Dear Jeralyn, Armando (Big Tent Democrat), Jerome Armstrong, Taylor Marsh, etc.:
I’m confused about something. You all keep saying that it is vitally important that we count every vote before determining who the nominee should be. It’s a fine principle, and one that is familiar to all Democrats from the last two presidential elections. So, if we agree to count all the votes from Michigan and Florida and to seat all the delegates based on those votes, and Hillary Clinton is still behind in the pledged delegates (as she would inevitably be), it is my understanding that you then expect the superdelegates to vote overwhelmingly in the opposite direction, thereby not only countering, but reversing the will of the voters.
This strikes me as akin to George W. Bush joining Al Gore in insisting that every vote be counted in Florida, and then once the Electoral College flips to Gore, having the Supreme Court overrule the Electoral College and hand the presidency to George W. Bush anyway. Is there some sense in which I have this comparison wrong?
I know the superdelegates have the right to do this in a way that the Supreme Court probably did not. But it’s not the right I am talking about, but the principle. We all know that Al Gore didn’t deserve the presidency because he won the popular vote. If that were how presidential contests were decided, George W. Bush never would have campaigned in Delaware or any other vote-poor state. He would have stuck to campaigning in vote-rich states like California, hoping to limit Gore’s gains there.
It’s true that the superdelegates basically only exist to overturn the will of the people if they feel that is absolutely necessary. They really serve no other purpose, and that is what you are arguing they should do. But where I’m having trouble computing your argument is where you say that it is a violation of some sacred principle to deny the people of Florida and Michigan their votes, but not a violation of any sacred principle to overturn the will of all the people that have participated in the nominating process.
You might argue that there is a scenario where Clinton might be able to claim that she won the most votes if Florida and Michigan are counted in the most favorable way for Clinton. It’s a big if, but it could happen. But you have already signed on for another principle…that the superdelegates have absolute discretion to vote for whomever they want, regardless of the popular vote. So, you’re hardly arguing that the popular vote is sacrosanct.
It seems to me like you are just fighting for Clinton, and that is the only principle that you applying. If it helps her, you advocate it, and if it hurts her, you bemoan it. You’re not really arguing that the winner of the popular vote should automatically be crowned the victor. You are arguing the opposite in the case of the pledged delegates. So, what difference does it really make whether Florida and Michigan are counted?
Obviously, a failure to allow their delegates to participate in the convention might make it harder for the Democrats to compete in those states in the general election. But you don’t recognize the will of the overall electorate as decisive, so why do you care whether Florida or Michigan are seated this way or that…so long as they are seated?
Let me finish with just one more point. Since you are arguing that the superdelegates should overwhelmingly reject the will of the people, as expressed under the rules by the pledged delegates, don’t you recognize that the superdelegates already know the results (and the circumstances that led to the results) in Michigan and Florida? Is it really necessary for those results to be official for the superdelegates to disregard the overall results?
At bottom, you are only angling for numbers. You know that counting Florida and Michigan makes it possible for Clinton to win with less superdelegates choosing to disregard the will of the people.
So, correct me if I am wrong, but you really aren’t operating according to any principle at all.
Sincerely,
BooMan
I commented the other day that the MI and FL delegations would be dealt with fairly — and they will. They will be seated. The MI deal is a pretty good one (the best the Clintons are likely to get, anyway), and Obama, I believe, has said he would seat FL (probably as is). Everybody should be breathing a collective sigh of relief.
But the problem for the ‘HillBloggers’ (and the Clintons, too) is that these solutions don’t get her any closer to the nomination. I believe Jerome Armstrong wrote yesterday that he would be okay with Obama as the nominee, or something to that effect. (I think he was trying to distance himself emotionally from Clinton losing, I guess.) I hope all of them work their way through this in similar way. Marsh is even doing something of a juggling act herself, it seems.
McCain is the enemy. Sooner or later it comes down to Republicans vs. Democrats. Obama laid into Magoo pretty good today, and it’s a signal the real battle is commencing. Hillary’s supporters, inside the blogosphere and outside, will need time to mourn and come around. I’m willing to give it to them, for my part.
They sort of remind me of all the right-wing radio hosts who refused to accept McCain at first. Eventually they need to come around or they will just fade away.
Yeah, that’s right. Are they going to keep ranting about Obama when he’s the only thing standing between McCain and White House? Doubt it. (It looks like Mr. ‘Big Tent’, and the gang though, are of a mind to be pissy about the whole thing a little longer. “The MI proposal is unfair to Hillareeeeeeeeeee–!”)
It doesn’t really matter what they think in the long run and soon they will figure out that everyone has ALREADY moved on. If they want to continue to be the celebrity bloggers that they think they are, they’re gonna have to change their ways… or go away.
There is a point of diminishing returns. Steve Soto is trying to right the ship over at The Left Coaster and Turkana, while still snarling at all those dumb Obama supporters, is admitting a little of the reality around him. No sign of eriposte.
If they don’t get with the F’ing program, their readers will ultimately leave. The decision has been made about who is going to lead the party from here on out. It’s done. These folks can continue to beat their heads against the wall until they realize – within a couple weeks – that no one is listening to them anymore. And they are certainly not going to join the Losing Party – The Republicans. They are going to pull it together and actually start listening to what Obama has to say. I’m so sick of these idiots saying that no one knows anything about Obama. WE ALL do because we dared listen to it. They just stuck with the non-threatening white lady that reminded them of the good ol’ days. If they want to deal with the future, they’re just gonna have to learn to look forward, not backward. If they don’t, they’ll be sitting alone in their living rooms shouting at themselves and no one will have any idea about it because they are NO LONGER RELEVANT.
-sigh- It’s so hard to watch people go through the 5 stages of grief. They’re kind of stuck between “denial” and “anger” right now.
I have been unashamedly waaaaaay ahead of the curve in the blogosphere about Hillary Clinton.
Pro-Clinton bloggers need to have a Kubler-Ross intervention with their candidate
published on february the 20th
YOU ARE SUSPENDED for the remainder of the day!! Now excuse me while I continue to ignore Hillary’s race baiting.
What is this your second comment of the day, magster?
You are chattering. Off with you!
Bingo.
Bingo.
One problem Booman, you can’t reason with these fools.
Nope. They’re all about finding the ponies in
Iraqthe primary.In addition to BooMan’s point, they continue to talk about disenfranchising voters.
But what of the Obama voters who stayed home in Michigan and Florida? Are they not disenfranchised by validating results that his voters expected would not count?
No, instead, they totally, absolutely, entirely, utterly ignore this. Disenfranchisement only occurs when it’s Hillary’s voters. Just like the only voters that really count are whites without college degrees making less than 50,000 a year.
They are truly deranged.
Markos told all his readers to vote for Romney in the Michigan primary as his own form of Operation Chaos. I wrote at the time that I thought that was stupid, as well as telling Ben Masel that it was dumb to vote for Dodd, as he wouldn’t be viable at 15%. All Edwards and Obama voters should have showed up and voted ‘uncommitted’ because of just such a scenario where Clinton would seek to get the delegates counted.
Well, now that scenario has come to pass, and even the compromise solution would give Clinton a 10 delegate net advantage. But for the HillBloggers, all the people that followed Markos’ advice should be disenfranchised. And so should the people that were assured by Clinton that they results wouldn’t mean anything, and stayed home.
i have a question about that : what is it with americans and not writing in their candidate of their choice?
was it prohibited in the michigan race? couldn’t the obama and edwards voters write in their candidates?
when i hear people saying “i’ll vote for mccain if obama is the nominee” all i can think of them is as GOP plants, but … but … why throw the vote to a republican if you can write in your candidate of choice anyway?
Actually, in most races people are allowed to write in candidates not on the ballot. But for some reason the Michigan primary did not allow for write-ins and it was announced beforehand that any write-ins would not be counted. Weird, eh?
Clinton supporters also try to confuse the issue about why most of the Democratic candidates took their names off the Michigan ballot. I know I’m being repetitious but when they (along with Clinton) signed their pledges they agreed not to campaign or PARTICIPATE in Michigan and Florida. Edwards and Obama couldn’t take their names off the Florida ballot, but they could and did take their names off the Michigan ballot. Hillary didn’t. That should have been the first sign that she was who she was/is.
wow! isn’t that unconstitutional? are primaries not counted as falling under regular voting laws?
How a party chooses its candidates is an internal matter. The Constitution applies to general elections.
We use this system called Inka-Vote or Inka-Dot and it’s basically a scantron or old-time punch card. There’s no space to write in another candidate.
Guess what?
Thanks to electronic voting, those ballots get scanned. The scanner doesn’t recognize write-in votes.
You have to hope some campaign worker notices a write-in and bothers to do something about it, instead of pretending not to see and just scanning it in.
Sorry – I have no faith in our election workers. I’ve met some of them.
The electronic voting machines we have, all you do is type in a name.
I can’t say much else good about them.
Deranged and thuggish
WASHINGTON (Map, News) – Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides admitted Thursday they were consulted by their big donors before the group sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi containing a veiled threat that she would risk their financial support unless she reversed her view that superdelegates should follow the will of voters.
Campaign spokesman Phil Singer would not give the details of the exchange between Clinton aides and the group, which is made up of 21 wealthy Clinton backers, including prominent venture capitalist Steve Rattner and Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson.
Tell these assholes to take their money over to McCain. Oh yeah, he can’t take it.
Struck me as the same family of mindsets that the prolifers will fight to the death to protect the rights of the unborn but step aside when asked to honor life when it comes to putting our military in harm’s way or denying capital punishment.
Hillary says (as in this most recent letter):
Votes are not the issue here. The issue is fair elections, like say, where everyone is on the ballot. In Michigan, that wasn’t the case and therefore it wasn’t a fair election. Those votes should not count.
Hillary is talking like those “Democratic” Eastern European countries that regularly held “fair elections”, where everybody was allowe to vote shortly after World War II. Everybody knew it was a joke. Who would have thought that fifty years later a major Democrat [!] would be trying to make that case.
Hillary is using the following propaganda technique.
H. Clinton signed a pledge not to participate or campaign in those primaries in the context of the DNC declaring that those two primaries would not count.
So let’s not mince any words.
HILLARY CLINTON LIED TO THE DNC. Or, SHE BROKE HER PLEDGE, for no other reason than to get an advantage in the primaries. And after those bogus primaries her public position to endorse them encouraged the state parties to stand firm, thus ensuring that there wouldn’t be a real primary in either state.
Now her rejection of the Michigan compromise puts her standing in the way of seating a delegation for that state. Why? Because as long as the issue is alive, she’s alive.
Should we be surprised that people who ignore this self-serving dishonesty would construct some kind of hand-wringing over it? This hand-wringing is only for the benefit of Clinton’s candidacy. When Clinton blithely announced that if the Dems operated under the Republican winner-take-all rules that she would have won, where was the outrage at the non-representational aspect of that? No, they got out their calculators and figured that it would be better for Hillary so it was okey dokey.
It’s okay for Hillary to say that whites won’t vote for Obama after her “oppo research” dug up all the dirt that they could on Reverend Wright and kept feeding it to the press for a month. I gave her campaign the benefit of the doubt about that picture leaked to Drudge, but after a couple of months of the Clinton campaign I would now give the benefit of the doubt to Drudge’s version. Drudge? Clinton is knocking back shots with the entire vast right-wing conspiracy.
This is all very discouraging. Some of those people I actually used to respect. These people are practicing the basest of identity politics and daily they rationalize to themselves and demonize Obama and his supporters. How sad.
I think this campaign has been very instructive in telling us who in the blogosphere is honest and has principles, and who loses track of reality when their candidate is involved.
And quite honestly, with the exception of Jerome and SusanHu, I’m not at all surprised to see the other bloggers who lack scruples.
I see the problem as when does “spin” become “lying” to meet your purpose or goal. The spin is to allow those votes from MI and FLA to be counted, the lie is “count every vote” statement from the Hillary and her bloggers.
We know Obama played by the rules and Hillary did not. Obama and Edwards removed their names from the MI ballot and Obama did not campaign in FLA.
I see and additional problem of character and morals in the Clinton camp. Politics while competitive, you must at time accept the word of your opponent and nothing more. Hillary gave her “word” and then reneged on her promise not to count FLA and MI. If Hillary gives us her “word”/verbal promise to end the War in Iraq, can we really “trust” her.
It is posts like this that make this the first blog I read every day.
Please keep up the great work.
Oh heck yeah. I second that in a big way. And yes – this is my first stop too, always.
There are other blogs? Who knew.
Here’s a useful thought experiment:
Imagine that Obama had come out ahead in the FL and MI primaries.
Now try to imagine Hillary Clinton and her supporters and surrogates arguing that the will of the voters in those states must be respected and advocating passionately for the seating of those delegates.
It’s a bit of a stretch, eh?
BRAVO!
you are so much more articulate than me … and yet, i am still going to post my rant to the very people you’ve invoked.
still, thanks, at least i can bring it down a couple of notches 😀
please don’t bring it down a couple of notches. Set the volume right where it belongs!!
Most of us desperately want this primary contest to end, because we know just how devasted the Democratic Party would be if Hillary Clinton somehow gained the nomination. In our view, it would be catastrophic, probably the end of the Party as we know it.
But it dawned on me tonight that Hillary really doesn’t give a shit. If the Party imploded, she could continue living in her Republican-lite world, rubbing elbows with Joe Liebermann and Diane Feinstein and Rahm Emmanuel and the lobbyists in Washington. Our world would come to end, but hers wouldn’t. She would be more than happy to jettison the progressives, the African-Americans, the bloggers, the dirty hippies…
The notion that the Party is at grave risk right now is just not an issue for her and Bill. They like Washington just fine as it is.
can i quote you? seriously, i’d love to use this on a post.
Anyone remember a post I put up last week where I said that Hillary is now working to wreck the Democratic Party for her masters? Not for a college degree, for the people who own her.
Plan A: McCain. Republican.
Plan B: H. Clinton. Republican Lite.
Plan C: Destroy the Democratic Party.
We’re in Plan C now. Hillary is owned, and Plan B is out of reach now, so in order to get back to Plan A Hillary’s got to destroy the party.
Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has a great photoshop up. Obama at a rally captioned ‘Obama Nation’. Then McCain and Bush captioned ‘or abomination’.
Yes they are, they just won’t admit it.
They think Obama can’t win because he’s black. In the end they are so convinced that Obama will lose to McCain that they are willing to do anything to put Hillary as the nominee.
And who is implying “Obama can’t win because he’s black” anyway?
Why, the GOP. And they’ve fallen for it.
I think their “conviction” is based more on what they feel is a certain win agains t McCain for whoever the Dem nominee is than that Obama can’t win the general. All they need to do is overturn the primary election results, and they’re back in the White House.
Much like the “sure thing” they thought Hillary’s nomination would be.
Obama behind 40+ points in WV. Only Rasmussen shows him as anywhere near thirty.
Might have to adjust your calculations, WV is going to really really hurt.
She’ll probably win WV in the high 60’s and get a 19-9 split out of it. Obama picked up the same number of net delegates just in the past two days.
Alrighty, because looking back at your last major “math” post, you had it as 64-36 when right now it looks to be closer to 70-30. Looking at the county break downs demographically, Obama might actually fail to reach viability in a few places.
WV only has three congressional districts. The easternmost one includes the Washington suburbs. He’s not going to have any viability issues. Also, polls are kind of worthless in this media environment. I don’t expect her to reach 70%, but I’ll be kind of surprised if she doesn’t break 60%.
I actually think he has a bigger problem in Kentucky than West Virginia.