AFSCME -- Dean can thank Sharpton and Edwards

It's been confirmed that AFSCME will join the SEIU in endorsing Dean.

If true, there's some mystery to it.

AFSCME's President, Jerry McEntee, had been cool to Dean. His flirtation with Kerry, then with Clark, seemed animated by Anyone-But-Dean sentiment. Also, AFSCME's rivalry with the SEIU had insiders convinced that AFSCME would not endorse the SEIU's choice -- which turned out to be Dean.

So AFSCME seems to have reversed itself. But here's the mystery: why did they do so right in the middle of what had been the Dean campaign's worst week to date?

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that two people convinced McEntee to go with Dean -- John Edwards and Al Sharpton.

Without their intervention, it's likely Dean's recent confederate flag remarks would have been accepted in the same enthusiastic spirit that his prior remarks had been.

But after Sharpton's and Edwards' intervention, the primary campaign became acrimonious on the topic where Democrats cannot afford to have acrimony -- that of race.

It also signalled the willingness of the campaigns to have the long, bitter primary season that the Democratic establishment had been loath to allow.

I would not be surprised if, looking on, McEntee, or AFSCME generally, said to themselves, "I see where this is going, and I have seen enough."

In this view, AFSCME's isn't endorsing Dean as such. It's endorsing a swift primary season where the party does not self-destruct -- the kind of primary season the front-loaded primary schedule was supposed to ensure.

Seeing the developing race, it decided against the uncertainty, and the extension of the race, that endorsing counter to the SEIU would have caused.