There's a very good reason the most fervent right-wing hate groups are rooting for Clinton: it will make them money.

Think about how many listeners someone like Limbaugh will gain from a Clinton presidency. Think about how many talk-shows Coulter will get on.

They are true Republicans in that they are giddy at the thought of sacrificing what they think is best for the country in order to make some cash.

Let's say there are a scrupulous bunch of voters, and an unscrupulous bunch, and they each support a different candidate.

Let's say the Scrupulous Party (of which there are 60 members) takes ranged voting seriously. They rate their candidate a 7 (recognizing there are some flaws) and the "other" candidate a 3 (because nobody's ALL bad, right?).

Then there's the Unscrupulous Party, of whom there are 40. They vote strategically, giving their guy a 10 and the other candidate a 1, universally.

The winner of this election? Unscrupulous Pete, with an average of 5.8 and 40 supporters, wins this election over Scrupulous Sally, with an average of 4.6 and 60 supporters.

What an awful idea.

Giving an automatic 10 to the preferred candidate and 1 for the non-preferred candidate does help with a lot of the strategy problems. Doesn't elminate them entirely, but we can't really find a PERFECT system.

I think my ideal (aside from changing to proportional representation) would be IRV administered by touch-screens. Bear with me here. You get a screen saying "Pick your first choice." You do. Then you get another screen saying "Pick your second choice, or choose 'Done' if you would not like to make another choice." This continues until all choices are made or the voter hits Done. A printed form comes out, which you must then confirm by signing. You feed this form back into the computer, and then get a receipt.

OK, so given that people have a hard enough time choosing ONE person, this probably isn't feasible. I think the most feasible of the options given is to select as many candidates as you'd find palatable. This one's easy by any mechanism. And I do think it's plenty fair to every candidate and every voter.

The elephant in the room when thinking about new voting methods, though, is that ANY alternative method would be designed to give Americans more choice. The people in charge (ie Democrats and Republicans) would be the only ones directly hurt by this, because "more choice" means "choice beyond Democrats and Republicans." So there's a conflict there - the people who would have to institute the change would be the ones hurt by it.

Thus, it'll never happen. Democrats and Republicans are far more concerned with their own power than what's good for the citizens. They'd mask it with "It'll be too costly/confusing/difficult to implement" or whatever, which is a fine and convenient cover story, and some of them might actually believe it. But make no mistake, it's about keeping power, and any excuse will do.

"The Republicans walked out of the House of Representatives today because we refuse to give George W. Bush the ability to spy on American citizens whenever he chooses. We don't understand why the Republicans hate your freedom so much and want to take it away, but we will be the party that defends your freedom. The Republicans can stage all the childish stunts they want, but they won't get their way, and America will be better off for it."

Superdelegates should not choose someone until they're ready to choose someone.

This switching after already having chosen someone is absurd. How short-sighted are these people? Here's an idea: wait until you've made up your mind to publicly state how your mind is made up. Is this how they go about other aspects of their political lives? If so, we should be awfully scared.

"Well, I publicly said I support the Patriot Act a year ago. But then after reading it, I'm not so sure and am considering changing my mind."

Actually, that IS how it goes, isn't it?

Who puts these jackasses in power?

Which candidate fares better in polls against McCain, Clinton or Obama?

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called 'al-Qaida in Iraq,'"

I have some news for you: Al-Qaida and Al-Qaida in Iraq are two different groups.

Thank you so much for sticking to the issues and not getting into ad hominem attacks against Mr. Nader like the rest of the media. It's this kind of political writing that gives me hope that some day we might be delivered from the utter disaster of the current 2-party system.

Oh wait, your writing was nothing like that.

This is journalism?

And I thought simply providing candidate ads was lazy and horrendous journalism. (Note to War Room staff: normally candidates have to pay to have their ads aired.) This is a new low.

By the way, cscs, before you accuse the Obama supporters of taking their ball and going home you might want to look at the actual data, which says Clinton supporters are more than twice as likely as Obama supporters to vote for McCain in the general.

This entire post was just a heaping pile of fail.

Criticising Salon = helping John McCain?

Has the "if you're not with us, you're against us" idiocy now moved to the left!