Political Punch

Hoosier Sue, Kevin Bard, Bishop*, seah, sunshinevoter, yawn, Texasdelegate, Katrina*, ConcientiousObjector (CO I am in with this plan, I am pretty well known in my community and I have spread the word), Oxycon and DavidH. I love to see your posts! Katrina and Bishop yours has an asterick because I always agree with you and I have read a lot of your posts.

One more thing. Get rid of the caucuses! They are clearly not representitive of the people who will vote in the general election and are easily manipulated by a handful of people. All caucuses do is confuse the process. Texas is the perfect test case, where Hillary won the primary but lost the caucuses.

Better yet, get rid of the Democratic party leadership. They clearly cannot run a national nominating process.

Here is the bottom line. Only Democrats could come up with a primary system that is inherently set up to take two great candidates and make them tear each other apart for nearly a year.

First, we have proportion allocation of delegates, which may be a good idea in theory. As we see, however, it is also great in creating stalemate. If, like the Republicans, we had a winner-take-all system of allocating delegates this thing would be over already, since Hillary took most of the big states. Another thing is the super delegates. They were created to give the party regulars more say in the nomination process. The problem is, removing delegates from the pool of elected delegates and making them unlected super delegates gives us exactly what we have now, stalemate.

On top of an inherently idiotic primary system, we have clueless DNC leaders. These people permitted Florida and Michigan to vote for delegates who would not be seated, and still have not found a way to resolve this issue. You cannot treat two major states this way.

Clearly, the Democratic party is not ready to lead this country.

Electoral and caucus votes should be obsolete. They detract from the will of the people. Both should be relics from the past, from the olden and early days of the republic when the founders thought the citizens weren't ready for the popular vote. Isn't it time that the simple majority vote decides without all this extraneous and confusing stuff of the caucus, delegate, electoral, and super delegate voting?

Has it occurred to anyone there is NO perfectly fair way to select a nominee?

I think this 'mixture of methods' does a pretty good job, considering the alternatives. And yes, I think caucuses work better in some areas than others, and primaries work better in some areas than others. One size does NOT fit all.

Caucuses are undemocratic. They are noisy, time consuming affairs that exclude large blocs of voters - the elderly, working people, parents of young children - gee, all those reliably democratic voters. To the voters in Primary states, the caucus process seems weird and elitist.

Oxycon -- "crooked caucus machine"? I don't understand. Hillary Clinton is one of the most capable politicians in the country, and the Clintons have been at the top of the Democratic party power structure for almost 20 years. How can she complain that Barack Obama was better organized than she was? She knew all the same rules for the contests as he did; she simply lost. It's sour grapes to complain, after the fact, about the system. The same goes for FL and MI; she only complained *after* losing.

Caleb, James Carville first suggested joint Clinton camp/Obama camp funding on national TV on one of the Sunday morning political programs. I know that I saw it first-hand in real time. The Obama supporter just hemmed and hawed around, though the moderator kept pressing for an answer. Obama doesn't want FL and MI to be heard because he's afraid to let the people speak. Since that joint offer, Carville has offered to have Clinton backers pay 100% for a MI re-vote.

Obama supporters who whine about how a re-vote wouldn't be fair have absolutely no problem with the fact that doing nothing (or somehow concluding that dividing delegates evenly is a solution) is even less fair.

This fact may be lost on Obamaites, but believe me, it isn't lost on Clinton supporters, FL and MI voters, and people who recognize racism and 20 years of acceptance for what it is and wish they had their votes back. Which hits the nail squarely on the head. I actually heard someone say that a re-vote isn't fair because this is a different time from the original voting date - meaning we're now in the Wright Era of Enlightenment.

Bill is right!! Obama does not win primaries, because moveon.org can not fix them as well as caucuses!

The caucuses do not represent the state, just look at TX.

If we cut to the chase, the Clinton camp would prefer to just rewrite the rules now to go back and count only the votes cast for Hillary. Well too bad, Slick, this kind of "game the rules" while the contest is still running gambit ain't gonna work any better for you now than it did for your protoge down in Florida in the election he tried to steal before discovering his higher calling to chill the globe. Adios piano legs. Wonder how long the people of NY will keep electing ya?

I was on Bill Clinton's conference call. There was no "fuzzy math" involved, as suggested in the report. It was clear to anyone with a brain that he was simply pointing out that the caucus process involves a small number of voters, who are not necessarily representative of their States. Therefore, Democrats should consider that fact in their decision-making process. It is the news media (including, or maybe "especially" ABC) with the fuzzy math. Have you noticed how the meida never mentions that the voters of Florida and Michigan(who had no choice of when their primary election was scheduled) have had their votes excluded from the delegate count, and how many delegates that removes from Hillary? When will the News Media return to reporting the news? It should be called the "Daily Speculation" or the "Daily Brainwashing" or both!

oxycon admit it Obama organized a better campaign then Clinton; if Bill wasn't a former president and Hillary's husband she would not have won as much as she has...she would not make a good president of US; do you think other countries aren't watching????

hoosiersue it isn't that simple, part of the problem was that voters who had voted republican because they had no say in the democratic primary will not be allowed to vote again which is illegal to prevent people from voting please did a little deeper before spewing "wisdom" (tongue in cheek)

Other ideas?

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Yeah, eliminate undemocratic caucuses.
Hillary won Texas by a sizable margin, yet Obama got more delegates because of his crooked caucus machine.
When Democrats vote in democratic primaries, Hillary easily wins 99% of the time.
Obama has successfully gamed the system.
He won't be able to pull that off in the general election, though.

Advise noted and appreciated.

I witnessed firsthand at my precinct station in Texas some very underhanded and aggressive ploys by Obama supporters during the caucusing. So I am one to advocate popular vote in making the final decision. What I witnessed at my precinct on the caucus night may have been a microcosm of what was happening nationwide. I will be one of the Clinton supporters to defect to McCain if it would turn into a close race between him and Obama, even thought I am at odds with most of McCain's idealogy. My McCain support would be in response to the disrespect shown to the caucus voting process by Obama suporters earlier this
month.

Harold Ickes of the Clinton campaign VOTED TO EXCLUDE FL and MI under DNC rules.

The Clinton campaign started talking about "disenfranchisment" ONLY when she started losing.

But this started with Ickes' vote, and no doubt, Hillary's approval.

No one to blame but themselves, so "SADDLE UP".

With pronouncements like these, it's amazing the media still take Bill seriously...he's become a joke. so, sad.

This doesn't even really deserve a comment. The Clintons are now beyond parody.