Soechting, who stuck out the office through surgery and all that, suddenly announces he needs to resign early, to spend more time with his family. Of course, the family will have to wait until April, even though there is an SDEC meeting the following weekend which could have named a neutral chair to run the party through the convention. Then Chris Bell sends out an email, asking everyone to urge the SDEC to elect Boyd Richie, one of the three announced candidates for the chairmanship in June. Richie of course is still the only one of the three who doesn't feel it's necessary to make public any plan or platform about his vision for the party should he be elected chair. A suspicious person might be forgiven for assuming that that's because he doesn't think he needs to deal with all those unwashed, uncouth delegates, the SDEC will do his bidding in April and set him up to retain the chair in June. But in the meantime, don't worry about about Boyd Richie, he's a nice guy, everybody likes him.

If this doesn't reek of backroom deals please give me another word for it. Meanwhile please quit peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining.