It was a nice to see the check mark!

I will check out Arkady's post,on it,MaryAnne. Always like reading him on KSF,too.

You know I really wonder how it will all go for Hillary.

I really admire her fighting tooth and nail as she is for every vote that was cast for her.

But I see Howard Dean on TV everyday almost desperately urging any and all super delegates not yet committed, to come out and state their preference.

Everyone knows that is what he really means when he goes on TV and says that.

He is running a bit scared worrying that HRC will actually get the chance to challenge the DNC for the Florida and Michigan votes cast for her.

It would open one big can of worms for Dean and Brazile if she does that.

Personally, I'd like to see her do it.

And I bet Florida would love it ,too.

They even have a law in Florida about the right to expose truth.

They believe in "The Sunshine Law" down there and so do I.

Thanks again for checking out the thread.~

;-)

D) The (completely fair) way it should have been done but probably won't. Super delegates must always vote their conscience (or the whole purpose of them becomes moot). Michigan and Florida get some (though not full) representation.

This mess is partially due to a power fight between the Republican/Democrat parties and the individual state legislatures. The state set the dates of the primaries and caucuses but the national parties want that power for themselves. Instead of battling over it, they need to sit down and come up with a reasonable compromise. Having the primaries and caucuses spread out over six months is dumb. This gives a small number of states the power over everyone choices on Election Day. We all know those small number of states are a poor representation of the diversity of this nation. I think all Primaries and caucuses should be done between April and May of Election year. Spread over just two months keeps half the nation from having useless primaries and caucuses. Best of all we would be saved from having to put up with two long years of political drivel from senators who should be working in Washington not parading the country telling up how good they can work!

It's both well-deserved and LONG, long overdue...Maybe with a more fair & more attentive Editor around here these days, you'll start getting a lot more of them. Way to go! "L."

Yes Hillary can yet win the nomination...she has to overcome the delegate deficit. She has to win the rest of the contests by over 20 percentage points, she has to somehow convince people that only she deserves to have delegates from Michigan and that the uncommited cannot count towards Obama's total and she has to convince over 60% of the superdelegates to support her. Of course Hillary can win, these are not out of the realm achievements.

Let us do it without trying to change the comitted delegates and also let us do it by accpeting the will of the people as currently stated. Additionally, Hillary has to commit to leave the race if she cannot take the delegate lead after all the contests are done and closed up.

That said......Hillary cannot win.

PLEASE, do not predict the outcome of the race for the Democratic Nominee until all of we Americans have had a chance to vote!

LaurieAnnM:

Will you support Hillary enthusiatically, should she win?

I wonder. But, aside from that question which should be answered in all equity....

I don't think it is incumbant in this country that anyone anyone should be forced or bullied or coerced to vote for anyone.

But thank you for your very interesting reply.

I haven't decided yet who I will vote for. But it is every citizen's right to vote for whomever they choose.

In part it is this bullying attitide of Obama supporters that is also disturbing.

I may vote for a write in candidate. It's every American's personal decision to choose and have a right to choose privately. that's why the voting booth is sacred and secret.

There is actually a law about the right to leep the citizens vote private.

No one can demand you vote for any particular person.

That is against the law.

That is why the caucus results are questionable... Texas precinct caucuses had Clinton supporters assigned to one side of the room and the Obama supporters to the other. All sorts of election laws were violated in TX because they were not prepared to handle the number of people attending.

No one that stands up for democracy would want their candidate to win under those conditions. Obama wants to calim TX, fine, but remember, he outspent HRC there also and she still won the popular vote.

Just think how much it will cost him to beat McCain. People actually like and respect him...

Because if he had taken the five minute to look it up, he would have seen that BO indeed had used the lawyers on this issue and that Obama's lawyers fought tooth & nail, both privately & publicly, to fight the RIGHT of the Dem. voters in Florida & MIchigan to express an officially accepted vote. Obama is the ANTI-democracy Democrat in this race, imho. Thanks for the back-up, j.

!

!

what the heck.

!!

.

Thanks again Lunesta for [what you did for me] I don't deserve it.

I'm just giving up on politics.

I call it Obama's way of making sure all the gals are at the back of the bus where they belong.

Thanks for the research Lunestra.

Lunesta: `snip ` Because if he had taken the five minute to look it up, he would have seen that BO indeed had used the lawyers on this issue and that Obama's lawyers fought tooth & nail, both privately & publicly, to fight the RIGHT of the Dem. voters in Florida & MIchigan to express an officially accepted vote. Obama is the ANTI-democracy Democrat in this race, imho. `snip`

Right, but the delegates are picked for their fervent for the candidate to whom they're pledged. The delegates would probably tatoo Hilary (or Obama, as the case may be) if they thought it help their candidate. It is very rare for a pledged delegate to switch.

Only in the Clintonian world where the meaning of "is" is ambiguous does a "pledged" delegate ...

Merriam-Webster, pledge: a binding promise or agreement to do or forbear b .... a person who has so promised

is there a kink in your IV?

They were, as you point out, made up on the fly, an ad hoc solution to a problem. Not a very good solution, but a solution upon which everyone (read: every candidate, including the one now demanding that Michigan and Florida be counted) agreed. Is there a legitimacy problem with crowning a winner absent those votes? Yes, without a doubt. But there are also multiple problems associated with just saying "oh, what the hell, just count 'em."

For one, the Democratic Party would never be able to enforce primary schedules again - seeing no consequence to disobedience, states would inevitably jump their contests progressively earlier to increase their influence on the process. And from the standpoint of justice, it seems unfair that states which broke the rules of primary order to obtain more influence would obtain the ultimate degree of influence by being the last ones counted in a close nomination process. Maybe you could hold re-votes in both places, then penalize each state by half of its originally-apportioned delegate count. At least that would be a usable precedent for future nominations - if you really want to increase your influence by jumping ahead, you'll simultaneously decrease it by losing some of your electoral weight.

As for the general election, the whole "he didn't win the big Democratic states" argument is more than a little bit silly. There is no way on God's green earth that New York or California is going Republican in the general election, and ditto for most of the other states to which you're referring. And he doesn't need to win those states by big margins - 51-49% still gives the winner all of a state's delegates. So that really means that a candidate with the potential to bring red states across the aisle is the better-positioned one in the general election.

Not so, Sawbones, with all due rerspect.

If you mean NY and Ca. yes, no doubt those two will remain blue, no matter who runs ..but Florida ,Ohio , Pa. and even NJ are all very much in play and could easily go red in the general.

And therein lies the problem for the DNC..

And with the bad feelings already recorded in Local Florida News Outlets, the people are pretty mad down there already at the democrats for the mess the DNC has created for them this election cycle. And even more angry that Dean and Brazile treated them so shamelessly when the Democratic heads of the State of Flrida begged them at the DNC for some sort of recourse out of their predictament and were summarily denied any redress or recourse to solve their issues with the primary debacle.

Ohio, Florida, Pa. and Michigan could very well be in play and go Red state in the general.Ohio went to Bush in 2004. And Florida to Bush in 2000.Albeit by a hair's breath and very questionably..but he got those two states, nonetheless...in 2008 ,as their numbers of both parties in each state is so close already in these swing states..they could easily go solidly red state.

They are the classic Blue Swing States that will determine the election. That is the big worry of the DNC...regardless of the spin we see on cable news, of late.

Thanks for replying I always enjoy seeing you and posting with you.