At the risk of being called an elitist, two notes:

1. Maureen Dowd, in today's NY TIMES, tells two stories of when her father, who worked on FDR's security detail, visited WV before the war. One story was that his car was overturned by outraged Mountaineers because of its bumper sticker supporting Al Smith (a Catholic). The other was that he was asked by a Mountaineer why people kept saying that FDR (much beloved in WV, at least by this guy) was a cripple. He volunteered to beat anyone up who said so. Her father replied that FDR had a fine, athletic body, and the guy went away happy.

2. In a poll published about a week before the election, 31% of WV likely Democratic voters declared that they thought Clinton WOULD BE elected President this year -- both Obama and McCain trailed her in the high 20s.

I respect anyone's right to their opinion. But it seems to me that what we're dealing with here are people who simply do not know very much about the world they live in. Clinton courted these voters, and their cousins in Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania, with an anti-intellectual campaign that mirrored the Republican campaigns of recent years, where style and "who would you rather have a beer with" trumped the fact that the Bush tax cuts gave the average West Virginia worker about 25 cents a week, while it cut the ground out from under the safety net which explains the attachment of West Virginians to FDR.

Can you spell cynical? What is more contemptible -- the man who speaks in conscending but sympathetic tones about "bitter" people or the woman who pretends to be one of them (in spite of a background that could hardly be more different) just long enough to take their votes and run?

It may well be true that Obama won't carry WV -- in fact, it would shock me if he did. But since John McCain's political handlers have played the "Bubba game" a lot longer and better than either of the Clintons, what makes her think SHE can, either?

How can Obama win when Hillary is going to be the democratic nominee? Go start your own progressive/aggressive party. Barack Obama cheated in the caucus state votes and has denied Michigan and Florida the right to have their votes count. That's the only reason he leads. Research Nebraska and Washington State before you mouth back. Barack lost 35% of his lead when each state had a primary after their caucus. Barack's camp obviously cheated.

You are completely clueless about the caucus process. There's this newfangled thing called the internet. Perhaps you could do some research there and educate yourself on the caucus process. If you do that, then maybe -- just maybe -- you won't sound quite so ignorant anymore. But I wouldn't count on it.

Michigan and Florida weren't denied their right to anything by Obama. They were denied their right to have their primaries count by the DNC -- rightly or wrongly -- and if Clinton thought this was wrong she never said so until AFTER it became clear she couldn't win the popular vote without them?

What she is trying to do is the equivalent of a baseball team demanding that spring training games be counted, now that it needs them in order to win the pennant. The games wouldn't be counted because, when they were played, both sides agreed they wouldn't count and used their resources accordingly. It is a lie to state that Obama has disenfranchised anyone at all, and a fraud to state that either primary represents anything real. And if you have an honest bone in your body, you know full well that if the situation were reversed and Obama were being prevented from using MI and FL votes, you feel exactly as I do.

As for the caucus process: hey, the rules were known to both sides in advance, and if there was such rampant cheating, why haven't we heard any complaints (other than a few in TX, where Clinton won)? It is, of course, true that delegates are allocated disproportionally to primary votes in caucus states, but everyone knew this in advance. The reason Obama was able to win these states so decisively is he ACTED on that knowledge and got his people to the meetings. This is legal, you know, and it's also an indication of the level of enthusiasm of your people, which has relevance in the fall. He did his homework. Clinton, on the other hand, was so sure she'd be the presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday that she ignored the caucus states, and got her lunch eaten.

According to my math, Obama has roughly 52% of the delegates and roughly 51% of the voters, if you don't count the phony MI and FL primaries, which any fair-minded person would agree you shouldn't count. So how is the caucus skew so decisive here?

The plain fact is your candidate ran a horseshit campaign, based upon the assumption that name recognition, money, and party leader support would put her decisively ahead on Super Tuesday. She was out-maneuvered by Obama and his people -- hey, that's life. But even she hasn't stooped to calling Obama a cheater. It took you to do that.

Shameful.

Wow! I can understand why you support someone who, by your own description, is condescending to many of the voters in Ohio, PA, and WV. I'm shocked by your arrogance and your demeaning attitude toward the voters who may have less formal schooling than you do. This is one reason that the Ds are divided and, despite all favorable indicators like the economy, may lose this election.

How do you know that the WVa voters weren't thinking that the party leaders (i.e., superdelegates) might take them and their votes seriously when they said that they thought that Clinton would be the D nominee? It doesn't look like Obama will be able to win without the superdelegates. I don't think it's likely that the superDs will select Clinton but just because the people of WV may have doesn't necessarily mean that they're ignorant or out of touch with the "world we live in".

This is why Clinton thinks that she might be able to carry WV: <link>

In a contest against McCain, she carries WV. Obama loses badly.

Parenthetically, it was hard not to laugh when someone who's relying on Maureen Dowd's opinion as one of the main pillars of his/her argument says that others are ignorant or out of touch. ;) And you clearly don't value SOME other ppls' opinions, i.e., the voters of WV and their "cousins". Saying you do makes it worse, not better.

If you're interested in helping to unite the country (I know you didn't say you were but Obama claims to be interested in that), perhaps you should re-examine your attitudes toward many people who live and vote in the USA.

the_slasher14:

Michigan and Florida weren't denied their right to anything by Obama.

(. . . .)

According to my math, Obama has roughly 52% of the delegates and roughly 51% of the voters, if you don't count the phony MI and FL primaries, which any fair-minded person would agree you shouldn't count.

Obama blocked revotes in both FL and MI. If he's really interested in the voters, why did he disenfranchise millions of them? You can keep telling yourself the "any fair-minded person would agree that you shouldn't count" FL or MI but I know many fair-minded people who are very angry that Obama blocked the revotes so that he could win. Many of them are lifelong Dems who have tirelessly worked in numerous GOTV efforts for the Dems. They are disgusted by this and will not vote for, work for, or contribute to Obama in Nov. They most certainly don't agree that it was fair for (or decent of) him to block the revotes or that it's fair to not count the delegates.

Don't confuse your own opinions, desires, and rationalizations with the values of "every fair-minded person". It makes Obama supporters look bad and further alienates many Dems from the Obama campaign. You may need those supporters to win in Nov.

Obama blocked re-votes? Show some citations on this. Where did you get this information? I've heard this line before, but never with any resources to back it up. I have seen numerous articles noting that the Michigan gov't voted against a revote, but nothing about Obama blocking it.

<link>

<link>

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<link>

I also remember reading that Obama was threatening legal action if FL held a do-over but I can't find anything on that now. I'm disabled and have a movement disorder and blurry vision so it's hard for me to find stuff on the internet.

Re: background for the last link: Pelosi can say that she's neutral but I don't know anyone who believes that. She hates the Clintons (and the DLC) and her closest friends and advisors are Obama supporters. <link> (This is not the best source for the feud between dlc and pelosi but it's the first one i found - my vision is fading fast)

Obama blocked the revote because it wouldn't have been fair. It would have been paid for by private funds, and anyone who voted republican in the initial election (the one that they were told would not count) would not be able to vote in the new election. Hardly sounds fair to me. Plus the mail-in vote had never been done in either of those states.

Clinton agreed to the terms for both Fl and MI, she wants them to count now because she's behind. And the first election should not count because many people either did not vote or cast goof ballot for fun. The only answer is 50/50 or to not have them count at all. Those states brought this upon themselves, the voters should be pissed at their state reps, not Obama.

Sassy: Cut the bullshit about "those who have less formal schooling" -- a silly attempt to sound as if you're more "one of the people" than I am. What I have learned about politics in my 66 years has had absolutely zero to do with my formal education. I read the newspapers and follow the 'Net and use what I've learned from reading about history. My experience tells me that Clinton has virtually no chance of getting the nomination, and I have plenty of math to back me up. When a plurality of people think Hillary Clinton WILL be President in 2009, they are simply flying in the face of the facts.

Yes, Obama will need superdelegates to win. And he's going to get them -- that was obvious even before WV. The supers are politicians. They want to know who is going to win the election and help the ticket. Nobody knows whether Obama or Clinton has the better chance of winning (the polls are inconclusive) but we now KNOW that Obama isn't going to hurt the ticket, because the Republicans put on a huge campaign linking Obama to the Democratic candidate in last week's special election in Mississippi, and lost a seat that Bush carried in 2004 by 27 points. Maybe you didn't notice this. The supers did, and will draw the conclusion that Obama isn't going to hurt the ticket this year.

So with those considerations out of the way, if you're a super being forced to choose, who are you going to try to please -- black voters, who have remained loyal to the Democrats through thick and thin, or the "Reagan Democrats," who elected Reagan and both Bushes and are now talking about voting for McCain even though the record is quite clear that Reagan and both Bushes have lowered their standards of living. And McCain, by his tax platform, has shown he'll continue that process for another four years.

Why is it "elitism" to point out that race and gay rights don't put food on the table for your family? Why would the supers be swayed because Hillary Clinton -- whose formal education is way, way, way more than mine -- has managed by pretending to be a "good ol' gal" to appeal to people who have allowed race and gay rights to sway them while their incomes go into the toilet?

On most bread-and-butter issues, there is very little difference between Obama and Clinton. Clinton is better on health care; Obama is better on taxes, in my view, but there's not a lot of daylight between them. The difference, now, is that Obama's people put together a better campaign strategy, won the primaries they needed to win, etc. Don't give me any shit about MI and FL, please. Clinton SAID they didn't matter when she didn't think she needed them and then changed her mind when she did. This isn't about disenfranchisement, it's about someone who miscalculated and is now trying to find a rationale for changing the rules in midstream that doesn't stink like last week's fish.

Look, if Obama had been on the ballot in MI and Clinton not, and if the FL primary had been won by Obama, you know as well as I do that Clinton would have blocked a do-over. So get off your high horse.

Personally, I would have liked to see Obama permit a Michigan re-run, because Michigan is pretty much a blue state and would have run a fair election.

Florida is controlled by a Republican legislature which has systematically been striking blacks from the election rolls, harrassing voter registration drives, etc. Allowing these bandits to manage a re-run as a mail vote, which Florida had never run before, would have been stupid. You would know this if you weren't a Hillary partisan.

But finally, when Clinton didn't think she needed the votes, she SAID the primaries didn't count and she DIDN'T SAY anything about disenfranchisement. It was only when it became obvious that she desperately needed the false votes to count that she began crying about disenfranchisement, with the do-over as a fallback position. I'm sorry, but to claim moral high ground here and say "well, I can't work with Obama because of it" is simply the yelp of a beaten cur. Clinton is losing this primary because Obama's people had better strategies than she did. They understood the importance of caucus primaries, and they understood that the race would not be over after Super Tuesday. Clinton understood neither, and is losing because of it.

Oh, and BTW, if you factor in the likely results of the remaining primaries and give Clinton 65-35 splits in FL and MI, Obama STILL has more 50-some more pledged delegates. And polls taken during the week of the discussion of the Michigan revote showed the state going about 50-50, so it wouldn't likely have been that close.

But you know something, sassy, if Hillary had managed to get a revote and won FL and MI big-time and then went on to get the nomination as a result, I'd have voted for her in November anyhow, and I will say that anyone who says otherwise is hiding some other reason for not supporting the Democratic nominee. Obama did what any politician in his right mind would have done about the MI and FL do-overs, and now you're telling me that you're going to let more thousands of Americans die in Iraq because you're in a snit about it? Get ahold of yourself.

I find it funny that Hillary "cares" about the vote in Michigan, but she is blocking Michigan's plan to have their delegates seated. <link>

She also wasn't concerned about it back when they voted and she said: "I personally did not think it made any difference, whether or not my name was on the ballot. You know, it's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything."

I'm beginning to think that she left her name on the ballot after everyone else removed theirs so that she could take advantage of the situation. But maybe I'm just seeing conspiracies.

JGRAYS -- no you're not seeing conspiracies. I have no doubt at all that she left her name on as an insurance policy, so she could claim the delegates in just such a case as has occurred.

You have to remember that back in December, when the decision was made to stay on the MI ballot, the Clintons had the overwhelming support of the party establishment (at least, that part of it which had committed itself that early) and anticipated that they would be able to command most of it. They expected the race to be over after Super Tuesday, but if it wasn't, they assumed that they would be able to control the Rules Committee. And that would give them MI's and FL's votes.

What they overlooked was that the party establishment has its own imperatives, primary among which is winning elections. That establishment could quickly see that if they knocked Obama off his perch by using the MI votes from January, they would lose Michigan in November because most of the city of Detroit would stay home. Same in Wisconsin and Milwaukee, and Ohio and Cleveland. I have no doubt that most of the superdelegates now flocking to Obama would be flocking to Clinton just as fast IF she had either a majority of committed delegates or even a majority of the popular vote (WITHOUT counting the phony FL and MI primaries). But she has neither, and is asking the supers to lose the black vote in November and possibly for years to come.

And the supers have noticed something: when things have gotten bad for Democrats in the past, they could always count on the black vote, and could NOT count on the white working class vote.

I can't speak for Washington State (although my uncles and cousins there say the caucus was open and fair - Clinton just chose to write it off)

But I am in Nebraska - and I caucused and then voted in the primary.

There was NO CHEATING HERE.

There wasn't much of a Clinton campaign here but her supporters were out and caucused and voted - I know because I live and work with a whole lot of them.

She wrote us off. We wrote her off.

So don't get mouthy about my state. If there was cheating where are all the complaints from Clinton supporters here in Ne? Not a peep in the news here. NADA!

The rules have been the same here for years and Bill Clinton didn't have a problem understanding them when he ran and won here.

Clinton is done. She knows it. And when she's ready she'll give you all a nice thank-you speech and move on.

Sassy - I don't know where you live, but Florida during it's most recent Legislative session had to cut BILLIONS from its budget because of lost revenue due to many factors including loss of tourism, the mortgage criss, insurance horrors, etc. We do not have the money to fund a "re-vote" -- you all make it sound like it just pays for itself. Or maybe, as Hillary has run her campaign, we can just wrack up debt to cover it. Unfortunately Florida also has a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget. We had to cut jobs and services enough. To cut 4million more so that Hillary can get her REVOTE is absurd. We'd rather have that money go to our elementary schools and to improve roads. So get out of the fairyland and recognize that COMPROMISE is necessary!