And superdelegates don't make sense in any contest that is meant to be fair and democtatic.

Unless a candidate can reach the magic number with just pledged delegates then they need a reason for the superds to choose them. The Team O campaign has argued superds should vote in at least the following ways: 1)how their state voted 2)how their congressional district voted 3)ratify the pledged delegate "winner" 4)vote for Obama because he is dreamy (or young voters, or African-Americans or riots)

Amen and amen.

Popular vote means as much in the primary as it does in the general election. Maybe it should be the metric of success in the future, but that determination needs to be made before the election, not retrospectively.

And actually Ezra you seem to have a hard time understanding the rules as they were set up. The rules as they were set up say that if you don't get a majority of the delegates both pledged and automatic then you are entitled to the nomination. If you don't have 2118 you have to get superdelegates to support you and they can decide on anything they want, not simply pledged delegates. A lead in pledged deleagates isn't worth a thing. It could be one reason to offer to the superdelegates as why you are the strongest candidate, but it is simply one and not a very good one. There are many other things the superdelegates can and should consider. As long as you and other idiots continue to perpetuate the lie that somehow Obama has a legitmate, undeniable claim to the nomination we will never have unity in this party. Obama didn't win the nomination, the superdelegates gave it to him, and not because fairness demanded it, but because they had no choice but to do so because the party would be torn apart by the threats of extortion by Obama's supporters. Obama MUST be the choice for political and practical reasons- it has nothing to do with the fairness or a legtimate process, those are not applicable here. It has everything to do with the process being changed in mid stream when Obama and his supporters through the threat of force and mob rule were able to delegitimze the intended and proper role of the superdelegates and force them to hand him thew nomination in spite of the fact he failed to meet the requirements to earn it himself. Any candidate without 2118 could not be robbed of this nomination, but by perpetuating the lie that he could, and getting his supporters to buy into and threathen chaos otherwise Obama has managed it.

If popular votes were to be such huge measures of determination of the nominee, then citizens of states which chose to implement caucuses should have been warned that their state party's or state's boards' choice of a caucus format would disenfranchise them from being counted in the apparently now supremely important popular vote count.

Such citizens were NOT so warned: they were not warned of this by any government, nor by the Democratic National Committee, nor by any candidate's campaign.

To retroactively decide after state parties have received full certification to carry out a caucus that their participation means nothing given that the popular vote, and not delegate selection, is said to be the meaningful determinant of a close nomination battle, seems somewhat less than a genuinely democratic respect for those citizens' voting rights.

El Cid once again gets it right. There is no democracy, in the modern sense of the word that the rest of the world including America use it, if there is not a fair process in which voters are fairly informed. If you want to come closes to a banana republic you just have to follow some of the arguments being advocated by the Clinton supporters. I said this in the other thread, but what's surprising for anyone who is a student of political science and government is how easily people are willing to throw out fundamental liberal democratic processes for temporary gains for their candidate. To accept Clinton's argument , regardless of what you think of Clinton, is to accept that process doesn't matter to democracy when in fact process is fundamental to making sure their is a real chance to vote.

The point behind superdelegates was primarily to get the goddamn elected people to actually interact with local delegates and party functionaries, instead of creating this split system where representatives and senators didn't give a crap about presidential campaigns or the party as a whole.

All we need to do next time is get rid of superdelegates. Then these BS popular vote arguments will go away.

El Cid and akaison are both arguing popular vote meme violates the process when it does not. Superdelegates have always been able to vote any way they want. Clinton is arguing they should vote for her and giving her reasons, Obama is doing the same.
Why is this so hard to understand?

no: Why is it so hard for you to understand that I am countering the arguments that the Clintonites are presenting with another argument which is also perfectly permitted, and I have the advantage of doing so for reasons of intellectual interest as opposed to simply trying to get what I want from superdelegates.

They are making arguments, not simply screaming "I want I want I want", and if they get to argue that unless the superdelegates act in a certain fashion it would be unfair, disenfranchising, and undemocratic, then I get to remark in a public forum for discussion where and how their arguments fail to convince.

No one here is arguing that they should be silenced, or prevented from presenting arguments to superdelegates.

Or are you suggesting that to offer a counter-argument to someone else's argument is somehow censorship?

And in this case, since the two remaining candidates have split the pledged delegates fairly equally,

No, no, no, no. This isn't kickball in your elementary school gym class. There were a series of electoral contests, which Clinton will end up losing by a roughly 35-32 margin. That is a loss. The Carolina Panthers don't get any credit for almost beating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Now, to say the superdelegates can and should exercise their independent judgement is one thing, but to say that the reason they must do so is because the election is close doesn't have any bearing.

And yes, the procedural change is coming one way or another, thanks to Michigan and the closeness of the race. Either we will move to some sort of lottery for election ordering, if Obama wins the Presidency, or Clinton supporters will push through a winner-take-all, or at least a district level winner-take-all reform so that they can win the nomination in 2012.

(I should go back and run the math on how this would have worked out if states were WTA at the state or district level).

I willing to admit she can make an argument about popular vote if yo uare willing to admit she's manipulating what counts as the popular vote. You should know that I was one of the people on here saying that if she outright won the popular vote, she then had an argument. But, that argument has now morphed yet again into "well if you count certain states." Uhm- no. Count all the states if that's your argument.However the tenous the argument was I was willing to accept it because of the superdelegates. But- that's not what she has been argument recently and that's what's been argument through her online surrogates. THeir principle argument has been electability, which by the way, also continued to morph over time. When I argue process, it's an argument about process- it's an argument against those who say that caucuses shouldn't count or that direct democracy is the only way to have a valid voting system when in fact that's false on its face. I am not even getting into her pretzel twisting logic on MI just to name one place where this is changing the rules after the fact.

"I am not even getting into her pretzel twisting logic on MI just to name one place where this is changing the rules after the fact."

As opposed to the conclusion with which we ended? Ha! Where in the rules does it say you can spontaneously generate delegates for your favored candidate?

First I am not an Obama supporter. He gets my support because I think he won the nomination, and I felt after May 6th Clinton didn't have a valid argument to win.

As for MI, We ended with the best situation of bad choices created by both candidates, but especially Clinton given she agreed before hand not to remain on the ballot, and thus her own actions made the situation happen. This is one of those process examples I mentioned. Elections work only if the rules are followed by all. Else, they produce bad results as you saw in MI.

Clinton's argument- essentially I should get all of mine, he should get nothing, was as usual self serving. So was Obama's but a) at least his was closest to equiptable given the bad choices that she helped create and b) the idea that hers was democratic is the part to which I am referring when I talk about democratic given the bad choices that her own behavior created.

I think the real problem here is that most of you are binary. Clinton v. Obama. Rather than having any principles of your own that's guiding this. Therefore you assume everyone else is.

I was an Edwards supporter. I could have cared less who won. The deciding factor for me is the issue of process and whether she's coming to this with clean hand or in effect helping to engineer the crisis that she helped engineer. Were the situation reversed I would say the same of Obama.

I am weight the information before me to figure out who makes sense without regard to who I want to win. because that person w ould have been edwards were that my interest.

El Cid, you were arguing Clinton's popular vote meme was tantamount to disenfranchisement. intellectual interest indeed.
your last sentence smacks of asshattery.

I agree with the central premise of akaison's follow up that the popular vote meme doesn't equal 'count every vote' or 'one man, one vote.'

Where in the rules does it say you can spontaneously generate delegates for your favored candidate?
That was the state of Michigan asking for a compromise, which was granted with the votes of Clinton supporters.
It was political solution that granted Clinton delegates she had no right to because the election was invalid.
The rules would have disallowed all delegates.

no: I really don't give a sh*t if your feelings that my clear and logical statements are "asshattery", because I don't know that given a pile of asshattery and a hole in the ground you could tell the difference. Otherwise your idiotic response that "buh they are just making argument" might have some purpose for existing. And you would have recognized the analogue between arguing that awarding 1/2 delegate votes to MI / FL delegates is "disenfranchisement" to arguing that robbing caucus states of the ability to have a popular vote tally to give to superdelegates is also disenfranchisement in as much as your argument is that superdelegates must look at the popular delegate count.

I.e., you cannot both argue that it is moral and necessary to have every voter fairly represented while callously dismissing those who live in states which held caucuses -- which is exactly what you're doing if you argue that (a) the popular vote should sway the decision of superdelegates and (b) citizens who live in caucus states are barred from having their input measured in that now super-important metric of the "popular vote".

Asshattery, hole in the ground.

By the way, the "extra" delegates were awarded by the only legal mechanism which exists for selecting delegates from Michigan: the Congressional District Conventions, who are tasked with appointing delegates and getting that result approved by the Executive Committee of the Michigan Democratic Party.

Those results were then submitted by the Michigan Democratic Party to the Rules and Bylaws Committee.

So, actually, the same process which always selects Michigan's delegates came up with their allocation this time.

At the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, that count was then subject to two competing proposals, one to count the delegates as forwarded by the Michigan Democratic Party from their Congressional District Conventions but awarding each delegate a 1/2 vote for the national Party; or the Clinton campaign proposal to seat in accordance with their outline of the Clinton versus Uncommitted results at full strength.

The Michigan Democratic Party's proposal, created from the delegate count of its own state constitutionally empowered Congressional District Conventions, was accepted, at the 1/2 vote each.

akaison - Clinton never agreed to remove her name from the Michigan ballot. That was an Obama plan designed to embarrass Clinton and ensure the MI primary was seen as a farce.

If you are going to continue to make process arguments you should have a better grasp of the process. Removing names from ballots was never part of the pledge.

Llan

Clinton agreed with Edwards and Obama regarding FL and Mi. I get enough of lawyer like definitions of "is" at work. Don't waste my time with spliting hairs.

And please don't tell me about process arguments when you are making factual arguments rather than process arguments. Even if you were 100 percent factually correct, it's still not an argument against my points about process. What you say just makes it seem like you don't know the difference betwen the arguments you are making.

That's right! Obama tricked Clinton into leaving her name on the ballot! He can't be trusted! I saw it on the internet!

Many others have already said it but it bears repeating - SDs can choose based on any metric, or no metric at all. Hill has used the pop vote argument in addition to many others. I believe her primary argument has been that she wants them to elect the best candidate, and she has offered many reasons she feels she is the best throughout this entire campaign. It's a simple argument, non-controversial. She probably won't sway anyone (unfortunately) but it's not unreasonable to make this pitch to SDs.

Anyone with an ounce of brains should have known two months ago that each campaign was going to argue that they won the popular vote. It is an unknowable and as such is ripe for spinning (notwithstanding Ezra's absolute conviction that Obama won the popular vote). Omnipotent, that Ezra.

Some are complaining that Hill's count is wrong because she isn't counting ALL the votes (caucus states). They don't see any irony in they themselves using a system that doesn't count MI! Some argue that FL was a 'valid' election (even though folks stayed home knowing it was meaningless) while simultaneously arguing that MI was invalid (because Obama voluntarily withdrew his name).

If Obama would agree to seat both delegations in full, help with some of Hill's debts, and ask her to be his VP then this could all go away (he's already thrown his reverend and church under the bus - two other prerequisites).

El Cid you are a disingenuous little twit.

Your original argument was flawed so I pointed out its defect. To deflect from your shortcomings you pulled out a strawman - that I was implying any disagreement with the popular vote meme was censorship. When called on this asshattery (specifically directed at the strawman sentence) you falsely imply that my comment was directed at your argument.

Tis a shame that you are so much invested in the comments section that you are compelled to resort to such childish tactics.

Good day to you sir.

From the previous thread on this topic - El Cid:

?I suppose it's also now unfair that small states have 2 Senators when some of them have populations lower than that of regional Southern college towns. How dare they!"

Some would say that's how we get 300 billion dollar farm bills and bridges and highways in the least populated parts of the country.

Ezra is correct - if we were playing Scrabble we would want to decide on the 50 point rule at the outset. But this is not scrabble. The process is not "democratic" - on that we all seem to agree - and there is no rule that the supers have to vote one way or another. Do all the MA supers have to vote for HRC because she carried the state?

She is making an argument that she can beat McCain and would be a better president. That's not changing the rules...moving the goalpost...whatever metaphor you want to give it. That's politics.

The supers could have ended this at any time after Super Tuesday. They chose not to. Probably because they didn't want to alienate millions of primary voters and caucus voters. Now Obama gets the Supers to push him to the magic number. Good on him. Too bad it's not going to be actual voters that do that.

Regards.

As the argument/discussion above illusrates, democracy requires fair process which require fair rules (known in advance and not revised on the homestretch).

The current process and rules are fucked up. Period. These elections are for nominations for federal office - and the election will be conducted under national/federal rules (Congressional Laws). Primaries should be elections (real secret votes tabulated by government agencies). No caucuses, no mixed elections/caucuses, no superdelegates, no allowance for past voting history in awarding the number of delegates, etc. No non-electoral vote territories, etc. DC should be a state with electoral votes.

We need a set of primary elections, under uniform federal laws, just like in the general election. The only difference should be a spread schedule of primary elections instead of a single date. That schedule of primary elections should probably be the same for both national parties (and any third parties), and voting should be restricted to voters registered with the state as a member of the party - independents can choose to remain independent but shouldn't expect to chose a party's nominee. The states should rotate in positions within geographic areas for early/late voting dates (with no 'special' privileges like IA and NH)And no "open" primaries, since party nominees are being chosen - political opponents shouldn't be allowed to help elect a candidate they prefer to compete with.

Until we get to national process and rules, then the rules are the rules: delegates count, popular vote doesn't count. If we don't like the outcome the current rules could produce, change the rules (prospectively, not retroactively).

All this discussion about democracy and fairness is bullshit - unless it is directed at producing better process and rules for the future, and not how to find a way to work around what the current rules provide.

The current rules provide for superdelegates and other less than fully democratic features. But they are the rules.

I agree with Jim about the rules clearly need to change going foreward into the future. How one does this and also address issue of the undue influence of money and name, I am not sure. The fact is both Clinton and Obama had to spend far too much money to be viable, and that's wrong.

Ps- one of the reasons I find the arguments by the clinton supporters not convincing is that I don't think their passion for the issues surrounding this discussion will last beyond the 2008 primary cycle. I look forward to being proven.

no: No, that is not what you did, and that is not what happened, and no such error in the argument was pointed out -- that is, outside the lack of handholding for those who didn't grok the obvious analogy -- and best journey to you back to your Edwardian-era accented world where you continually endeavor tirelessly to assist the arguments of others and they are mean, mean, mean to you in response. Ingrates!

"Elections work only if the rules are followed by all."

This is spot on and why none of the delegates from MI should have been seated at all. That primary was more than flawed; it was destroyed by the DNC. When the DNC accepted the MI proposal, it broke its own rule.

The DNC's biggest blunder was telling voters their votes wouldn't count in the beginning. Just because none of the candidates was wise enough to see where this would lead doesn't mean the fault doesn't lie with the DNC.

Does anyone else feel their eyes glaze over when they see "automatic delegate"?

Ezra wrote: A popular vote campaign, for instance, would suggest that candidates should aggressively contest big states even if they're certain to lose them, because such states are vote-rich environs.

As always, Ezra, I admire you and your writing, but you really should look up "environs" in the dictionary. Wonderful things, dictionaries.

JimPortlandOR wrote: No non-electoral vote territories, etc. DC should be a state with electoral votes.

I may be stating the bleeding obvious, but I want all understanding to be perfect: While DC is not a state, and has, effectively, no self-government and no representation in the Federal legislature, it does have three electoral votes, thanks to the 23rd amendment to the Constitution, which first had effect in the presidential election of 1964.

The entire delegate system should be abolished. The party nominee should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes. Voting by caucus should be banned and all states should vote by primary.

As far as I understand it, the popular vote argument serves two purposes:

(1) It acts as a means to convince Super D's that the candidate is backed by the will of the electorate. This is completely undermined by popular vote claims that exclude caucus states and attribute the entirety of the popular vote differential to a race where a single (major) candidate was on the ballot.

(2) It serves to undermine the legitimacy of the winner of the pledged delegate race. This intra-party strife may be leveraged into (a) a place on the ticket or (b) the sabotage of the party's nominee so that the losing candidate may run again in 4 years (rather than waiting 8).

The DNC established the very complicated primary race for very specific reasons. The rules were set out at the beginning and the Clinton campaign, of the campaigns, had the most input into the process. To claim foul now, at the end of the process, is nothing more than sour grapes.

There is no "right" to the nomination for any candidate, but it seems like the winner of the primary elections (represented by a lead in pledged delegates) has the greatest claim to the title. As exhibited by the steady stream of Obama endorsements, the super delegates agree with me.

The party nominee should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes. Voting by caucus should be banned and all states should vote by primary.

Caucuses serve two important roles in the primary process:

(1) They act as party-building exercises that can recruit and engage party members.

(2) They act as a gauge of support of party activists and measure the "depth", rather than the "breadth", of support of a candidate. These are the people that will knock on doors and phonebank, so it is important to make sure that they're engaged.

Caucuses, prior to this election cycle, were thought to advantage the elderly voter rather than the youth. Elderly voters tend to be more active in politics and tend to have a significant amount of free time. It was thought that young voters would flake out on the process.

The problem with having a pure PV primary system is that different states (due to finances or state law) are required to hold different types of primaries states, which can greatly affect the turnout and the PV differential from each contest.

If you have an open (R,D, and I), rather than a closed (D) or modified (D and I), primary, you'll have more turnout which can lead to a larger PV difference. Again, this leads us to the problem that the influence of states may be unequally weighted for completely arbitrary reasons.

I'm of the opinion that much of the sentiment that "The process is broken" arises from the fact that it lead to the nomination of the "wrong" candidate.

The entire delegate system should be abolished. The party nominee should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes.

You give no reasons for this sweeping prescription, and it's hard to imagine any persuasive ones. Once upon a time (and this is still true in much of the world today), the parties chose their own nominees, rather than throwing open the decision to the public, constituted in various ways in various times and places. Leaving the choice of Presidential candidate largely up to this popular process began in 1972, when the Democrats ended up with George McGovern, who, much as he is an admirable man, was a deeply flawed candidate. Since then, we've had Jimmy Carter (um...ditto), Walter Mondale (um...ditto), Michael Dukakis (words fail), Bill Clinton (deeply flawed man, pretty good candidate), Al Gore (admirable man, remarkably flawed candidate, who, though he won the popular vote, should have won the election in a landslide, not that this was particularly his own fault), and John Kerry (again, words fail). The scheme previously in place gave the Democrats Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy, obviously among others.

Which system produces better results?

obviously Catholics do better in the back rooms

to the ones proposing federal election standardization of what is currently state by state... You do realize that we live in the United States? Not the State of America.

The federal government by design has very limited powers in this regard. You think that things are rigged now when one party has to manage 50 independant groups to conspire for success? How do you think that this would be improved by centralizing this to a federal authority?

Dont be fooled into thinking that just because this election is likely to be won by a democrat that this will continue as a trend. Once it swings the other way such centralization could truly rig the system even more then it already is. ..and states could do nothing about it.

To those who want a simple democratic vote. We have always been a representative democratic republic. Meaning an individual citizens vote has always been filtered through several layers above him. Delegates, college electors, whatever.

How is it:
1.that we have done quite well over the ages..
2.that things seem to get worse the further we get from the original design
3. and even so you claim this SHOULD be so. It seems there should be some very convincing evidence before that extraordinary claim is put to the test.

Look, I know I'll get slammed up down and sideways... but it seems to me the most objectionable thing in Ezra's post (and even Nick's) is this notion of Obama as "way ahead." I agree this is basically over and Obama has the numbers that matter... but this is very close. some 35 million votes have been cast. Using the most favorable numbers to Obama, the difference between the two is 1.5%. Out of 35 million. That's less than the votes in many states, less than the votes in a number of major cities. Then, too, I think the whole discussion of popular vote counting just leads to more concern about the overall process, when 4 states have never provided actual tallies from their caucuses, and Michigan has a result so flawed it's all but impossible to make a fair inclusion of it. This hardly strikes me, Clinton supporting or not, as a great process. And that's before the exclusionary, somewhat stifling aspects of the caucus processes, and the lack of uniformity from contest to contest.

Apropos of akaison, I agree - the question, and it's not just for Clinton suporters, is who plans to put energy towards reforming this process in the future? While the 50 state, extended examination, and trunout increasing aspects of this race have been heartening, it strikes me that all of that comes at a high price in terms of creating new rifts, bad feelings, and a sense of scores that may never be settled. We can, and should, make an effort to do better, create a fairer, more inclusionary, and less abstruse process (and, almost certainly, abandon these "who goes first" notions that up-ended the calendar and helped set the stage for the Michigan and Florida debacles). I didn't come upon these issues yesterday, I don't argue about them because I want some "magic" interpretation that only helps Hillary Clinton, and I will, surely, agitate for change as much as I can. Til then, I think the key thing about this race, all along, has been its closeness, and at the same time, its deep divides. And both, I think, as well as the poorer elements of the process, are why we're all struggling to find common ground, even on something that shouldn't be as fuzzy as these numbers can be.

a month from now, this being America, most of Clinton's supporter except fo the crazies who were always messed up anyway, will have moved on to Obama v McCain. Most will support Obama. That's the reality of being in America. It has a lot of bad things about it. But this is the example of where it has some good things bout it too.

Herschel,

I believe the nominating system and the general election system should be based on the concept of "1 person, 1 vote". Having delegates choose a party nominee and electors choose a president violate the idea of "1 person, 1 vote" For this reason, I support the abolition of the delegate system in Dem and Repub nominating contests and the abolition of the electoral college in the general election. I think primaries are more democratic than caucuses and therefore I support every state holding a primary instead of a caucus.

As I see it, the 2 biggest problems with the current voting process are delegate disputes (ie popular vote vs delegate count) and the primary calendar. As I wrote earlier, the best way to solve the delegate problem is to get rid of the delegate system. the party nominee should be the candidate who receives the most votes from all the states. To make vote counting easier, I favor all states voting by primary.

The primary calendar is screwed because Iowa and NH are allowed to maintain a stranglehold over the calendar. The DNC and RNC should give Iowa and NH a WWE smackdown and break their stranglehood by adopting a rotating regional primary calendar.

I support the abolition of the delegate system in Dem and Repub nominating contests

And you support this purely as a matter of principle, irrespective of the quality of the outcome? Why is such a principle persuasive? As you can presumably divine, it is unpersuasive to me. Why does this one-person-one-vote principle trump a better-Democratic-Party-nominee principle? How is a principle which is reasonable and worth fighting for in the general election necessarily applicable to how the parties choose the nominees to contest the general election? Why is it that no other democracy seems to do it the way you think it should be done?

Irrespective of the quality of the outcome

I think one person one vote is the fairest, most equitable method for choosing a presidential nominee. The delegate system is an inaccurate reflection of the expressed will of the voters. For the record, I prefer Obama over Hillary but I still believe this voting process requires a major overhaul.

"If you run the popular vote numbers such that you include Florida, include Puerto Rico, include caucus states, and exclude Michigan (where no one campaigned and only Clinton was on the ballot), Obama is way ahead"
Huh? 46000 is "way ahead" in your world, Ezra? And didn't you see the polls from Montana (Obama 48 Clinton 44) and South Dakota (Obama 34 Clinton 60)? This sure looks as if Clinton will get another big popular vote increase this round. I haven't checked how many votes are possibly on the table in these two primaries, but isn't it possible, if not even probable, for Clinton to win the all-inclusive popular vote?
:-/

"How is a principle which is reasonable and worth fighting for in the general election necessarily applicable to how the parties choose the nominees to contest the general election?"

Well, how isn't it? Why should there be different procedures for the primaries and the general elcetion at all? You haven't produced a good argument for this yet.

Besides, pls think of a reform of the Dem primary process as a precedent for reforming the general election. By demonstrating how a true "every vote counts (equally)" approach would work, and porbably showing its benefits, the Dems would have a much stronger case for reforming the presidential election process. Imho a strong argument for change.

"exclude Michigan (where no one campaigned and only Clinton was on the ballot)"
Oops, ok, I didn't exclude MI, and counted all uncommiteds for Obama (yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes). Since Edwards endorsed him, I guess that's only fair. However, it was NOT only Clinton on the ballot, but afaik at least Kucinich, too. And Edwards and Obama voluntarily dropped out of that race, there were no rules forcing them to do so. We all know this was a strategic move by Obama, currying up favors with Iowa, but why should he be allowed to have his cake and eat it at the same time?

"...a month from now, this being America, most of Clinton's supporter except fo the crazies who were always messed up anyway"

Yeah, that helps.

"But you have to choose one, because the popular vote count doesn't make sense in a delegate-oriented primary"
Where did you get that idea, Ezra? It's no problem to allocate delegates according to the share of the popular vote. Several Democracies all around the world have working methods to do exactly this for determining the buildup of their parliaments, for instance. For every vote to have equal weight, it would be preferrable if the number of delegates for each state wouldn't be fixed, but proportional to the number of voters in the state's primary, of course. But this is really no problem.

So, there still could be conventions with delegates, and your argument doesn't really hold water.

"Yeah, that helps."

Indeed. The ability of Obama supporters to unite is simply stunning.
|-(

Btw, Ezra, sad to see you obviously didn't read the good roundup of the MI/FL issue in the Progress:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=playing_by_the_rules
This would have prevented you from stating nonsense like "Michigan (where no one campaigned and only Clinton was on the ballot)"
:-/

If you're going to cite 1972 and bad old loser McGovern for an example of how it's good to have party insiders (superdelegates now) intervene in the case of bad decisions by the voters, make sure and also cite 1968 (June!), where the party insiders gave it to the candidate who was the sitting Vice President who hadn't campaigned in a single primary, Hubert Humphrey, over the larger vote-getter, McGovern.

Humphrey, the conservative, establishment-backed, high office holding, party-insider selected candidate?

Yeah, he lost the election *before* the one McGovern lost.

It amazes me that 1972 is supposed to hold all the lessons for Democrats because it's a chance to bash the dirty friggin' hippies who backed McGovern, but party-insider hawk Humphrey loses in 1968 and we're not supposed to learn any lessons from that.

And it's interesting that the boomers are far more haunted by what happened with McGovern (mainly because he's easily dismissed as being too liberal and a peacenik, that former military medal winner) than by what happened with Humphrey -- you know, the election that gave us Nixon as President in the first place.

Gray: we've heard it before. The single most irritating thing for me about the Clinton campaign is the same feature Atrios noted: their habit of repeatedly insulting my intelligence. Her supporters, like you, faithfully repeat the claim 'o the day without noticing that their candidate claimed the opposite yesterday. Michigan and Florida are beauty contests (certainly when talking with Iowa and New Hampshire voters) until their delegates are needed by Clinton. Then it's a democratic crusade to count elections that everyone agreed were nonbinding. Single sentences lifted out of context and bizarre rules-lawyering is used to claim that Clinton didn't actually mean what it looked like she said she meant.

Caucuses are bad after Clinton does poorly in them. States with too many black votes don't count, only big states without too many black votes count. The white vote is the important thing, especially the "working class" vote, especially after the last state with a lot of black voters weighs in. It's line after line of excuse-making and hogwash, and after awhile the only emotion it's possible to generate about it is contempt.

One person one vote sounds great, until you ask the question "which persons?" As has been pointed out, when you look at primary states the "persons" at issue vary widely. The primary season is meant to nominate a candidate for a party, who presumably should stand for the principles of the party in some meaningful way.

Opponents of caucuses are simply mouthing platitudes. In some states, caucuses are more accessible than primaries, in that they are held on the weekend and have a proxy or absentee mechanism for those who can't attend in person. There is no inherent democracy argument that rules out caucuses, and because they are cheaper to put on, it makes it feasible for the party to do it on its own, and not be hostage to the state legislature, possibly under the control of the opposition party.

Apparently Harold Ickes was for caucuses before the Clinton campaign was against them.

Thomas Edsall:

Barack Obama stands on the brink of capturing the presidential nomination in large part because of Democratic Party reforms initiated by the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s -- movements in which Hillary Clinton's top strategist, Harold Ickes, was a key player.

When Obama was barely three, Ickes took part in Mississippi Freedom Summer, helping the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party send a primarily black delegation to the 1964 national convention in Atlantic City.

After the Freedom Democratic delegation was denied seating by the virtually all white male Democratic Party establishment, Ickes -- then 24 -- went on to help organize the party's reformist Harold Hughes Commission, the precursor to the McGovern Commission.

The anger against entrenched power of the old-line Democratic Party intensified, and by 1968, young civil rights, women's rights, and anti-war activists were beaten in the streets of Chicago outside the convention hall, and the protests of dissidents were gaveled down by party bosses on the convention floor.

The outrage gave birth to the Democratic Party's Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, aka the McGovern Commission.

Writing in the January 1970 issue of Harper's about the '68 convention, McGovern described the "tumultuous floor debate, bloodshed and tear gas in the streets...it also evokes the image of rigged procedures, a political party assembled to reach predetermined decisions. The convention became the shame of the Democratic Party."

Coming out of the turmoil of the sixties, the 1972 McGovern rules, as they came to be known, radically altered the way Democrats pick their presidential nominees, opening up the political process by mandating proportional inclusion of previously excluded constituencies -- African Americans, voters under 30, and women.

All of the reforms adopted then, and modified over the years, have been in play this year, including the expanded role in party proceedings of blacks, women, and the young; the required use of proportional representation; and superdelegates.

One reform stands out particularly in Obama's march to victory: the much wider use of open caucuses as a key component of the nomination process. Caucuses differ from primaries in that participants must spend many hours in a complex rule-ridden bargaining process that determines how a precinct or ward will allocate its support among the presidential candidates...

..."Caucuses were the preferred institution of the reformers. The argument of the reform theorists was not about the gross bulk of participation, but about the character of the participation," Shafer said. In a primary, "you could go and vote, but it was limited: you pull the lever that was it. In a caucus, it wasn't that turnout would be lower, it was the quality of the turnout was higher."

Again, although currently all the mover & shaker Democrats only talk about "1972" and "McGovern" as the only important nomination battle to ever really think about, back then, when there were police riots outside the convention and Humphrey went on to lose to the even more pro-war Nixon, Democrats found that worth reforming, too.

Including Harold Ickes, back when he was an eager party activist and reformer.

I think we need a hybrid system. Part primary and part caucus. The caucus can come prior to the primary in each state for the sake of party building and establishing a strong ground game. Then each state has their primary with the viable candidates benefiting from their caucus investment (caucuses are cheap for the state, but can be expensive for the candidates, while primaries can be cheap for the candidate, but expensive for the state). We then get to see on a state-by-state level which candidates not only have broad electoral appeal, but also which candidates have the organizational chops (and money) to get out the vote and help build the party for the long term.

I would say give the primary the majority of the delegates, but not so much as to devalue the caucus, maybe a 55-45 split.

The caucuses and primaries should be ordered based on a lottery. There would be 5 pools based on population and each pool would have a state selected for each slate of elections.

The first caucuses could be held in mid-January with the primary coming the week after. The next set of caucuses could then happen a week after that. That would give the whole nominating season a 10 week calendar. If having it spread out more makes sense then add a week of down time between the last set of primaries and the next set of caucuses and you add a month to the process.

Perhaps you could tweak it to give some greater benefit to smaller states by having the first pool be the 10 smallest states with five going first and 5 going last. The largest states could be cluster in a group of ten with 5 coming on a 'Super Tuesday' in February and the other 5 going on a 'Super Tuesday' in March. You could also weight the lottery by giving purple states a higher chance of going early and then give blue states more delegates as a reward for their loyalty.

Randomizing would make things more equitable and keeping both the primaries and caucuses allows for increased party building. I don't know what to do about the current superdelegates, but I suppose they could remain with greatly reduced power just to keep them active.

However, it was NOT only Clinton on the ballot, but afaik at least Kucinich, too. And Edwards and Obama voluntarily dropped out of that race, there were no rules forcing them to do so. We all know this was a strategic move by Obama, currying up favors with Iowa, but why should he be allowed to have his cake and eat it at the same time?

Only in the Democratic party do we think candidates should be penalized for being good campaigners.

Sorry. Link to the Edsall column, via HuffPost (but also carried elsewhere):

http://tinyurl.com/55ltlj

I say "Let every half-vote count!"

If you're going to cite 1972 and bad old loser McGovern for an example of how it's good to have party insiders (superdelegates now) intervene in the case of bad decisions by the voters, make sure and also cite 1968 (June!), where the party insiders gave it to the candidate who was the sitting Vice President who hadn't campaigned in a single primary, Hubert Humphrey, over the larger vote-getter, McGovern.

Humphrey, the conservative, establishment-backed, high office holding, party-insider selected candidate?

Wow, that's a lot of error in a small package. Humphrey didn't enter any of the primaries in 1968 (there were only thirteen of them at the time) and neither did McGovern. Perhaps you're confusing McGovern with Eugene McCarthy, who actually won the most votes in the primaries.

And Humphrey was conservative? For decades he was the absolute archetype of the liberal Democrat, and I don't think he'd take very kindly to your characterization.

In 1968, the sitting president had become enormously unpopular, largely because of the by-then very unpopular war against the people of Southeast Asia. The nomination process in the Democratic party was a huge train-wreck, culminating in the week-long calamity of the Chicago convention. In many ways, 1968 was an election year like this year, with the "out" party almost certain to win the presidency. And yet with all his baggage as the Vice President to a horribly unpopular President with his horribly unpopular war, and the spectacle of Chicago, Humphrey lost to Nixon by seven tenths of one percentage point in the popular vote. If you think McGovern, or McCarthy, would have done better than that, well, I think you're wrong.

I certainly make no argument that party insiders should intervene and over-rule bad decisions of voters. Rather, I question the soundness of the premise that the general public should be deciding who will be the nominee of the Democratic Party.

Humphrey was a domestic liberal and a foreign policy hawk. He got so close largely because Wallace split the conservative vote with Nixon. There were a lot of historical ingredients that were radically different, including the radical change in the role of the South (from automatic Democratic to automatic Republican, by and large.)

"In many ways, 1968 was an election year like this year, with the "out" party almost certain to win the presidency."

Bobby Kennedy ran in '68, and was a sure winner, until...
Hmm, maybe it isn't good to use '68 as a comparison. Let's all pray '08 is different.

The problem with reforms is you don't know how they will end up. Winner take all primaries were at one point thought to help establishment candidates. It's how McGovern barely squeeked by Humprey in California and took the nomination. I doubt anyone thought that it could be used to dethrone an established front runner more than 30 years latter.

Same thing with the McGovern reforms. It gave the nomination to the most liberal Democrat in 1972 and one of the more conservatives ones four years later.

Make some reforms now and they will probably piss someone off in unseen ways the next time around.

Herschel is right: I meant to type McCarthy as the rival anti-war challenger which led to the McGovern commission two years later. (And I've done the same thing elsewhere, and it's the two Mc names and the quick typing.)

And yes, I am rating Humprhey's war views as the denominator as the more conservative candidate -- as it was seen at the time. As to whether RFK or McCarthy would have done better than Humphrey, I really think the opportunity would have been much better for the nation to have seen.

But as far as 1968 being an unusual year -- yes, exactly -- and so was 1972, and so was 2000, and so was 2004. All kinds of unusual and particularistic factors.

But 1972 is privileged as granting the general and systematic lessons about how awful the liberals were for the party, whereas 1968 where the pro-war candidate lost is ignored.

And if you're going to cite Humphrey as barely losing the popular vote (and had Wallace not split off with the South, who knows), know that there are plenty of people out there arguing that Al Gore's "loss" in 2000 is also proof that the liberals are bad for the party.

Bobby Kennedy ran in '68, and was a sure winner, until...

RFK was nowhere near a sure winner, even for the Democratic nomination, let alone the general election. No one thought that at the time.

But 1972 is privileged as granting the general and systematic lessons about how awful the liberals were for the party, whereas 1968 where the pro-war candidate lost is ignored.

Please don't think that that is anything even remotely like my argument. I am way to the left of anyone the Democrats are ever likely to nominate, and I certainly don't believe that Al Gore's "loss" proves that liberals are bad for the Democrats.

That being said, I still believe that the current system, where the parties don't choose their own nominees, is misguided and more than a little bizarre.

If you rate Humphrey as more conservative because of his views on the Vietnam disaster (and I don't see anything particularly "conservative" about that, but no matter), then I guess Nixon was the liberal in the general election. Gee, it didn't seem that way at the time.

I agree with those who compare the candidates we got under the old system to the ones we get now. I say abolish the entire primary system and go back to nomination by party insiders in a backroom. WE got better, more electable candidates. This country is not a Democracy (except Vermont), it is a Republic and would be better served if it realized that. Or converted to a more Democratic, Parliamentary system, one in which a President Bush would have been impossible.

I see my idea of abolishing the delegate system and going with the straight popular vote has gone over like a lead balloon. What about the primary calendar? Should Iowa and NH maintain a stranglehold over the calendar forever? How are 2 tiny states able to hijack this process? Do they threaten the DNC and RNC with nuclear weapons? Why not end their tyranny over the other 48 states by creating a rotating regional primary calendar?

jerry

that then brings up the money issue. none of this is simple. the two main problems we have are winner take all (rather than parlimentary so that the real center is shut out in favor of whoever gets 50 plus 1 which isn't always the center) and the need for money to sustain it.

Herschel: I agree that much of the argument isn't describing your particular arguments -- more of what is thrown out by spokespersons for the Clinton campaign or generally asserted about Democratic politics.

But in 1968 those protesters angry about the nomination being kept from the anti-war candidates weren't there because they were backing Nixon, just to add a colorful example.

I would agree that the country would be much better off if we did in fact have real political parties, in which members had to somehow join and then there could be serious mechanisms by which the members of, say, the Democratic Party, could work to have an effect both on who the party leaders would be and on what the party's policies would be.

I've had many friends working on real issues like health care or public financing of elections managing to push it through local & state party resolutions, and the cumulative effects on candidates & party policies are pretty near zero for their efforts.

But we don't have that.

El Cid: Exactly! Real political parties that you join and pay dues to. A party whose membership could fire Harry Reid would be nice. I think you and I are largely in agreement.

Ezra,

The problem is you confuse who you think people should have or could have voted for with who they did vote for. You and the rest of the Obama supporters have confused what you believe to be his rights, with voter rights. Who people vote for is the vote - period. To reconstruct a vote out of other measures is like saying Nader should be given more votes because he wasn't on the ballot, and people don't really want to vote for Gore/Bush that did. It's not logical, yet it's where the Obama people come from.

The issue with Obama in Michigan is that he made a decision to not accept votes for the election, yet he demanded to be given those votes for the convention. That disenfranchised the voters, and Hillary. The party once again showed that Democratic ideals are a sham when it's convenient for them to be so. The only reason Obama is close, is because he manipulated the caucus and focused only on the weighted districts so that his delegate count does not reflect the popular vote. This is cynical, and the worst kind of political gamesmanship. It's also a deal breaker for those in our midst that are fair minded. If he had let the election results stand as they were cast, and taken the consequences for not having permitted the voters to vote for him, I would have supported him in November.

This leaves me as a very ardent Democrat without a candidate. I will not vote McCain - but I will no longer vote Obama! His manipulation of the situation, and his desperation to 'close the deal', means that he will dash his hopes of any easy victory in November. I cannot and will not support this charlatan in his bid to become George III, the insular, arrogant, admit no wrong dear leader....

When Obama's supporters went highschool drama - we want the basketball jock as class president - on Hillary and her supporters - they forgot that we aren't the enemy and they would need us in November. We weren't the enemy, now we're definitely not your friends! Good luck in November Hopium addicts - you'll need your hope, because you won't have my vote!

WTF, your description of Michigan is really at odds with what virtually everyone else sees. The Michigan party came up with the split, and it was based upon what they could reconstruct about what the sham election would have come out as if there had been choices on the ballot. The business about taking the consequences, to be blunt, is unadulterated bullshit. Clinton wasn't willing to take the consequences of her signed agreement that the contest wouldn't count; for Clinton supporters to complain about ex post facto rules changes is incredibly funny.

Re caucuses: Obama knew the rules in advance and executed a campaign strategy which would win according to those rules. It's downright bizarre to characterize that as "manipulating the caucuses". That is otherwise known as "trying to win according to the rules." There appears to be a wierd opinion among Clinton supporters that Obama is both arrogant (for wanting Clinton to leave) and somehow cruel/mean (for continuing to acts as if there is an active contest going on.) It doesn't come across as rational.

The Michigan delegate selection (that whole 69-59 split) was the result of the activities of the Michigan Democratic Party's Congressional District Conventions.

Each and every primary, they and they alone are the ones who determine the delegate count which is sent to the Michigan Democratic Party (I believe via the Executive Committee).

The Congressional Districts Conventions forwarded their delegate counts, based on their meeting to determine the intent of the voters and Michigan Democrats per District, and sent that to the Michigan Democratic Party.

The Michigan Democratic Party then sent that delegate allocation to the Rules & Bylaws Committee for consideration; and then the state party presented that delegate allocation as one of two proposals to the RBC meeting.

The members of the RBC voted to approve the proposal of the MDP which (a) kept the District Conventions delegate count, but (b) recognized the DNC sanctioning ability and recommended 1/2 vote per delegate.

This was not something created by the Obama campaign.

They certainly could have kept the Michigan delegate totals at the previously approved "zero" for everyone.

If you prefer zero, that was certainly a possibility.

However, the Michigan Democratic Party chose to send to the DNC's RBC the delegate allocation as established by their own process of allocated delegates, as they always do.

wtf: You may be a wonderful person, beloved by all who know you, but your comments above are among the stupidest things I've ever read in the whole of my life.