spoiler is the brazen flip-flop from 2000 and 2002, when it was common knowledge that they were hoping for a second place finish and a win in the legislature, versus his insistence now that he never felt that way at all, (and his Dem-bashing scorn for the very idea)? Greenvtster (and others) suggests that by doing such a flip-flop, Pollina is intentionally pursuing a scorched Earth strategy, to guarantee that if he can’t have the prize, nobody on the left can – even if that means sabotaging his own prior strategy.

For my part, the spoiler tag has always made me a little queasy – but if any of the two leftist candidates really wants to avoid it, they should pledge to endorse the second place candidate, should they come in third (assuming Douglas does come in first – likely, but not assured) and throw their own support behind them in an IRV style argument, giving the legislature support to vote Douglas out if he’s short of an actual majority

(NOTE: Gram has an article on this today, which I only just became aware of…. that’s spooky).

Honestly, I’d like to see some letters to the editor on this. Such a pledge from Pollina and Symington would bury the spoiler argument for the rest of the election cycle. And Douglas would have a hard time countering it without looking like a flip-flopper, given that he himself was clearly depending on it as a fallback plan in 2002, had Con Hogan not pulled 60-70% of his votes from likely Racine voters and paved the way for Douglas’s inauguration (boy would I love to find some clips on this…. anyone?)

This all led to the following strategy, which should have proven to Pollina, the Progressives, and everyone else in Vermont what a losing argument it is (in fact I think it did, but they just can’t help themselves at any opportunity to mock Dems in a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face):

GOP candidates Jim Douglas (Gov), Brian Dubie (Lt. Gov) and their Republican henchman are getting ready to steal your vote. How? By arguing that the person with the most votes does not necessarily win. In Vermont, if no candidate for governor, lt. governor or treasurer gets more than 50% of the vote, the legislature chooses the winner. The last time this process was used to overturn the will of the voters and select a person who did not receive the most votes for governor was 1853. If the Republicans succeed, they will give new meaning to the term ‘take back Vermont.’ Don’t let the Republican make your choice on Election Day meaningless. Your vote is your voice. Write a letter to the editor. Demand that your local candidates for the legislature respect the will of the voters and will support the person that gets the most votes. Tell Jim Douglas and Brian Dubie that you won’t let them steal your vote!

(Full-disclosure repeat… I was all for this at the time as a matter of principle, but I’ve gradually changed my mind, in no small part due to the IRV debate)

Despite commentator/reporters’ energized opposition to the issue (such as that repeatedly articulated by Mark Johnson, with Terri Hallenbeck and Shay Totten nodding in concern-troll-style agreement on Vermont This Week), the press is likely to be of several minds on the issue. Here’s highly regarded (and influential) Randolph Herald editor Dickie Drysdale on the issue at the time:

Reporters and columnists seem to have unquestioningly accepted that democracy and political legitimacy would suffer a body blow if the legislature were to pick someone with the second-highest number of votes.

This is silly. It’s happened before and is likely to happen again with no ill effects. Indeed, the last time a second-place candidate was elected, it was because well-connected legislators knew something the public didn’t know-that the winning candidate for lieutenant governor was about to be indicted for fraud. The independent choice of the legislators saved Vermont considerable embarrassment.

There are other reasons, too, for a legislator to vote for the candidate who does not get the most votes, especially if the race is very close. Voting to support the majority in your voting district seems reasonable enough. It also seems reasonable to try to discern, in a three-person race, what the electorate was trying to say.

Can’t say it more clearly than that.

If we can push Symington a bit, and get Pollina to pull yet another 180… maybe we’ve got something, here.

A no-spoiler election.