Letters to the Editor
Uncle Fester
Published Letters: 1346 Editor's Choice: 12
-
@lj da rules
[Read the article: Clinton camp goes on offense against Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Levine may have a legitimate gripe. I'm also skeptical of politicans saying one thing now, when they said very different things earlier, such as in the case of Florida. The state dems lied big time. There's also this:
New Hampshire law stipulates that the New Hampshire primary will be the first primary held in the United States, and although the Iowa caucuses are held before the New Hampshire primary, because the Iowa event are caucuses, for the purposes of New Hampshire law it is not counted as a primary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_primary
But I don't get the point. MI still wasn't one of the states chosen for early primaries. Both Hillary, Edwards, Obama (etc) knew the rules ahead of time. I don't see the intrinsic Obama advantage here. If MI counted, Hillary would have gotten less than 55% of the vote, with Edwards and Obama somewhere in the mix. Any one of the three could have won.
TAMPA - Barack Obama hinted during a Tampa fundraiser Sunday that if he's the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he'll seat a Florida delegation at the party's national convention, despite national party sanctions prohibiting it.
Obama seemed unaware the pledge he signed prohibits news conferences. Asked whether he was violating it, he said, "I was just doing you guys a favor. … If that's the case, then we won't do it again."
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/sep/30/obama-vows-do-whats-right/?news-breaking
Well, A florida delegation could still get seated. And it sounds like he screwed up and broke his pledge.
I still think you're not giving enough credit to the basic difficulty in revoting. These state govs are not exactly limber and used to thinking out of the box. I've heard the following:
- A lot of voter machines are being swapped out and not available in FL counties
- Voting by Mail is illegal in FL
- Having outside contractors view voting rolls is illegal; making outsourcing the vote near impossible.
- The govt doesn't want to pay for the revote.
I don't see how any of that is the fault of the Obama campaign, and I don't know how they could change those things.
What did you think of the Obama Camp's memo regarding legal issues with the MI revote. I'm not a legal person, but I'm not ready to dismiss those issues either. Salon needs to hire a legal interpreter.
-
@madam
[Read the article: Clinton camp goes on offense against Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Keep up the good work Mon Oncle and thanks for the Salon watch.
Thank you for the kind words and always interesting posts. One of these days, though, real life will intrude and I'll and that glorie will sweep me beyond the horizon.
-
@cabick If you were honest, you would agree with me
[Read the article: Politico: "Clinton has virtually no chance of winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If wishes were horses, then rides would be free
[..] with revotes in michigan and florida, clinton would very likely come out ahead in the popular vote when all is said and done, which means that "the will of the people" might actually tilt ever so slightly to clinton if it were allowed to express itself. i think obama supporters who are honest with themselves know that. it's awfully convenient for obama that these two states happen to be the ones who broke the rules.
Those two states broke the rules a long time before Obama was a factor. If you go back and google you find lot's of reasons why the delegates have been stripped. We've argued over it extensively here, and left very few stones unturned. I must admit that it was all an Obama Consipiracy is one tinfoil rock that we missed.
If I was to be honest for a second, I would say that I would have no idea what a vote of MI and FL would look like. Instead, I would list many factors likely to shape possible outcomes. For example, the date of the primaries would significant. Before feb 4th, I think Hillary would have an edge. Between Feb 4th and Mar 5th, I would give the edge to Obama. Of course, if Hillary and Obama knew they had to win MI and FL between feb 4th and Mar 5, they would have structured their campaigns differently. Both of them could have lost major votes and delegates to Edwards. Hillary started out the campaign with a tremendous advantage in name recognition. Obama would have had to spend more time in MI and FL to overcome that.
In the end, it's somewhat wishful thinking. Sure, if we could somehow twist the past, the future would be different, the popular vote would swing one way or the other. But I lost my time helmet somewhere at the Daily Show.