"I'm GGG and I approve this message."

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Are you planning to turn this into an avatar?

is that the little mermaid's dad?

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
your guys were the ones balling

I wish I was a little bit taller.

Do you seriously not get the difference between party primaries and a general election? Of course you do. Stop.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
again, so you can't claim not to hear, your guys were the ones balling about every vote being precious. you guys treat vote like born-agains with fetuses when you are running against a R.

You guys are the ones who are so into the every-vote-is-precious schtick that you've convinced yourselves that voter fraud is a problem. So don't go there.

If Obama were to say, fuck Michigan and Florida, I agree that there would be some hypocrisy there. I don't believe that's his position. The staffers you talked to probably understand that their motives are self-serving and not principled.

At the same time, there were rules, and Obama played by them. Changing the rules now to advantage Hillary would be unfair too. And finding a good solution -- a new vote -- would cost money that no one is offering. So there's no good answer.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
again, so you can't claim not to hear, your guys were the ones bawling about every vote being precious. you guys treat vote like born-agains with fetuses when you are running against a R.

Hank is a vigilant critic of the hypocrisy he perceives.

S_A_M

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
is that the little mermaid's dad?

Do you get your knowledge of Western culture from cartoons?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
again, so you can't claim not to hear, your guys were the ones bawling about every vote being precious. you guys treat vote like born-agains with fetuses when you are running against a R.

In my state, the delegate nomination process is so weirdly skewed so my vote in Houston is worth 8 times as much as much as some Democrat in Amarillo. It's very, very clear that every vote isn't precious in the Primaries.

[SlaveNoMore]

[i]ETA: Jesus fucking Christ. If the Hillary plan for world domination had gone right, no one would give a fuck about Florida and Michigan because she would have swept Super Tuesday and the whole thing would have been over two months ago. Certainly Hank and Slave wouldn't give a flying fuck about "disenfranchisement." And I don't hear all that many people crying about the poor Republicans in North Carolina and Nebraska that didn't have a chance to have a meaningful vote for their Presidential nominee.

I still don't give a fuck about disenfranchisement.

I'm mocking the Democrats <AlGoreVoice>"Let all the votes be counted</AlGoreVoice> blatant hypocricy.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I still don't give a fuck about disenfranchisement.

I'm mocking the Democrats <AlGoreVoice>"Let all the votes be counted</AlGoreVoice> blatant hypocricy.

So you, too, do not see a difference between a party primary and an election?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
So you, too, do not see a difference between a party primary and an election?

You mean it's different when you're killing your own? As a matter of democracy, there is no difference. But, sure, if the Democrats wanted to pick a candidate by random lot, they could.

Also, no one seems to mention that shutting things down will have an even more pernicious effect on the timing of primaries the next time around. I know it's not important now, but if you tell the late-voting states that the one time their vote really matters that they won't get the chance, is any state ever going to hold a primary after Super Tuesday?

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
You mean it's different when you're killing your own? As a matter of democracy, there is no difference.

That's not right. It's not even wrong. The political parties are clubs who only allow their members to vote. How they do so is nothing more than a mechanism for choosing who is allowed to introduce themselves with "I am the Democratic nominee." The purpose of that enterprise is not to be fair; it's to hand the nomination to the most electable candidate. Hank's point only later turned into a critique of whether excluding the MI and FL delegates was wise in terms of gauging the outcome of the MI and FL vote in the General. But he started out by saying it was hypocritical to run your primaries differently than you say you want the General to be run in November. That's both stupid and a total non-sequitur. A convention can nominate whomever they think will win the General.

ETA to be truly democratic every state would be allowed to hold a new primary whenever a candidate for the nomination dropped out. After all, we haven't heard from millions of voters who cast wasted ballots for Romney in NV, MI, WY, ME, MA, MT, UT, MN, CO, ND and AK.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
So you, too, do not see a difference between a party primary and an election?

I can see the parallel re: having votes count, but it's an entirely different issue. It was known beforehand the FL and MI D primaries were held that FL and MI D primaries were not going to count. Even I knew that.

I think I need someone to explicate how this situation parallels the voter fraud/preventing people from voting/hanging chads stuff. Because other than both of them being about voting, I don't see the same thing.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
You mean it's different when you're killing your own? As a matter of democracy, there is no difference. But, sure, if the Democrats wanted to pick a candidate by random lot, they could.

Also, no one seems to mention that shutting things down will have an even more pernicious effect on the timing of primaries the next time around. I know it's not important now, but if you tell the late-voting states that the one time their vote really matters that they won't get the chance, is any state ever going to hold a primary after Super Tuesday?

What's the problem with holding them all on the same day? I guess it could knock out some "smaller" candidates because they can't afford to advertise everywhere, and so they don't get that momentum thing that winning a few small/low population states early on can give people.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ironweed
Ok. I think assumptions based on her showing in those two votes may be flawed since the process was compromised from the start, i.e., people didn't campaign, or campaign as hard, or bother to get their names on the ballot because they knew nothing would come of it.

I also think it's a stretch to say that McCain is a lock for the general election because Hillary voters won't vote for Obama in a general election and vice versa. Maybe there are polls that say this, but I know how you feel about polls.

On the first comment, that's a fair point. I considered that when I reached my conclusion and still felt she'd take Florida, due to the general voter profile for the state.

On Michigan, it was more of a toss up. Hillary could get killed there because of the NAFTA thing, but on the balance, I think the state is demogrpahically close enough to PA and OH that I figured it would trend in the same direction. I could be wrong on that state, very easily.

[Adder]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Dems before they crash (and make no mistake, that is their present trajectory), Or maybe I meant Icky.

huh? You think it is clear cut that Hillary has a better chance against McCain than Obama?

There are certainly arguments in that direction (although I don't think they are terribly convincing) but it is certainly not clear cut.

[Adder]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Yes, but if he can't win Florida and Ohio, he's dead. She has an argument that he's ahead on numbers, but DOA in a general election.

Only if you assume that the people who voted for Hil in the primarily won't vote for Obama in the general or that they are somehow representative of how non-primary voters will vote.

There is certainly a set of people that fall into the first group, but who knows how big it is, or whether it is bigger than the set of voters that Obama can bring tot he table who wouldn't vote for Hillary. Regardless, nearly all of the primary voters will vote Dem (and vote) in the general.

On the second point, I'm not sure that how primary voters broke out says anything at all about how the general will go.