Back in the fall before any primary elections had taken place, I wrote a couple of columns about the wide, zany field of presidential hopefuls.

There was a glut of seemingly legitimate contenders and a few head-scratching dark horses, and it was great. That many people, even if it was obvious early on that most of them wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hawaii of getting more than their mothers to vote for them, made it interesting early.

However, many of the primaries are now out of the way. All of the fringe hopefuls from both major parties have faced reality and dropped out of the race.

The Republicans have found their candidate in a revitalized John McCain, and the Democrats have theirs in Barack O….

Wait a second. Okay, scratch that, apparently the Democratic Party has found their candidate in Hillary Clin…. What, not her either?

But they are both still in the race. And it’s late April.

The other party has their guy, and they are already speculating on who his running mate will be.

By now, both parties would usually have their candidate set and ready to go. The remaining primaries, as well as the official announcement that this person is the party’s new candidate at the National Convention would be formalities. The real campaign could begin.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party still has two people in the race, and apparently voters have found plenty to like about both of them.

The magic number for a Democrat to automatically have the party’s nomination is 2,025. That’s in both delegates and super-delegates.

For those who are confused by the term, a “super-delegate” is just like a regular delegate, but super-delegates wear brightly colored tights and capes. Either that or they are elected officials and representatives from various organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Combining the two kinds of delegates, Barack Obama has 1,719, following the Pennsylvania primary, and Hillary Clinton has 1,586.

Even though Obama has the lead, it is relatively small, and there is still the potential that Clinton could surpass him.

But it’s April. This ordinarily does not happen this late in the campaign.

As an Obama supporter myself, I’m crossing my fingers that he’ll be the one to make it out of the contest, and the delegate margin is just big enough that he could survive in the lead until the Democratic National Convention in August.

There is still room, however, for Clinton to pull ahead, with upcoming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. The likelihood that she would pull ahead because of them seems slim, though, as according a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, Obama has the advantage in North Carolina, and the two are neck-in-neck in Indiana.

Even after Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania, she took only three more delegates from that contest than Obama did. Unless Clinton can pull off a landslide victory in one of the two aforementioned upcoming contests, it is likely that Obama will hold onto his lead. Neither can get to the magic number at this pace, which leaves open the dreadful possibility that it really will take the Party until its convention to settle on a candidate.

Meanwhile, John McCain has all the time in the world to promote his candidacy now, no longer having to compete with the likes of Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, who have made it a point to get behind him.

He and the Republican Party can come up with a catchy slogan, a campaign song and all the various shallow things that seem to get people to pay attention to political campaigns.

More importantly, he can line up a running mate, so by the time the Democrats will figure out whether they are pairing someone with Obama or Clinton, the Republicans will have a head start on promoting the McCain and Romney/Huckabee/Thompson/Giuliani/Rice/Mark Mangino (come on, you know you’d vote for him) ticket.

I can’t just say the remaining states need to get on with it and pledge their delegates to Obama. Democracy is a funny thing like that.

Unfortunately, if the remaining primaries continue to be split, with only slight advantages to one candidate or the other, the Democratic candidate will only be finalized when there is very little time left to work.

This will hurt the chances of whomever that candidate is and, ultimately, the Party itself.

This delay practically guarantees McCain a victory in November.

Cohen is a Topeka junior in political science and English.