Have you even read the cites provided? If it will have any effect, I will quote from this article that Shayna has been steadily quoting without any sort of acknowledgment, positive or negative:
I doubt there are ‘thousands’ of party leaders in Florida. Do you?
Because the results are tainted by the knowledge that the votes wouldn’t count.
On further reflection, I think it’s probably useless to keep going at this topic. Either a person finds the quoted assertion (a strong assertion IMO; all my knowledge of statistics and surveys says that this is true, but it’s still assertion and not fact) and its brethren compelling, or they do not. There’s clearly no amount of persuasion that’s going to get the diehards on either side to accept the other POV. Of course, that’s never stopped Dopers before, but it seems worth mentioning.
Hillary gets together with Richard Mellon Scaife to get Jeremiah Wright back into the news.
Yeah, that’s Scaife, whose money was behind the Arkansas Project, a half-dozen semi-legit wingnut organizations, and was basically the kingpin of what Hillary described as the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.”
And then Team Hillary distributes an American Spectator article accusing Obama of anti-Semitism for wanting Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, which was the position of every U.S. Administration from LBJ to Bill Clinton.
I agree with Kevin Drum: it’s time to vote Hillary off the island.
I will only add this: while I suspect it this statement may well be true (that they got a large number of email messages saying: No second vote), I notice that there is no accounting given (that I’ve seen) of the number of responses in total and the number that said “no second vote.” Further, under the circumstances, we would expect the people who don’t want there to be a second vote to be the ones who would email in, thus potentially biasing the appearance of the will of Floridians.
And it would be almost impossible for anyone to tell if there really is a groundswell of anti-second vote feeling among Florida Democrats, or if the Chairman, Ms. Thurman, simply has personal political reasons for not wanting a second vote, or wanted one, but was unable to broker an accord between the two candidates (which, indeed, the article linked hints at strongly), similar to the situation in Michigan.
Indeed, it seems odd that in her letter, on the one hand she dismisses the possibility of a party-run primary on the basis of the fact the people don’t want a second vote, but dismisses the possibility of a state-run primary on the basis that the state can’t manage it, and that there is a legislator who intends to block it. If the people’s will about a second vote is really important, why would the legal obstacles to a state-run primary matter?
So, has anyone seen polls showing sentiment among Florida’s Democrats about how to resolve the delegate issue? If the polls showed that there was disinclination to have a second primary, I’d be much less likely to suspect that the true reason they gave up had to do with the inability of the candidates to compromise, or the machinations of the party leaders who favor one or the other of the candidates.
While listening to the Clintons’ b.s. du jour on Olbermann last night I finally declared “Enough. There’s no way in hell I’ll vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination.”
It wasn’t any specific thing that pushed me over the edge; I just tired of her “I gotta win this” mindset. She wants it too much, and that sort of obsession bothers me. Perhaps Captain Queeg can help you find the key, Hillary.
Of course, my notions are in no way indicative of those of anyone else. I’m just one data point in the question, Could Clinton’s intractability wind up putting John McCain in the White House?
From David Brooks’ column on the Clinton campaign’s persistence:
"*Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Mrs. Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.
Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping…the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.
Meanwhile, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. For three more months, Mrs. Clinton is likely to hurt Mr. Obama even more against Mr. McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance…
When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.*"
Is this really, as Brooks suggests, the mindless inertia of the political celebrity machine that Clinton has been “encased” in for the past 20 years?
At some point you wonder how much of it is the delicate balancing act that Clinton must perform to keep her hopes of ever being elected President alive. Too much grinding negativity and sabotage, and her party won’t forgive her. Not enough, and Obama wins in November, permanently torching her ambition to be Prez (if it doesn’t happen now or in four years, it will realistically never happen).
If Obama does hold on and takes the nomination, it’ll be interesting to see how little support the Clintonistas can get away with.
If you scroll up 2 pages I believe I wrote a very long post about my Clinton Lover Step Mother - who is a doctor and who changed her mind over the course of several weeks of Clinton’s antics. It’s a good post, I’d hate to just repost it because it is so long…but it is quite telling.
I think what you are saying is not that uncommon, and I think a lot of people are going to jump on the Obama train once he’s the nominee. Donna Brazile spoke to that effect this morning…Clinton needs to jump off, and soon. Unfortunately she will use any win in PA to try and make it a little longer…
I was glad to see the pastor of the church Hillary and Bill went to in DC spoke out against her using the Wright issue and defended Wright as someone he knew and respected as a pastor and human being.
He has made it clear that he’ll abide by the DNC’s decision, hasn’t he? That’s hardly “making sure”. Presiding over primaries is not the job of a candidate, and that is a Damn Good Thing. I cannot fathom why anyone would think that it’s a good idea, ever, to have a candidate or campaign lobby hard for a “do-over” of an election that went (went south, in this case) by the book.
In fact, they’re the last people who should - campaign organizations are not formed to act as neutral arbiters, on the contrary, their entire raison d’etre is to work (within the rules) for a specific outcome of the election. They have to be at arm’s length from the process itself.
The party organization is supposed to act as the disinterested overseers, the campaigns act within the boundaries sat by the party and by their own moral boundaries, if any. Mixing up those roles rob the primaries of legitimacy.
Maybe because I started talking about it a bit ahead of the pack, I got tired of talking about it way before certain others did. If certain others regard that as insufficent devotion on my part, that’s their problem.
Revotes ain’t gonna happen. Looks like that’s true, no matter how much noise I might make. And like I said in (1), yaaaawn.
I’m against counting the MI/FL votes ‘as is.’ Clearly, campaigning in a state does have an effect, especially when the contest is between a familiar candidate and a relatively new face; also, one would expect this to apply especially strongly in early states. I’ve produced evidence demonstrating the effect of Obama’s campaigning in a number of states, which shows him gaining significant ground relative to Hillary after the campaign moved to those states. There’s no reason to believe that MI and FL would have been different.
(3) doesn’t imply that the residents of MI and FL are smarter, dumber, more informed, less informed, or whatever than the residents of other states. One would expect the same thing to happen in MI and FL as did happen in other states in response to an active campaign in those states because Michiganders and Floridians really aren’t much different from anyone else.
I have provided alternative recommendations for counting the MI/FL votes that are consistent with (3). That is distinct from “RTFirefly doesn’t want the MI/FL votes counted.” It IS equivalent with “RTFirefly is against the MI/FL votes being counted as is.” Statements by others about why I don’t want the MI/FL votes counted are obviously mistaken. And they would have been pure speculation anyway.
Assertions about a poster’s position or recommended actions shouldn’t be confused with assertions about that poster’s preferred candidate’s position or recommended actions. Inadvertent segues from one to the other can result in statements that make little if any sense, and should be guarded against.
Thank you for making this point so succinctly. It hadn’t occurred to me in that form, and now that you’ve pointed it out, I think you’re exactly right.
For all the calumny heaped on Obama supporters who say they’ll jump ship if Clinton’s nominated, it seems the reverse is more common: according to Gallup, 28% of Clinton backers would support McCain if Obama were nominated, but only 19% of Obama backers would do the same if Clinton were nominated.
Seemed worth mentioning.
Well! Obviously, then, if the Dems want to win in November, they need to go with Clinton! Right?
Pretty damning breakdown from The New Republic:
Haven’t seen this here yet, not sure if this is the right thread, but thought it was very good:
Wow, the Huckster is defending Obama? Where’d you find that?
And that statement, if actually true, may mean that McCain wins the White house later this year. 
I think you could rightly say that it’s the Dems who maybe forked here…
-XT
Exactly! It is a fundamental problem that more people do not understand this…Thanks for explaining clearlt and eloquently - tho I suspect some people on the boards will still not understand. 
Lot’s of good Obama love’in coming out of your neck of the woods 
I watched that clip. It sure made me think better of Huckabee.