I guess someone should have told the DNC to warn all the citizens whose states held caucuses that their votes would not count in the end, since what apparently "really" mattered were primaries which led to a popular vote count which should be the "real" measure listened to by the 'superdelegates' in order to choose their nominee.

So if the only state contests which "really" mattered were those who chose to run primaries, even though the DNC allows caucuses as perfectly fine ways of choosing candidates, can those state citizens "disenfranchised" by their state parties (whose choice of caucuses voids their citizens' count in the 'popular vote' campaign) sue the DNC for some sort of fraud or improper certification of a state contest?

It would be like saying after a basketball game that you counted all baskets as 1 point and your team won because they put the ball through the hoop more times, and not factoring three-pointers and free throws.

Beat LA!

It's worse than even what the other two posters write. Her argument hasn't just changed now, but day to day, week to week and month to month all to serve her campaign. Right now, if this is how they planned to govern, I glad we dodge this bullet because we just went through 8 years of up is down, black is white.

It would be like saying after a basketball game that you counted all baskets as 1 point and your team won because they put the ball through the hoop more times, and not factoring three-pointers and free throws.

Well, no. It would be like if basketball had, in addition to regular points, judges who gave teams more points at the end of the game, based on whatever criteria they wanted to use. And then one team argued that, despite scoring fewer points on the floor, they played with better fundamentals, they ought to get more of the extra points. Which is a ludicrous situation, of course, and that's why these sports analogies don't work.

It's called Calvinball, except Calvin won at Calvinball. Hillary will not.
-j

It would be like if basketball had, in addition to regular points, judges who gave teams more points at the end of the game, based on whatever criteria they wanted to use. And then one team argued that, despite scoring fewer points on the floor, they played with better fundamentals, they ought to get more of the extra points.

So more like boxing, then? Or at least gymnastics?

I dissent.

Sure, the nomination is decided by delegates. And in this case, since the two remaining candidates have split the pledged delegates fairly equally, the nomination will be decided by the superdelegates, who may cast their votes for whomever they want, using whatever criteria they want


Clinton's strategy (or one of them) for the last few weeks has been to argue that the candidate who receives the most votes in the primaries represents the considered choice of the rank and file of the party and that superdelegates should thus cast their vote with that candidate.

Obama's campaign has been arguing that the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end of the primaries represents the considered choice of the rank and file of the party and that the superdelegates should thus cast their vote for that candiate.

Now, as it turns out, the superdelegates have been buying Obama's argument and not Clinton's. But Clinton's isn't absurd.

No worries, Ezra.

The majority of the Party who voted for Clinton are mainly the working class folks you think the Democratic Party is better off without.

It's a win-win proposition from your standpoint.

Changing the rules of the game mid-stream isn't just a flaw in Clinton's argument, it is a flaw in the Democratic party. Isn't that what this weekend was about? The DNC set a harsh penalty that it didn't have the fortitude to carry out. As a result, we are left with two illegitimate contents with the votes and delegates counting anyway.

"The majority of the Party who voted for Clinton are mainly the working class folks you think the Democratic Party is better off without."

When did the Clintons become the champions of the "working class folk" that you idealize so, Petey?

Because, presumably unlike you, I was a voting, pro-working class Democrat in the 1990s, only to have Bill Clinton shit all over us and move the Democratic Party towards a more friendly policy stance regarding the wealthy and multinational corporations.

I'm serious, educate me. What about Hillary's deathbed conversion to fiery populist has you so convinced that the interests of working class people really would be her top priority as president?

I dissent also. Yes, it's the delegates but since neither one can win by elected delegates alone, the superdelegates get to decide. And popular vote can be a consideration if they wish it to be. They don't "have" to do anything. Many are breaking for him and that's fine. But her argument is worth considering.

Take Idaho, for example. 8290 caucus goers elected 18 delegates. Now Idaho will vote Blue in a presidential election when hell freezes over. Then look at West VA - 240,000 primary voters elected 28 delegates. There's not just a little risk in ignoring this kind of math.

Regards.

No worries, Ezra.

The majority of the Party who voted for Clinton are mainly the working class folks you think the Democratic Party is better off without.

It's a win-win proposition from your standpoint.

Posted by: Petey | June 2, 2008 1:25 PM

Ah, the Republican fantasist reappears. Have you earned you John McCain t-shirt yet, Petronella? I assume that you can now reveal your real candidate - Senator McDodo - rather than pretending to be a Democrat.

Luko,

And I can just adjoin: Puerto Rico, 53 delegates, no electoral college votes.

The whole system is insane.

To be fair, Clinton is not exactly trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. What she's doing is trying to find some metric to support an argument to the superdelegates that they should vote for her.

Granted, using that metric is not at all persuasive, because as you point out the primary process is not set up to measure popular votes and the candidates therefore did not set up their campaigns to maximize popular votes. But to say she's trying to change the rules in the middle of the game is overstating things a bit. It's enough to say that it's a meaningless metric, and the superdelegates should ignore it.

Nate's right, of course, and so is Aaron.

"The Clinton campaign is trying to change the game," Ezra claims. No, the game all along was that if no one got a majority, the SDs would decide it on by whatever criteria they chose.

To stick with the woeful analogy, our awful system is like a basketball game, a semi-final match decided by points, unless no one got to eighty, in which case the decision would be tunred over to the referee would could base the decision on points--that seemed the most logical and fair to most people--but he could also tecide that the team with fewer points is stronger and had better chance of winning the final game--all right, enough. The point is, it's perfectly honorable and logical for the Clinton team to argue that the popular vote totals should be considered by the SDs. Unfortunately for them, the totals are shaky. But if it were widely accepted that Hillary had gotten, say, a million more voters than Obama--things would be very different, and Ezra would be writing a different post.

Petey's commitment to the Party is greater than that of his beloved salt o'the earth working class Democrats, plenty of whom told exit pollsters they'd vote for McCain in November, even if Clinton was on the ballot.

All that's left is to find out whether it takes longer for Petey to retire his InTrade debt than it does Clinton to retire her campaign debt.

I'm not much for sports analogies, but all of this has reminded me of arguments I used to have with my sister about Scrabble. She had a deep and abiding hatred of the 50-point bonus for seven-letter words. In any game in which I made a seven-letter word, if I won by less than 50 points, she would say I didn't "really" win. Now apart from the fact that the rules are the rules, this would always ignore the fact that if the 50-point bonus didn't exist, I would have made different words, since many of the seven-letter words use very common letters and have low point totals apart from the 50-point bonus. So even if you wanted to disregard the seven-letter rule, you couldn't do it simply by deducting 50 points from my score. This seems like the same sort of situation to me - Hillary has a deep (and I believe principled) opposition to the caucus system, and a less deep and less principled opposition to the Florida/Michigan penalties, so she wants to just deduct all those points from Obama's score. In her view, she's played the Z, the Q, the X and the J (ie California, New York, new Jersey and Pennsylvania) on triple-word scores, while he's sneaked ahead of here with a bunch of 7-letter words made out of Es and Ts.

Kevin

One of the reasons I am becoming hardcore on this is disingenuous arguments by people like you. What you wrote might fly if I hadn't been paying attention for most of the primary season. To me, a former Edwards supporter (and again someone who until May 6th could have careless whether it was Clinton or Obama), you are just throwing whatever shit against the wall you can to see what sticks, and hoping people are too dumb to figure it out. For the record, her arguments are principled- to be principled they can't change from week to week to week to suit what she thinks advantages her. Here's an example of a principled response- since you seem incapable of understanding it. The principled response is to figure out a metric regardless of candidate for who has the best case for having won the primary. That means all states, all votes, etc. It doesn't mean ignore 14 states and claim you are for democratic values.

I was just thinking how much smoother the Republican primary was planned and executed instead of the goatfuck we have with the Democrats.

I am not sure how someone as smart as Ezra could continually post things that are this stupid and ignorant, but he has proven time and time again that he is capable of a level of stupidty and ignorance I thought was reserved only for the right wing noise machine.

There is no doubt that delegates will decide the nomination, no one has ever contested that. Some of those will be pledged delegates, some will be super or automatic delegates. Those superdelegates can decide on whatever they choose, and many people I am sure would fine it totally reasonable for one of them to come out and say I cast my vote for Candidate A because they had more popular votes throughout this process. That will be somewhat difficult to do because the process is a joke and makes it very difficult to determine who is actually ahead in the popular vote. But you have got to be a complete moron to suggest as Ezra does in this disgraceful post that a superdelegate who did say well I voted for Obama because he is ahead in the popular vote had done something illegitmate. This claim that someone is trying to change the rules during the middle of the game is ludicrous because the argument being made is to superdelegates about how they should decide their votes, and there are no rules for that. The superdelegates can decide however they want. Given that it would be impossible to change that rule, unless you were to suggest that their was only one choice the superdelegates could make.

Any superdelegate could choose either Clinton or Obama and they would be TOTALLY JUSTIFIED in that choice based upon the fact that in every significant way there is little to seperate the two candidates in terms of support from the electorate. The supers have broken in favor of Obama because the prevailing narrative is that the black community will not accept any outcome other than Obama being the nominee. This has been perpetuated by the press and the Obama camp and somehow we are supposed to believe that having a lead in pledged delegates entitles one to the nomination. That is just bull. Having the number of delegates required, no matter pledged or super does that. Obama has extorted that out of the party through threats of mass defection and backlash if we were denied that support because he had a lead in plegded delegates. The supers will not deny Obama because they all know that the talk of unity was bull and that if Obama was not coronated by the superdelegates the black community would have en mass turned against the party. The superdelegates are making the only decision the party could make, it can afford to have that happen, but lets call a spade a spade and not try to cover up the pure power play being made by the Obama forces through the use of the race issue. The superdelegates must give in to the Obama camp and give him the nomination because they know if they do what they were created to do and vote for the better candidate the party will lose the support of its most loyal group of supporters. We all also know that Michigan has never held a legtimate nominating contest and as such should not have any representation at the national convention. That could not be allowed to happen because that would hurt Obama's chances in the fall, so the DNC had to make up rules that would allow it to allocate delegates to a state that never provided its citizens an opportunity to participate in the process. Actually, that needs to be reworded, because it was not the state of Michigan who did that, ot was Barack Obama who did that. By taking his name off the ballot in Michigan and blocking revotes Obama ensured that there would never be a legtimate nominating contest in Michigan. Without such a contest Michigan should have no delegates to the convention, but that would be blamed on Obama and we can't have that, can we? There is only one choice for the Democratic Party in 2008, it MUST nominate Barack Obama. A corrupt system has ensured that. Let's at least have the respect for the truth to admitt that, and better yet have the sense to make sure that disgrace of a system is changed before it can ever create another mess like it did this year.

akasion-
You are totally full of it. Clinton has never argued that the superdelegates should vote for her or the process would be illegitimate, that is the lie Obama and his forces have perpetuated about him getting the nomination. Clinton is only giving reasons why they superdelegates should vote for her, not why they would be illegitimate not to. That has always come from the Obama camp. Clinton never said the superdelegates should vote for the person with the most plegded delegates, or simply the person who is winning the popular vote. She has said they should vote for her because she is the strongest candidate and used many arguments including the popular vote to support that claim. Her principle has never changed, select the candidate best able to beat John McCain and ready to be President. The evidence she has offered has changed, but that is because thay evidence is not static but rather is something that changes as the primaries continue.

And for god's sake please stop defending the caucuses. They are a disgrace to democracy and we know have evidence from 4 states (WA, NB, ID, and TX) that they have vastly different outcomes then when truly democratic contests are held. You may not want the superdelegates to consider that, you may feel entitled to the fruits of a corrupt system (obviously after th Michigan decision we know Obama is), but that does not mean that the superdelegates have to be. You couldn't hold a caucus to pick the nominee for dog catcher, but we hold them to select the nominee for President? If they are so great why don't we get all the states to use them to select the electors in the general election. I am sure the Republicans would support that whole heartily.

Anonymous:

Paragraph breaks are your friend.

Which is not to say that your comments would sound any less lunatic than they do if properly formatted.

akasion- obviously I wasn't making myself clear. I was trying to make the point that HRC's position doesn't make sense (believe me, I just spent a 14-hour day as a volunteer lawyer for Obama at the Texas Credentials Committee challenges, I found all the arguments by HRC supporters untenable). I used the word "principled" to distinguish the fact that, from everything I've read, HRC has always hated caucuses (although admittedly never did anything about it), just as my sister has always hated the seven-letter rule. By contrast, the outrage over Florida and Michigan seems almost completely situational.

It's not principled if she contests it only when she thinks she's lost them. It's certainly not principled to be a part of the process for setting up rules that you think will advantage you, and then to only fight then when you have lost. As a lawyer, I think you will appreciate this phrase, "if you seek equity, you must do equity." Doubly so when talking about voting.

I don't need to defend or not defend the caucuses. They are a part of the process that she accepted when she thought she had a chance of winning them. The only things that's changed when she had a chance to fight them earlier is that she has since lost them. Please don't lecture me abuot democracy when that's not your interest. Democracy isn't "I" , it's 'we"

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!

it's now being report that clinton may suspend her campaign by tommorrow.

As for El Cid wrote-

that's part of the problem with their argument. Are they saying they have a problem with liberal representative democracies? this is to me a dumbing down of the conversation that has been happening over a long time with the American people.

To some degree our democratic structure isn't meant to be direct majoritarian democracy. yet way to many people from gay marriage to this thinks if a majority believes it- thats the end of the discussion.

I suspect they know that this works off of the ignorance of the listener couple with strong partisans who want Clinton and are searching for some reason to feel justified in their anger over having lost.

there are problems with the system. a lot of reform needs to happen. but this isn't about that at all. its just throw agaisnt the wall to win.

Akaison, speaking of "we" what have you done lately for "we," other than bash Clinton supporters. Wanna move that along?

Akaison and El Cid are a tag team. Paid, Sockpuppets or Lovers?

I was just thinking how much smoother the Republican primary was planned and executed

Yes, El Vag, it took great planning by the RNC to ensure that Pope Rudy would bet the farm on Florida, Fred Thompson would campaign like a corpse, and Romney would earn the hatred of his competitors.

Someone give a cookie to the GOP hack who came up with a process to choose the oh-fuck-it option.

The world sees that the Democrats cannot even plan a primary. After whining about "every vote counts" and screaming "democracy", they now will trash all of that for expediency's sake and the sake of making a social statement by nominating an inexperienced newcomer by any measure.

I think Harriet sums it up best....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACQuZVAE3s

Lamp Chop/Hush Puppy: "Boo hoo hoo hoo hooo, no fer they iz peepul sayin stuf i don lyk i gues i now call 'em fag ha ha ha ha ha i funny!"

Actually what I want to do is to give you a dictionary and a cross. The first so that you can look up the difference between constructive criticism and bashing. The second so that every time you are feeling bashed you can get up on the cross to act like proper victim.

thank god el va is around. were it not for fred, we would think there was some danger of us losing this year. but he reminds us that no matter how messed up we are- the GOP is thankfully outcompeting us in the "how fucked is my our party" category.