1) The current primary rules unfairly favor Obama.

2) Obama unfairly insists that the rules not be changed so they won't favor him. This makes him undemocratic.

3) Hillary Clinton's appeals to reverse the DNC's "arbitrary" decision to enforce its own rules, which MI and FL were informed would happen, is driven by a pure desire to let voters' voices be heard. This makes her democratic.

4) The most crucial aspect of democracy is winner-takes-all. Therefore apportioning delegates proportionally to the vote is undemocratic, since the rules are not consistent from state to state and unfairly weigh certain votes over others. It is far more fair to give all the delegates to one candidate, no matter what proportion of the vote he or she won.

5) The failure of efforts to resolve the matters of FL and MI so they rightly favor Clinton are soley due to the undemocratic dealings of the Obama campaign.

6) Black is white, up is down. Dogs and cats sleeping together.

Did I miss anything?

HELD OVER, MUST READ: Mark Penn and Senator Clinton: It's a Matter of Trust -- The BuzzFlash Editor's Blog. If You Want to Know Why Penn Was Ostensibly Demoted But Not Fired, Ask Why Colombia's Uribe Fiercely Attacked Barack Obama Twice This Week and Not Hillary Clinton? A Clinton Campaign Strategy Backfired by Involving a Foreign Nation in the American Election Process. Someone Had to Pay the Price, and So Hillary Clinton's Prince of Darkness Walked the Plank.

"In short, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, is systematically delegitimizing the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. I have never seen anything like it -- and it is genuinely fascinating in all its paradoxical squalor."

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/077

http://buzzflash.com/

I am writing in response to Sean Wilentz' article, which argues that Hillary Clinton would be far ahead under a winner-take-all primary system.

Besides apparently considering the popular vote totals to be an "eccentricity" of the democratic nominating process, the biggest flaw in Wilentz' argument is his implicit assumption that campaign strategy is irrelevant. This is like arguing that the Chargers would have reached and won the Superbowl last year if field goals counted for 7 points. Unlike Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign has run a strategy that reflects the rules of the game, and if the rules were different, why should we assume his strategy would remain the same? If the democrats had a winner-take-all primary, Obama likely would have spent less time and resources in the smaller states, and more in the big states. Who knows what would have happened, but the state-by-state results likely would have been different. It is meaningless to apply a different set of weights to primary results after the fact.

Hillary Clinton should have run her campaign according to the rules she had, instead of the rules she wished she had.

It is very telling of the blindness of most commentary on this article that the least addressed issue -- and least defendable by Obama supporters -- raised by Sean Wilentz is this paragraph:

"Yet the Obama campaign has stoutly resisted any such revote in either state. In Michigan, Obama's supporters thwarted efforts to pass the legislation necessary to conduct a new primary. In Florida, campaign lawyers threw monkey wrenches to stop the process cold, claiming that a revote would somehow violate the Voting Rights Act, and charging that a proposed mail-in revote would not be "fraud proof." (Obama himself, it's important to note, proposed a bill in 2007 to allow for mail-in voting in federal elections.)"

If there is a contention between Clinton and Obama whether FL and MI should be counted in the nomination campaign, why not have a re-vote? It has been approved by everyone but Obama. Obama is afraid to have a re-vote because he would most likely lose, and it is more important for him that he wins than to allow full democracy and individual American votes to count in this Dem. competition.

It bodes badly for Obama in the General Election to not include FL and MI in the nomination contest...he will ultimately lose them in the GE and therefore lose the Presidency...and have no one to blame but himself and his campaign strategists and laywers.

Mr. Wilentz article is interesting - but very much of academic interest only. This game - as any other game - is played by a set of rules and the players naturally adjust their strategies to fit the rules. They try to win the game by using their strengths and protect their weaknesses in accordance with the rules, using their energy where they see the best outcome.

Now, any new set of rules that is proposed after the game and which would have produced another outcome just isn't very interesting. The players - in this case Obama - would naturally have played differently had the rules been different. Under a winner-takes-all regime Obama would of course have focused more on the big states and won some of those, and certainly campaigned in Michigan and Florida if those states were going to count.

Mr. Wilentz arguments sound very much like a sore loser explaining why his - or her - team lost, but would have won if just the rules had been different. Trying to change the rules after the game is played is unfair and naturally not acceptable to those who have won based on a superior strategy.

it's, "Whiner take all!"

It's a bit overreaching to proclaim the Republican electorial method as a model for democracy. But even IF the Democratic rules were such that Sen. Clinton could walk away with all the delegates (at this point) from the states she has won, it would not change the fact that she is losing the popular vote. I can't find a problem with having the candidate that wins the most votes be the nominee. For that matter, I can't find a problem with having the next president be the winner of the popular vote.

A system that provides states with few people to nullify the voters of states with large populations is touted as a system that makes sense! It made sense in 1787, when it was crucial to the ratification of the Constitution and the electorate was made up of white middle class males, but it doesn't now. Remember, the electoral college theoretically can take a one vote plurality in each state and DC and turn it into a "landslide" 538 to 0 victory.