I guess I am confused about the electability debate. It doesn't really make sense to me. I guess that is what this article points out. Honestly, I just can't see people that would support either Clinton or Obama just sitting back and letting John McCain win. It would be childish and self defeating to allow the thing that is furthest from what you want to happen, happen just because the thing that is exactly what you want won't happen.

I think the polls are skewed right now by the fact that Clinton and Obama are still in such a tight race. Niether side is going to say, "sure I'll support the other if he/she wins." However, once one is decided, they will begin to compare that person with McCain. That's when they will say that 'the other' democrat isn't so bad.

anybody would be better than a GOP candidate.

Currently I'm so unhappy with the GOP national performance that I will not vote for a GOP candidate at any level. If the GOP candidate is very superior to the rest of the field I will abstain.

Hope you're right. However, you'd be surprised at the dozens of staunch Hillary and Barrack supporters I hear EMPHATICALLY saying they simply won't vote for the other if their choice is not the nominee. A "no-vote" is nearly as bad as a "McCain vote" and hurts Party chances in House-Senate races too :(( Joint ticket?

As another poster helpfully pointed out, Hillary Clinton's supporters have to support Barack Obama in the general election. Why? Three words: Roe vs Wade.

The Supreme Court is only one vote away from denying women the right to choose. If John McCain is elected he won't hesitate to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with a conservative ideologue.

Obama 08!

Dan, I think your confusion lies in that you may not understand that it really is independents who are going to make or break the next president.

You're right that die hard Democrats are going to vote for which ever Democrat gets the nomination. But independents are going to be harder to count on in the general election.

I believe that what Democrats in general are missing, but I hope the superdelegates aren't, is that Obama has the power to bring in many different voters, including independents and disaffected Republicans (like myself), who know that the GOP needs to spend some time in the wilderness after Bush.

The Clintons, on the other hand, are considered by many of these independents as simply not eligible for the presidency. The loathing of these people is real. The Clintons have not expanded their popularity during Hillary's campaign; to the contrary it has shrunk. Only the traditional, dependable Democrats are solidly on her side. McCain has far more cross-over appeal. Hillary in '08 is not the new, shiny Darling Billy of 1992 who the country is going to fall for. It's the grisled, exhausted, exhausting, cynical, embarrassing, lying, narcissistic Clintons we all know all too well.

A President Hillary Clinton will do more to reinvigorate the Republicans and their worst instincts, than anyone the Republicans could ever hope for.

I don't just want to "turn the page" on the Bush years, I want to tear that page out. The Clintons are far closer to the Bush-Rove style of politics (look at their current campaign) than Obama will ever be.

People disparage Obama for supposedly being style over substance. Not true. He's standard Democratic substance - nothing earty shattering or exceptional in this regard - but with a very rare sort of style which can bring a lot of non-Dems into the fold. He could be the Democrats' Reagan if the Democrats have the vision and guts to believe in something again.

I don't agree that McCain would be a conservative idealogue. Name one way in which he is. On many of what are considered "conservative" points, particularly social issues, he is much more of a moderate liberal.

I do not believe he would attempt to do anything to overturn Roe v. Wade, or put in a hard right winder into the Court should an opening occur during his presidency.

I am tired of the "sky is falling on abortion rights!" nonsense that pops up every general election like clockwork. Please show me any basis for this idea that abortion rights are threatened. To the contrary, abortion has become more accessible, easier to get since Roe v. Wade's inception, even over those "horrible dark" Reagan and Bush 1 and 2 years. Abortion has become far more generally accepted over the years as well.

It's just scare tactics, bullshit. The supposedly hard right wingers in the Supreme Court have quietly surprised all of the lefty wing Chicken Littles on many issues, like First Amendment expression and so forth.

"Please show me any basis for this idea that abortion rights are threatened."

Try present reality on for size.

In his first term as Chief Justice--last year, John Roberts wrote the most important civil rights opinion since Brown v. Board (1954).

Brown said that government racial discrimination inherently imposes an evil injury on its victims. A year later, in a case known as Brown II, the court held that government was obligated to proceed with "all deliberate speed" to remedy the consequences of government racism.

Last year, the Robert's opinion held that when fashioning a remedy for racism, race of the victims cannot be considered.

The courts and the government as a whole often acts to remedy evils imposed on discrete minorities--discrimination based on age, national origin, religion, gender, sexual preference, recent relocation, veteran status, handicap, economic condition and countless other characteristics American possess and find themselves grouped by and discriminated against because of. In each and every one of these cases, the relevant characteristic of the victim can be considered when government fashions a remedy.

Only if the injury is caused by racism is the government prohibited from considering the relevant characteristic of the victims when fashioning a remedy. Surprise, surprise, I say as a white man, once again, only blacks are treated this way. In the name of "color blindness," Roberts has built racist treatment of Americans right into the Brown line of cases itself.

This isn't exactly a repudiation of Brown. instead it is what conservative courts have always done, closing the door justice to victims: gutting without overruling. Plessy didn't overrule the 14th Amendment, it just gutted it of any meaning.

So if you think Roe is safe today, you're living in a happy self-delusion. A court that would gut Brown, will most certainly gut Roe in a heartbeat.

As for John McCain, I don't see him as a reactionary, but he'll have to serve his party's conservative base and those ideologues are keenly interested in the make-up of the court. McCain will have to accommodate them the way Bush did--even at the cost of throwing over his friend Harriet. They were fooled with Souter and they're not going to accept any stealth appointees in the future from a Republican president. They will demand and get far right appointees.

Myself, I'm voting for McCain, even though I expect his election means appointment of further rightwing justices. A year ago, I could not have imagined taking such a position, but both of the remaining Democrats condoned the cancellation of millions of Democratic primary votes. Their values aren't just different than mine. Their values are as different from mine as Joseph Stalin's were.

I believe democracy should be more than just a pretense. I think our leaders must, at minimum, stand for something as basic as counting votes.

"the cancellation of millions of Democratic primary votes"

Where? When? How?

1.7 million Florida registered Democrats voted on January 29th. A Democratic Party committee of thirty or so political hacks ruled that these voters are not entitled to representation at the convention where the candidate for the public office of president--the highest public office in the nation, will be selected.

If you don't see not having a voice as disenfranchisement, then you don't understand the most basic premise of democracy--that the voters decide on the candidates. The candidates don't get to decide on the voters. Only in places like the Soviet Union and Iran do party official get to decide who can count and who can't count--and, of course, newly here in America, in the Democratic Party.

All you partisan are so mixed up in the horse race between your favorite candidates that you've failed to notice that you're passing an anti-democratic precedent into our political heritage as an inheritance for your kids and grandkids.

Please don't run out the "victim deserves it" argument or the "we'll have anarchy if we count votes" argument or the "rules justify voiding millions of votes" arguments. While they may assuage to your guilt, they are also exactly the arguments Jim Crow ran out to justify disenfranchising another group of Americans. In 2008, the Democratic Party became the second greatest disenfranchiser in American history, behind only Jim Crow.

How can you still support such a party and specifically either of these candidates who went along with it?

1. Florida was told long before the primary was held that if they moved the election the party wouldn't honor the outcome. The voters knew well in advance their votes might not count, and why; nobody "cancelled" anything, and there's nothing remotely anti-democratic about not counting the votes in an election conducted in breech of the rules. Your breathless analogies to Iran and Soviet Russia are laughable.

2. Questioning your "reasoning" hardly makes me a Democratic Party hack. There is no realistic circumstance in which I would vote for either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama.

You say "...there's nothing remotely anti-democratic about not counting the votes in an election conducted in breech of the rules."

So too said Bull Connor, so to say the Ayatollahs in Iran, so too said Joseph Stalin.

The DNC adopted it rules because if preferred that state's other than Florida and Michigan matter most--Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. When the DNC adopted its rules it knew that the sentiment in Florida and Michigan was for moving their primary forward to matter for a change. In fact, the DNC you defend adopted its vote voiding rules for the very purpose of enforcing its decision that voters in Florida and Michigan should continue to not matter in the candidate selection process.

Forty nine year old Floridians have never voted in a presidential primary where their vote mattered. The last time a Florida primary vote mattered, George Wallace was on the ballot.

There was no "agreement" with Florida or Michigan--only their legislatures have the power to set election dates.
The DNC unilaterally decided other states would matter more and then added a threat to impose their will on the tens of millions of people living in Michigan and Florida, "Change your primary date in an attempt to matter then we'll void your votes, so you won't matter anyhow."

The challenge was accepted by the legislatures and we've picked up sides as a result.

You stand in support of a political party wherein a small group of operative can decide which states matter and which do not. You stand in support of a party that would void millions of votes rather than let the votes upset a preferred schedule for who should matter. You stand with the new tradition that party committees can void primary votes by the million in advance.

I stand on the ground, first and foremost, that any system that letting party officials void million of votes is undemocratic. I stand on the ground that legislatures--accountable to the voters in the states, should set election dates--including primary dates. I stand on the ground that party officials are unfit to decide whose important and who is not, unfit to design the mechanism by which we select our presidential candidates.

Look at the events of this primary season: voiding millions of votes, halving votes, doubling some votes, holding caucuses to water-down election result the minute primary balloting ends and setting-up a body of 800 free agents to act independent of voters in selecting the candidates.

All of that Rube Goldberg nonsense is antidemocratic. What we need is laws that every vote is counted and counted whole--the not unfamiliar principle of one-person one-vote.

What's mostly wrong is complacency in the public.

In 2000 the Republican Majority leaders in the Florida House announced, as the votes were still being counted, that because they had the power set forth in the Federal Constitution to do it, no matter how the vote totals came out, they were going to certify an electoral college slate for Bush.

This didn't offend our happy electorate either and so no correction was made at the time.

Democracy without standards is anything--even a nation where 30 or so political hacks can void millions of votes and other people will happily wander on content that all is well.

Add to your list of reasons not to vote for Clinton or Obama the disgusting kowtowing they did when millions of votes were voided.

You ought to be indignant. Democracy dies by complacency.

"You ought to be indignant. Democracy dies by complacency"

You ought not to be such a self-important condescending fuck.

"You ought not to be such a self-important condescending f..k."

You've got me. I am exactly that.

If I met myself on the street, I'd have to slap myself into oblivion.

But am I wrong about vote voiding? Even an obnoxious nit can be right, if only by random chance.

Also, I don't know how else to get people motivated to change the law to a one-person one-vote rule for primaries that will confine the clown piles that are the parties in acceptable boundaries for their disputatious competitions.

I am really offended that our system worked to cause such a development as massive vote voiding.

You could have posted no more appropriate response than that one to earn my respect and admiration.

Well and fairly said, and I'd have to add it takes one to know one.

"I don't know how else to get people motivated to change the law to a one-person one-vote rule for primaries that will confine the clown piles that are the parties in acceptable boundaries for their disputatious competitions"

Can't really fault you there, at least in the good-intentions department. One of my (many) character flaws is uncontrollable sneering when people compare even our goofiest voting practices with third-world snotlockers.

Beers on me.

I agree that the Democratic Party really fouled up the Michigan and Florida primaries. The Republicans got it right: make a stand by halving the delegates but not by taking away all of the delegates and causing problems down the road.

Where you get a little crazy, Issywise (no heeznot), is in comparing this machinery to Stalin and Iran or Jim Crow. The people in these states were not "disenfranchised" with the intent of imposing as a dictatorship or discrminating against a particular class of people. Both parties have a problem with their primaries: how do you maintain the "retail" style of politics that brings candidates to states like NH and Iowa and South Carolina, while ensuring that all votes matter? Party leadership came up with what they felt was the best solution to that problem.

If all primaries were held on the same day, no presidential candidate would set foot in NH or Iowa or any of the other small states that get attention now.