Letters to the Editor
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Salon's sister publication?
Sorry to interrupt, but I have a question:
How did an article from The Onion get on this site?
I only ask, because this piece was a total joke.
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The time to reform this system is after the election, not during it
"If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections..."
But we don't. Both campaigns were well informed ahead of time.
I wonder if you would be saying this if HIllary were ahead? Would HIllary be demanding that Michigan and Florida be "heard" if it would undermine her chances of winning?
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Barack Obama: Affirmative Action Candidate
Supporters of BO should stop pretending they care about the machinations in FL and MI prior to the votes in those states.
The truth is that they want their candidate to continue to dispatch his lawyers to those states to make sure votes are not counted and do not affect the nomination outcome. They are happy to see their candidate fight for the nomination by throwing up legal obstacles to re-votes in those states.
They and their candidate are happy to accept an "Affirmative Action" nomination based on fighting against millions of voters.
We learned in 2000 that candidates who send lawyers to disenfranchise voters are scumbags. The actions of BO and his supporters in the Florida and Michigan debacles land them squarely in that category.
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This Read Like a Clinton Press Release
"If the System made sense" happens to be the operative phrase to the whole thing.
It doesn't make any sense, and, guess what? Democrats developed it all on their own. No partisan bickering. No evil Vast Right Wing Conspiracy piping Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" into the DNC headquarters under a 24/7 seige and allowing the DNC operatives to dine on nothing but Hillary's home baked cookies.
No sir. This disastrous set of procedures was 100% the handiwork of the Democrats' best and brightest.
And this brain trust wants us to entrust them with running our healthcare system when they can't even run an efficient nominating process?
I wouldn't trust these dolts to clean my septic tank.
Let the democratic party operatives bitch and moan all they want. They can try, however weakly, to blame republicans for the Florida primary date, but that is a noise level component of this widespread process mismanagement from proportional awards, to elitist super delegates, to hard and fast rules about the February 3rd, to having the Clinton's and their cloud of half truths, whining, and innuendo following the party around like Pig Pen's dust cloud in the Peanuts Cartoon Strip.
Bitch all you want Democrats. It's all your own making. You guys really have to work hard to blow getting the presidency this cycle after Bush II's Reign of Error, but it seems well within your grasp.
Pardon me for laughing my ass off about it.
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kindergarten analysis of "winner-take-all" systems, not worthy of Salon
This emotional rant by Sean Wilentz lacks even a basic understanding of statistics, elections, and arithmetic.
Wilentz's piece is based on the assumption (cynically propounded by the Clinton campaign, ridiculed by political scientists, transparently incorrect after even a few minutes' thought) that "winning" a state primary -- beating another Democrat by even a few votes, in an election in which only Democrats are voting -- is compelling evidence that the victor would be much more likely to win that state against a Republican opponent in a general election (an election contested against a Republican opponent, with both Democrats and Republicans voting) -- strong enough evidence that that state should throw the entire weight of its political will behind the victor of that state primary (however narrow their margin of victory). The logical absurdity of this argument has been called out in press so many times -- so how does a piece get into Salon that takes this false premise at face value?
"Winner take all" primaries would lead to absurd and arbitrary outcomes.
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But...
"Obama's leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process"
That argument would make sense if the eccentricities you speak of were ONLY available to Obama. Was HRC not able to take advantage of these 'eccentricities'? Did Obama, the young senator have some knowledge of the Democratic primary system that HRC did not?
For sanities sake I wish, and many others wish and perhaps there would be a different outcome IF there were a simple 'winner-take-all' primary system with no, inherently undemocratic superdelegates. But to say the current system favors Obama is to say that ANY system favors the victor.
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Bizzaro spinmiester
What a bizarre spin! Is it based on the premise we're all a bunch of idiots? Is this author paid by the Clinton camp in an attempt to incite some kind of action about Hillary's endorsement of not counting Michigan and Florida then pushing for a rule change to favor herself? How very Hugo Chavez of her. Is this an effort to bolster McCain and to plunge the Democrats further into the abyss? It becomes alarmingly apparent that Hillary intends to spite the party if they reject her deluded thoughts of entitlement. She just can't handle Obama beating McCain.
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yeah, a little too heavy on emotion and light on evidence
There are a lot mischaracterizations here of the Obama camp positions: First of all, Obama did run a couple ads in Florida for which he got explicit DNC permission because they were on cable channels that broadcast nationally. Clinton had fundraisers in Florida where the media just happened to be there. So they are both equal on this one.
As for mail-in voting in Florida, that wasn't the best option because they had never done it before so it would have been totally untested. It is not hypocritical for Obama to support a plan that would implement mail-in voting over time yet not support a one-time-only system that would have to experiment with in Florida of all places. I used to work at the Elections Office in Texas and trust me, things take time to happen. This is the government and it takes awhile to establish a secure voting system.
I remember that Clinton threw out that she would not accept a caucus even though Michigan and Florida thought a caucus would be more feasible. So she turned down an option flat out because she did not feel a caucus would favor her. How is that for only supporting democracy when it supports her? Look, I honestly think we have a small chance of getting Florida no matter who the Dem nominee. Sure Clinton won the state but not by a huge margin, especially considering none of the other candidates campaigned in person there. McCain has the support of the governor who he may very well pick as VP. So I'm not fretting about FL. Michigan seems a lot less pissed about this and more willing to accept their role in this problem. I think Obama can win MI.
The Clinton campaign seems to be imploding right now and she will likely lose her core supporters of white working class men with the latest NAFTA, Colombia revelations in a general election, where Repubs would have negative ads against her. She has only done this well because Obama has not run a negative ad against her, ever. She will be destroyed in the general and marked as a liar and hypocrite. Her income taxes don't help any. A less than 2-millionaire like Obama is much different than a 110-millionaire, I don't care what anyone says.
Anyway, I could go on, but you know ... What's the point? The rules are the rules and Obama just played this one better. By far.
So the fact that we don't have a winner-take-all system seems very democratic to the core ... After all, the Repubs use winner-take-all and they ended up with McCain using that system and he wasn't vetted at all. Thanks, Repubs. We get to introduce his negatives to the voters on our terms.