rabel22 wrote:Where is it written in the constitution that the democratic party has the right to tell the states when they can have their primaries. If they want to have them on January 1st its the states business. The fact a bunch of crooked politicians can tell me when I may vote in my state makes me think our system of government is morphing from a republic to a dictatorship.
ebrown is correct, political parties are not a government entity. So the state has jurisdiction over when to hold elections and they oversee the elections as a government function, but it is the party's responsibility to meet the criteria to be placed on the ballot. And the parties have their own ideas about when they want the elections to be held, so they did not get with some of the programs that states instituted.
I do have a question about the Democrats simply deciding they don't like the current setup or rules previously agreed upon for super delegates or certain states, and so now they are suggesting ways to make new rules. That doesn't strike me as fair. Like if I am losing the game, I simply suggest we draw up new rules and throw out some of the previous results? How ethical is that? No matter how screwed up or unfair it was, it would seem it should be too late to change the rules now. They should go with what they have already arranged in my opinion. If I am playing a basketball game and it appears the 3 pointer is too easy, how do you scrap the 3 pointer in the middle of the game?
Hillary and her camp are the only Democrats trying to change the rules.
It may be true that I don't understand the election system. But as a lifelong democrat I sure as hell can not vote for the person that the political hacks have chosen for the democrats. Caucasus are too easily controlled by small gropes of people and don't really express the will of all the people. Only the ones who can afford and are healthy enough to travel. I know enough about our political system to know it needs to be revamped so it address the will of all the people instead its most wealthy.
rabel22 wrote:It may be true that I don't understand the election system. But as a lifelong democrat I sure as hell can not vote for the person that the political hacks have chosen for the democrats. Caucasus are too easily controlled by small gropes of people and don't really express the will of all the people. Only the ones who can afford and are healthy enough to travel. I know enough about our political system to know it needs to be revamped so it address the will of all the people instead its most wealthy.
rabel, the young energetic Obama groupees that are very ardent helped him do very well in the caucuses, so I agree caucuses are places where well organized campaigns with ardent supporters can do well. I am not sure this is altogether bad. It has advantages and disadvantages.
Also, the way I see it, the super delegates are a bunch of old political hacks that have been vested with power to help nominate the person the party hacks want, rather than the common everyday voter out here. Whether they would admit it or not, it is a tinge of socialist type party practices coming into play here. They don't really trust the everyday voter to elect the best nominee. But now that the system is exposed for what is really going on, it puts them in the hot seat to figure out how to explain it or do it the way they want.
okie wrote:rabel22 wrote:It may be true that I don't understand the election system. But as a lifelong democrat I sure as hell can not vote for the person that the political hacks have chosen for the democrats. Caucasus are too easily controlled by small gropes of people and don't really express the will of all the people. Only the ones who can afford and are healthy enough to travel. I know enough about our political system to know it needs to be revamped so it address the will of all the people instead its most wealthy.
rabel, the young energetic Obama groupees that are very ardent helped him do very well in the caucuses, so I agree caucuses are places where well organized campaigns with ardent supporters can do well. I am not sure this is altogether bad. It has advantages and disadvantages.
Also, the way I see it, the super delegates are a bunch of old political hacks that have been vested with power to help nominate the person the party hacks want, rather than the common everyday voter out here. Whether they would admit it or not, it is a tinge of socialist type party practices coming into play here. They don't really trust the everyday voter to elect the best nominee. But now that the system is exposed for what is really going on, it puts them in the hot seat to figure out how to explain it or do it the way they want.
Given our track record I'm not sure I trust the everyday voter either.... I include myself in that...
rabel22 wrote:It may be true that I don't understand the election system. But as a lifelong democrat I sure as hell can not vote for the person that the political hacks have chosen for the democrats. Caucasus are too easily controlled by small gropes of people
Not that small.
The Minnesota caucuses drew 212,000 participants.
The Colorado caucuses drew 119.000 participants.
The New Mexico caucuses drew 140,000 participants.
Even in Nebraska, almost 39,000 people participated.
In state after state after state, turnout broke all historical records, as precincts were flooded with voters, many of whom had never taken part before.
The image that the Clinton is trying to conjure up of some shady smoke-filled backrooms where political hacks and insiders cooked up the results among themselves in these caucuses is just ridiculous. Not just is it nowhere near the truth, but it also insults the masses of voters, including a whole wave of new participants altogether, who crowded to these events to take part.
Moreover, to dismiss those throngs of regular people as just insiders whose choice shouldnt really count is an insane election strategy, considering that any Democratic candidate will direly need all those new voters and prospective volunteers when the general election is on. Hillary is damaging the party's interests with such spin.
Unfortunately, state parties where caucuses were held, who probably just never expected one of the candidates who signed off on the whole process to turn against it during the campaign, have added a problem. The states listed above have recorded the actual number of individual voters - six-digit numbers as you can see. But in many other states, including Iowa and Nevada, nobody counted how many people came to the caucuses in all. The only numbers recorded were those of the select number of delegates voted in during the caucus as representatives for each precinct, who then went on to determine how the state's delegates to the national Democratic convention are distributed.
The result is that in any state-by-state listing of results, you will see huge primary turnouts listed next to the much smaller numbers for states like Iowa and Nevada, with only a footnote at best signalling that the latter actually represent only 1/5th or 1/10th or 1/50th of the total turnout in that state. That also makes any tally of "the popular vote" deceptive, since caucus voters are systematically underrepresented in those.
The great fun about this issue (other than I am practically guaranteed to win by bet with Cyclo) is that the Democrats created it for themselves.
Jesse Jackson runs and, afterwards, the Party is persuaded to run a primary system that is ultra-democratic: Proportionality.
And yet, the clever Party insists upon a failsafe should the great unwashed overwhelmingly choose someone that resonates with all the funky aspects of their insipid and ignorant positions. Hence, the super-delegates, party regulars who are granted the power to override the idiotic popular preference.
The Party worked hard to deprive Jesse and Al Sharpton from securing the nomination. The nuclear superdelegate option was never contemplated to be invoked because the smug Party leaders were sure that an African-American (or Latino, or Lesbian, or Eco-Maniac) would never rise to the nomination.
But a mulatto has.
Never-the-less the same principle for super-delegate participation ( a rational check against the foment of the masses), is if Hillary has anything to say about it, to be shortly evoked.
Obama is in trouble.
But if the Clintons figure out a way to rob Obama, there is going to be a massive problem created for the party, to the point of mutiny. Do you think the Clintons and their minions are that devoted to winning that they would say, "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead?" Maybe they think Obama will fall in line and accept vp, and all will be healed? Are they that naive?
Never look a gift horse in the mouth. This could be the best thing to ever happen to the Republicans, as it is something that has the ability to open the eyes of millions of voters to finally see the truth about their own party, something the Republicans or talk radio could never accomplish.
pray, to what elusive truth do you refer?
Finn dAbuzz wrote:The great fun about this issue (other than I am practically guaranteed to win by bet with Cyclo) is that the Democrats created it for themselves.
Jesse Jackson runs and, afterwards, the Party is persuaded to run a primary system that is ultra-democratic: Proportionality.
And yet, the clever Party insists upon a failsafe should the great unwashed overwhelmingly choose someone that resonates with all the funky aspects of their insipid and ignorant positions. Hence, the super-delegates, party regulars who are granted the power to override the idiotic popular preference.
The Party worked hard to deprive Jesse and Al Sharpton from securing the nomination. The nuclear superdelegate option was never contemplated to be invoked because the smug Party leaders were sure that an African-American (or Latino, or Lesbian, or Eco-Maniac) would never rise to the nomination.
But a mulatto has.
Never-the-less the same principle for super-delegate participation ( a rational check against the foment of the masses), is if Hillary has anything to say about it, to be shortly evoked.
Obama is in trouble.
Finn calls the Democrats ignorant then uses the term
mulatto. Finn,the A2K gift that keeps on giving.
As well, he implies that the super-delegate system was put in to prevent a Sharpton or Jackson nomination. Then he ignorantly states that that "Party leaders" were sure that an African-American or otherwise undesirable in Finn's ignorant view would never seriously compete for the nomination. One wonders than why they would put the system in place, wouldn't one?
And Finn, thanks for continuing to expose us to your profound epicaricacy.
snood wrote:pray, to what elusive truth do you refer?
The truth is that the Dems are a diverse coalition with a large umbrella. A coalition whose diversiity leads to a lot of in fighting. The Republican Party is a party of rich, white people and not-so rich white people who embrace the snob appeal of the Republican Party and walk together blindly in lock step.
As War Neared in 2003 -- Hillary Was Silent
Posted March 16, 2008 | 11:41 AM (EST)
by Greg Mitchell
Wherever you stand on the Obama/Clinton race, one thing nearly everyone agrees on is this: She voted for the war resolution in 2002, has not apologized for that vote since - but now says the resolution did not really authorize the war and calls the 2003 invasion a mistake. But what did she do in attempting to halt the war - which she felt she did not authorize -- in the two weeks before it began? Apparently, nothing.
With fifth-anniversary coverage now in full swing, I probed The New York Times' online archives today from March 6 to March 23 in 2003 (the war started on March 19), looking for evidence. Numerous articles involving the junior senator from New York turned up, but most related to subjects pretty far afield from the war: from abortion to the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!The only Clinton statement about the war in the Times - as the countdown arrived - came in a revealing roundup of local officials' views written by Joyce Purnick. She found several top New York officeholders strongly against the war (such as Rep. Rangel), and a few okaying it. But here is her summary of Hillary's views:
"The award for the most indefinite position has to go to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. When her press secretary, Philippe Reines, was asked her position, he sent a transcript of Mrs. Clinton's remarks last Friday on CNN and a news account of her comments on Monday during a visit to Watervliet, N.Y. (It seems that the senator, still a bit first ladylike, is reluctant to pick up the phone.)
"She said on CNN that the president ''made the right decision to go back to the United Nations''' and suggested that the country 'take a deep breath, deal with Iraq if we have to, understand exactly what we've gotten ourselves into, because in the briefings I've received, there's a lot of unknowables.'
"In Watervliet, the senator said, 'This is a very delicate balancing act.' And, 'I fully support the policy of disarming Saddam Hussein.' She also urged the administration 'to try to enlist more support.'
"A skeptic might conclude that Mrs. Clinton wants to appeal to her antiwar constituents in New York now, and to a broader base later -- if she runs for president. Or maybe she remains conflicted."
A little over a week later, on March 14, this letter appeared in the Times, from Susana Margolis of New York City: "It's increasingly evident that the likely invasion of Iraq is only secondarily about the variously offered objectives, from weapons of mass destruction to ''liberation.' Rather, it represents a historic change in United States foreign policy: the establishment of an American garrison to carry out policy goals in western Asia by military means.
"The president should come clean on the administration's true intentions, and it is the Senate's duty to debate the issue. Yet there's not a word. New York's senators, having voted for the resolution last year authorizing the use of force in Iraq, appear to have lost their voices entirely. History will record that when the country effected a sea change in its posture toward the world, Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles E. Schumer were nowhere to be found."
Nothing else related to Iraq and Clinton turns up in the Times' archive until a week later. Skip ahead to just after the war began, to a March 23 news story: "In New York City, about 35 members of a group called Westsiders for Peace sang, prayed and protested at lunchtime outside the Third Avenue offices of Senators Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Complaining that the senators supported the war, the protesters carried manila file folders that bore messages like, ''Who represents us if our senators aren't listening?'''
Finn dAbuzz wrote:The Party worked hard to deprive [..] Al Sharpton from securing the nomination.
Umm.... How would Sharpton ever have remotely approached securing the nomination, superdelegates and the like or not? Remind me how many votes he ever got?
Sharpton was entertainment, but to say he would ever have had a credible path to the nomination, from which he was just "deprived" by the party machine, is fairly out in leftfield.
nappyheadedhohoho wrote:The Deep Blue Divide
For months, Democrats were just thrilled with their choices. Now they can't even stand to sit together.
Julia Baird
NEWSWEEK
Mar 15, 2008
A fair enough article, but then there's this bit:
Quote:According to exit polling in the Texas primary, 91 percent of Clinton supporters said they would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee; 87 percent of Obama fans said they would be dissatisfied with Clinton.
I really, really wish journalists would learn to interpret simple stats. The
the exit poll in Texas said no such thing.
What the exit poll said (scroll down to about three-quarters down the page) is that Clinton voters made up 91% of those who would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee. Well, duh - there's not many Obama voters who would be dissatisfied with him as nominee. But Clinton voters
also made up 31% of those who
would be satisfied with Obama as nominee.
Same the other way round. Obama voters made up 87% of those who would be dissatisfied with Hillary as nominee - thats self-evident. The only surprise is that Hillary voters actually made up as much as 10% of those who would be dissatisfied with her as nominee. Perhaps Republican cross-over voters heeding Rush Limbaugh's call to cross over and vote for Hillary just to get the less electable Democrat nominated. But Obama voters
also made up 32% of those who would be
satisfied with Hillary as nominee.
And in both cases, the group of voters who would be satisfied with the candidate was about twice as large as the group of voters who would be dissatisfied.
A
little calculating shows that this means that in actual fact, just 52% of Obama voters in Texas said they'd be dissatisfied if Hillary were to be the nominee, and 59% of Hillary voters saying the same about Obama as nominee. Kind of wholly changes the story, huh?
You really should contact Newsweek and straighten them out. They're obviously in need of a bit of hand-slapping.
The media in this country have no idea how to handle simple statistics. It would be funny if this were a one off, but it happens all the time.
Stats.org is a good site tracking media statistical errors.
