In a visit with the Grey Lady today, Bredesen offers a prescription for his party: a superdelegate primary.

It’s particularly interesting to see Bredesen calling for a common sense solution to help the Democratic Party considering his own comments on his party’s shallow bench in the upcoming race to challenge Lamar Alexander for U.S. Senate, which almost portended Hillary’s own remarks that McCain has made it more clear than Obama that he’s ready to serve as commander-in-chief. If his party mattered that much to him, Bredesen could’ve encouraged some young Democrat he’s impressed with to make a challenge to a statesman he admired. Or maybe he’s got his eye on a bigger prize…

Personally, while I don’t think Bredesen’s proposal is particularly problematic, I am not a fan of changing rules midstream after a lack of foresight has yielded an unexpected and unwelcome result. After all, does choosing a nominee sooner mean choosing a nominee better? Based on the closeness of the primary competition through and after Super Tuesday, I’d be surprised. I think any Democrats in either the Hillary or Obama camps who will unite behind any Democrat are going to do that regardless of whether they are asked to do so in August rather than June. And I think any undecideds are going to see a series of attacks and issues relating to both Hillary and Obama continue to be expressed by conservative mouthpieces well beyond the appearance of a clear nominee.

Ultimately, though, I think Democrats frustrated with this year’s process, where many, many states had their primaries and caucuses under the magnifying glass, need to scrutinize their nominating process to avoid, say, treating Republican states better.

This post was written by Freddie