Obama '08?

Foxfyre wrote:

If Hillary was a man, her legs would not be an issue.

It is an issue nowadays, tho' I wish it were not, that people picked for public office have to be telegenic and this factor can and does trump some qualities which might seem more desirable attributes for the office in question.

I cite Dan Quale, Tony Blair and George W.

maporsche wrote:

A few things to consider for those here that are arguing that super-delegates should just vote along with the people.

1) The rules are not set up this way,

That's actually the point of the Op-Ed. Evidently the rules WERE set up this way, and the current gun-jumping is the subversion.

Butrflynet,

I've looked for that article today. It was there this morning. Do you know where to find it or who wrote it?

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

I have for quite sometime understood that charges of racism against anyone expressing conservative views are par for the course, but here's some truly friendly advice to all of you folks who claim to be friends, but who now find yourselves currently at odds. Calling someone a racist, calling their opinions racist, implying someone is a racist or implying their opinions are racist, while a favorite tactic to be used against the Right, is going to cause some serious bad feelings among you all. And if you take my advice and seriously consider whether a charge of racism is truly warranted, perhaps you will develop the habit and use it when debating conservatives.

I'm getting very confused again. Does anyone think I've called anyone a racist? What I wrote or meant to convey is that I think it's a good reason to vote for Obama because I was thinking functionally that it will be harder for the press to criticize Obama than it would be Clinton. Because they will be more afraid of being called a racist than a woman hater. That's all I meant. The argument in the article I read was that the Republicans won't be able to use some of their most effective tactics with Obama. Therefore it would be a reason for me or any of us (in addition to all the other reasons we may have) to vote for him in the primary.

sozobe wrote:

maporsche wrote:

A few things to consider for those here that are arguing that super-delegates should just vote along with the people.

1) The rules are not set up this way,

That's actually the point of the Op-Ed. Evidently the rules WERE set up this way, and the current gun-jumping is the subversion.

I think you're confusing the rules with this authors interpretation of what the DNC intended back in the 80's.

What the DNC may have intended vs the rules they invoked are two different things.

The rules were set up the way they are today, the SDs are following the rules as they were written.

After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party implemented changes in its delegate selection process, based on the work of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The purpose of the changes was to make the composition of the convention less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast during the campaign for the nomination.

These comprehensive changes left some Democrats believing that the role of party leaders and elected officials had been unduly diminished, weakening the Democratic ticket. In response, the superdelegate rule was instituted after the 1980 election. Its purpose was to accord a greater role to active politicians.[1]

In the 1984 election, the major contenders for the Presidential nomination were Gary Hart and Walter Mondale. Each of them won some primaries and caucuses. Hart was only slightly behind Mondale in the total number of votes cast, but Mondale won the support of almost all the superdelegates and became the nominee.[2]

The superdelegates have not always prevailed, however. In the Democratic primary phase of the 2004 election, Howard Dean acquired an early lead in delegate counts by obtaining the support of a number of superdelegates before even the first primaries were held. Nevertheless, John Kerry defeated Dean in a succession of primaries and caucuses and won the nomination.

For example, take New Hampshire just gone. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote (40%), and will take 3 state and 6 district delegates from that. Barrack Obama came second (36%) and still wins 3 and 6 delegates from that too. However, the superdelegates are not bound to follow what the voters decide, and can freely choose who they want. So while Clinton may have own the 9 delegates from the New Hampshire vote, she only won 2 superdelegates over during the process. Obama won 3 superdelegates. At the end of the day, Obama wins more delegates from the state, 12 to 11.

That makes all our candidates couragous and voters need to rise above these fears with them.

http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/pdfs/20060119_charter.pdf

A few things to consider for those here that are arguing that super-delegates should just vote along with the people.

1) The rules are not set up this way, and like FL/MI the candidates all agreed to the rules before running. If you're going to force FL and MI out of the race for breaking the rules, then criticize Clinton for trying to change the rules mid-stream.....well then, it seems a little strange to try to change the rules for SD also mid-stream just becuase it would seem to help your candidate.

2) Should the SD vote along the lines of the delegate count, or should they vote along the lines of the popular vote totals? And why? I mean we're talking about changing the rules here so there'd have to be some justification for picking one over the other.

SUPERDELEGATES....

Chris Bowers unleashes a cri de coeur against the possibility that superdelegates will end up determining the winner of the Democratic primary:

If someone is nominated for POTUS from the Democratic Party despite another candidate receiving more poplar support from Democratic primary voters and caucus goers, I will resign as local precinct captain, resign my seat on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, immediately cease all fundraising for all Democrats, refuse to endorse the Democratic "nominee" for any office, and otherwise disengage from the Democratic Party through all available means of doing so. This is not a negotiable position. If the Democratic Party does not nominate the candidate for POTUS that the majority (or plurality) of its participants in primaries and caucuses want it to nominate, then I will quit the Democratic Party.

I don't quite get this. The very existence of superdelegates assumes that they'll vote their own consciences, not merely parrot the results of the primaries. After all, why even have them if that's all they do?

More importantly, though, who decides what the popular will is anyway? Is it number of pledged delegates from the state contests? Total popular vote? Total number of states won? What about uncommitted delegates from primary states? Or caucus states, in which there's no popular vote to consult and delegates are selected in a decidedly nondemocratic fashion to begin with? And what about all the independent and crossover voters? Personally, I'd just as soon they didn't have a say in selecting the nominee of my party at all, but the rules say otherwise. If I'm a superdelegate, do I count their votes, or do I pore over exit polls to try to tease out how Democratic Party voters voted? And how do I take into account the obviously disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, two tiny states that have far more power than any truly democratic process would ever give them?

I'm not very excited at the idea of superdelegates deciding the nomination either, but the only way that will happen is if the primaries end up nearly tied in the first place. Then factor in the number of ways in which the primary/caucus process is nondemocratic from the get go, and it hardly seems practical to insist that superdelegates should all somehow divine a single "democratic" result from a very close race. I'm just not sure how you can do it. Better to simply respect them as human beings and party loyalists, and allow them to vote their consciences.

Better to simply respect them as human beings and party loyalists, and allow them to vote their consciences.

Better to simply respect them as human beings and party loyalists, and allow them to vote their consciences.