Given how much money they’re pouring into ads on it I’m thinking that the Clinton campaign must be seeing this gas tax holiday thing helping them a lot in Indiana — even though virtually everybody agrees it’s a bad idea that’s basically a giveaway to the oil companies. Guess we’ll see.

The AP says that early voting patterns in Indiana look encouraging for Obama.

I’d also forgotten that back in September, when President Bush first rolled out the Korea model of the permanent occupation of Iraq which Sen. McCain (R) has now embraced as his platform, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office did a study of what a 50 year ‘Korea model’ presence in Iraq would cost.

The study was done with highly conservative estimates, figuring a much smaller contingent of troops, and basically all the best case scenario numbers, including everything being basically chill over there like McCain says it’ll be.

They came up with an additional $2 trillion over 50 years.

Now, an interesting point of comparison is the projected shortfall in the Social Security budget, which is on the contrary tabulated on highly pessimistic assumption. That number over 75 years is projected at $4.7 trillion.

Now I hasten to add, again, that the Iraq numbers are highly optimistic and the Social Security ones highly pessimistic. If we do a simple back of the envelope calculation we get the 75 year cost of Iraq would be $3 trillion.

And remember that the Social Security number is the one that is supposed make the country curl up, collapsed in upon itself and supernova.

Yesterday I noted how the long-term Social Security deficit which pundits commonly describe as a long-term fiscal crisis is projected not to cost that much more than the first 75 of John McCain’s 100 years in Iraq. And to be clear, this is not factoring the costs of the present occupation out 75 years into the future. These are the cost estimates put together last year by the Congressional Budget Office for a South Korea model in Iraq, in other words, a much smaller number of troops remaining in the country with no actual hostilities.

So whether or not it’s likely that Iraq is going to settle down into a situation like in South Korea, this is costing out precisely what McCain says he supports. Yesterday, I noted that even with the very conservative estimates the CBO used the price tag for 75 years came to $3 trillion. And that was compared to the Social Security deficit over the same period coming out to $4.7 trillion.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Every year the Social Security Administration produces a series of estimates of the fiscal health of Social Security. And to the great chagrin of the major privatization supporters the forecast for Social Security has actually been getting better for about a decade.

Normally, I’m on top of when the new estimates come out. But I guess I’ve been otherwise occupied for the last few months. And TPM Reader BW writes in to note that since the 2007 estimates, which I used above, the long-term deficit has actually gone down again. Under the 2008 tabulation, the number is now down to $4.3 trillion.

So, cost of John McCain’s long-term ‘presence’ in Iraq through 2085, $3 trillion. Social Security’s predicted shortfall over the same period, $4.3 trillion.

But there’s one other point worth noting, which BW raises. Each year, the SSA puts out optimistic, pessimistic and intermediate estimates for the program’s long-term solvency. There’s an long-standing debate about just how optimistic the optimistic scenarios are and whether the intermediate number is really the one that should serve as the baseline for political and policy discussions. But as BW notes, this year, under the optimistic or ‘low-cost’ scenario even in 2085 Social Security will still be running a small surplus.

In any case, this started as a comparison between two very distinct sets of numbers. But the take away is that even when understood precisely on John McCain’s terms, the cost of his permanent ‘presence’ in Iraq is not that much less than the Social Security shoftfall, the budgetary consequences of which are supposed to threaten the bankruptcy of the entire nation.

Looks like we still have a race on our hands. The special election down in Lousiana’s 6th district had the Republican, Woody Jenkins, up relatively comfortably with about 45% of the vote counted. But it’s now tightened substantially.

Watch the results in our scoreboard to the right.

10:46 PM … Cazayoux sneaks ahead with 79% of precincts reporting. A 3 point margin.

10:48 PM … Flips back to Jenkins.

10:49 PM … with 99% reporting, Cazayoux back up. Looks like he took it.

Late Update: Here’s DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen’s release crowing about the win …

“Congratulations to Don Cazayoux on his hard fought victory. Don’s independence and commitment to putting middle class Louisianans first inspired people from across the political spectrum to support his fight for change.

“For the second time this cycle, Republicans were reminded that ‘all politics is local.’ House Republicans tried to nationalize this election, illegally coordinated with Freedom’s Watch, used false and deceptive special interest smears, and funneled nearly a million dollars into a district that Republicans held for more than three decades. Don won by focusing on the concerns of LA-06 voters — good paying jobs, affordable health care, and better education.

“Don Cazayoux will be a tremendous asset to our Democratic Caucus, as we continue fighting to strengthen our economy and ease the squeeze on America’s struggling middle class families.”

It’s boilerplate. But this is a pretty amazing feat. This is a really, really red district.

Funny-business in last night’s election in Baton Rouge …

On election day, a number of homes in Baton Rouge’s predominantly black neighborhoods were phoned with a tape-recorded message asking black voters to teach white Democrats a lesson by staying home and not casting ballots.

The ad signed off as “Friends of Michael Jackson.”

Jackson, a Democratic state representative defeated by Cazayoux in the primary runoff, said he was not involved or connected in any way with the calls. Jackson said he will run for the seat in November.

From Bob Reich’s blog …

When asked this morning by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, HRC said “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”

I know several of the economists who have been advising Senator Clinton, so I phoned them right after I heard this. I reached two of them. One hadn’t heard her remark and said he couldn’t believe she’d say it. The other had heard it and shrugged it off as “politics as usual.”

As some mix of manic euphoria, delirium and exhaustion settles over Democrats nationwide, it’s worth stepping back from the clamor for a moment to consider just why it is the Democrats have superdelegates (which the Republicans don’t) in the first place and whether the whole concept should be abolished.

Obama supporters say that the superdelegates as a group should not overturn the verdict of the primary and caucus election process while Clinton supporters say that it’s precisely the point of the super delegates to make their own considered judgment about who the party’s nominee should be regardless of the finally tally of pledged delegates. The second accurately portrays why the superdelegates were created.

In fact, even this description puts too gentle a gloss on it. Coming out of the 1970s, the Democratic party establishment created the superdelegates precisely to put a brake on the power of “the groups”, which was shorthand for, and not necessarily in this order, the hippies, the blacks, the gays, the feminists, the environmentalists and everyone else suspected of driving the Democratic party to the left of the American mainstream and out of contention in national elections. In this view, there were ordinary Democrats on the one hand and these assorted freaks on the other who came out every four years and out-organized the ordinary Dems to nominate rotten presidential candidates who got slaughtered in national elections.

The more palatable argument was that the superdelegates balanced out the idealism of party activists with the more pragmatic experience of party regulars and elected officials who had experience winning actual elections. But however you argue it, the supers were put there precisely to second-guess the results of the primary and caucus process.

And there the decision stood, fixed almost as though in amber, after 1982 when the system was created. But it never really mattered because all the presidential nomination battles since then either had a clear plurality winner or didn’t even go on long enough for the superdelegates to really be an issue. And now we wake up more than twenty years later wondering just why we have these superdelegates in the first place.

Before being too judgmental toward the people who came up with this bright idea, we should note that the Democratic party was a very different thing and in a very different place back then than it is today — at mid-point in an agonizing process of molting from the dominant but bifurcated party of mid-century America to the very different party it is today. With that said though, this was 1982, not 1782. So I doubt very much that the concept would have withstood actual application — that is, having the superdelegates overrule the pledged delegate tally — even back then. Indeed, it’s not only that the concept is less palatable today. The sociology of the party is simply different; from the inside I don’t think the party’s critics any longer see its shortcomings in that way. The superdelegate concept was just a bad idea that got kept on the books because it seemed not to have any practical effect other than to give federal officeholders and sundry party bigwigs credentials to attend the conventions.

So what to do about it now? As you may know, there are almost 800 superdelegates and they’re divided roughly equally between elected officials and party officials. While I think the superdelegate system should probably be scrapped in its entirety, the rationale for the elected folks is far, far greater than for the party operatives. The electeds are basically every Democratic member of Congress, Democratic governors and then a few miscellaneous folks like ex-presidents, ex-vice presidents and ex-congressional leaders. These folks are actually elected by Democrats on a fairly regular basis. And if they abuse the power they can be held accountable at the ballot box.

Now, back in February, Susan Estrich wrote a piece about just how the decision to create the superdelegate system was made back in 1982. (She was against the superdelegate concept because she was on the Teddy Kennedy team — long story — but was on the Rules Commission that set up the system.) She has a good run-down of just what the politics were at the time. But if I read her correctly, she seems to say that what the Rules Commission decided was basically just to make the elected folks superdelegates. It was only later that the DNC added its own membership to the list of supers — a terrible and self-serving idea.

Just to recite the catechism, these are the rules this process is being run under. No changing the rules in midstream. But once this race is over and everybody can reconsider this matter without having to think about how it affects one particular candidate or another, Democrats need either to strip the superdelegate list down to members of Congress and governors (and the ex-presidents, speakers, et al.) or get rid of the whole superdelegate idea entirely.

Late Update: Having reread this post over a few times, there’s an additional factor I should have noted. We now think of the presidential nomination contest as an ordinary one-person, one-vote election process, with individual elections in each state and territory following their own custom-tailored rules. With that guiding assumption, the unelected super-delegates are an anomaly. But that assumption is relatively new. And in 1982 it was newer still. As recently as the 1960s there were only a smattering of states that had primaries as we understand them today. And even those often elected ‘favorite son’ candidates, which essentially meant signing the state’s delegates over to one of the state’s most powerful elected officials. In other states, delegations were chosen by the state party or even just the dominant political boss. What all of that boils down to is that the superdelegate system devised in 1982 was just a more formalized though much more limited version of the system that had existed only a couple decades earlier. I still think it should have been obvious that it was a clock that couldn’t be turned back. But in analyzing what happened in 1982, we should keep in mind recently the party boss system had still been in force.

New Ohio AG doing a bang up job …

Just 16 months into his four-year-term, Ohio’s attorney general admitted he was in over his head as he acknowledged an affair with a subordinate and his failure to stop problems that led to a sexual harassment investigation that brought down three of his aides.

Marc Dann apologized to his wife and supporters but insisted he would not step down. He took responsibility for the scandal, saying he was not prepared for the office or to run such a large agency.

“I did not create an atmosphere in my public and personal life that is consistent with the important mission of the Office of Attorney General,” the Democrat said Friday after the three aides were fired or forced out in the harassment investigation. “I am heartbroken by my failure to recognize the problems being created and by my failure to stop them.”

Dann had punted the probe to a well-respected lieutenant, state Sen. Ben Espy. The investigation uncovered a seedy underside to the office rife with booze, profanity, inappropriate sexual activity, misuse of state vehicles and on-the-job threats involving the Mafia.

The long, slow, painful process of accounting for the folly of the Iraq invasion and occupation continues, with a book by the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez.