First, I just want to say thank you Sean for this very insightful and observatory letter! I have never read or heard something that completely sums up how I feel about this election. Maybe because I am a Hillary supporter and this letter obviously favors her. Nonetheless, I think America is finally seeing first hand that our current democratic process has some major flaws. First, as a free society we should get to decide who our presidential nominees are. I have never agreed or really understood the whole electoral/popular vote process. As a democrat I believe this country needs change...but change in this country can't come all at once and we need to be realistic about just how much change Obama can bring. In watching him throughout the passed few months I am seeing that he likes to do and say things to please other people, not staying true to himself or his values. At one time I thought he was a very confident and even egotistical man but now I think he is a little uncertain of where he is or where he is going. As a president you need to get back on your path after someone knocks you off. I do not understand why so many people hate Hillary. It can't be because she forgave her husband for his infidelity can it?? I mean you can't discount the fact she is passionate about our country and the world. We can't forget that there is a whole world around us. As far as Michigan and Florida are concerned...you are right! It's not Obama's or Hillary's or the voters fault and they should both be counted. Hello! It's the right thing to do. Do we ever ask ourselves anymore what is the right thing to do? Hands down...Obama can't win against McCain and if the democratic party really wants a democrat in the whitehouse they should wise up and work towards that goal!

P.S. Howard Dean is an idiot in my opinion.

This excellent article by the academic equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein shows why Republican strategists are fawning over Obama. Obama, de surcroit, can't win the states Democrats need to win in the General Election. And he's got a church-sized anvil on his foot. If he gets the nod, Saul Wilentz will probably be the best placed American to pen the definitive book on how Republican Party strategists, the media, and an intellectually-challenged DNC conspired to make hell freeze over to engineer a loss of the White House in a year Democrats couldn't lose.

Honestly, there are parts of this article where you could simply post a link to Hillary's official site.

One small but telling example:

Obama opposed a last minute, hastily-devised "mail-in" vote in Florida. BUT, you say, it is "IMPORTANT TO NOTE" that Obama proposed a bill last year to allow for mail-in voting in federal elections.

I guess it was not as important to note that one can be in favor of the practice of mail-in voting but not be crazy about the idea of just quickly throwing together a system at the last minute that might be vulnerable to fraud. Oregon has mail-in voting today that is widely praised as a good system, but it didn't happen overnight. It took a long time. Would YOU trust a Florida mail-in system devised in a MONTH?

This isn't such a terribly complex notion to allow for in a two page feature article in Salon-- you're not struggling for precious seconds of airtime on cable news to get your point across-- that's what makes it sound more like a cheap talking point distortion when you make a claim like that.

To the larger point:

If this election had been winner-take-all, each campaign would have run things differently. Perhaps the Obama campaign would've struggled more, but they certainly would have employed a different set of strategies, as would ANY campaign. But you can't just retroactively change the rules and pretend that the results of all those caucuses and primaries would've turned out the same.

If the system "made sense", it's likely that no other campaign would've been able to overcome Hillary's name recognition and the media's widespread assumptions that she was simply unbeatable. I'm not sure how that kind of system makes any "more sense" than the one we currently have. A lot of these proportional results seem to more accurately reflect the complexity of the electorate-- Obama just BARELY won Missouri, for instance, but would it be fair for him to get ALL of that state's delegates when basically half of the state was for Hillary? I don't think so. True, there are plenty of things you can point at that defy explanation and good sense, but that's true of almost any American election.

The truth of the matter is that Obama has run a better campaign than Hillary has, and that, more than anything else, is why he is winning. If the system had been "winner take all", there is no way of knowing whether or not Hillary would have benefited, or whether she would have simply lost in a different way. Obama might STILL have run a better campaign. One thing seems certain: "If she had run a better campaign, Clinton would be ahead."

Finally, Salon publishes an article that isn't about filling my inbox with talking points directly from the Obamanation.

Sounds like BO supporters have yet to grasp an important point: Millions of people will write in Hillary Clinton, whether she's the nominee or not, if they perceive she's been railroaded out of this election. Obamamatons are simply trying to strongarm the other half of the Democratic Party into submission, and apparently they don't quite understand that it's simply not going to work.

Disenfranchisement is disenfranchisement is disenfranchisement. This people's RIGHT to vote we're talking about here, Not! Their! Privilege!!! The same people whining about supposed tacit agreement on the part of the Clinton campaign would be the first threatening riots in the street were the shoe on the other foot and were Clinton blocking a revote or a counting of the ballots. In fact, they're already threatening riots should Clinton win this nomination by legitimate means, which shows a lot of us out in the reality-based community how out of touch they are in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, I know the wise heads at the DNC are worried about losing the black vote if Obama doesn't get this. Call me a racist if you like (hell, you will anyway), but there are far more women in this country than blacks, women who have been voting for Clinton by overwhelming margins. Seems to me like simply a numbers game - but then, the DNC is probably eager to get its hands on the higher margin of donations it perceives will follow the Obama campaign, and then use the money to elect candidates for various offices from Congress to dogcatcher. Too bad the Obama donors won't realize what the game really is until October, when it will dawn on them the DNC never planned to do much to help Obama anyway (it can't: He's unelectable, which many insiders surely know by now.)

(While I'm talking about the cry-wolf charges of racism to which you folks have subjected the country for months now, it's obvious to many that you've now enabled the Republicans to perform actual unspeakable acts of racism in the general election if The Precious wins the nomination - nobody will now take Obama seriously, since his supporters apparently find racism in the most innocuous of remarks.)

Shame on you, all of you. Especially in the case of Florida, the primary date of which was moved as part of a Republican plot (and a package to ensure the possibility of verified ballots, which you short-memoried folks seem to forget is desperately needed in the Sunshine State.)

You're certainly showing your ignorance in the case of comments to this article: the author is clearly stating that Democrats - again - are allowing the Republicans to set terms of a debate and beat us with one hand tied behind their collective backs, simply because we can't get our shit together. If you folks would stop trying to poleaxe a legitimate candidate who's won millions of votes - including those in most of the states Democrats will desperately need to win the general election in November - we might have a chance to stop them. But noooo. Apparently you're willing to destroy this party in order to "save" it - too bad it'll be far too late for the rest of us to stop you at your own game if you're allowed to proceed with this truly foolhardy strategy.

- 8th generation Democrat in a swing state that you will never, ever win for Barack Obama...no matter what (not that you seem to care, if it means you can defeat the Clintons)