[QUOTE=unconventional]
I have been watching the media news channels religiously these past few weeks to gauge the bias, spins and commentary. I have watched the pundits endlessly parse Rev. Wright’s comments and then agree about the damning consequences for Barack Obama. Staunch conservatives like Buchanan, Scarborough, and the illustrious Fox News defend Hillary Clinton’s choice to take the primary all the way to the convention while they smear Barack Obama. Squeezed between Obama bashing and the glorification of Bush, the intellectual, Bill O’Reilly, crusades to de-fund PBS because it is a left wing loon channel. CNN runs stories picked up from conservative right wing blogs that pour over items posted on the Trinity Church bulletin board. Tonight, CNN suggested that Obama might be too liberal to work across the isle in Washington. The message is that Obama can’t unite and liberal is a negative.
This is a critical election for a multitude of reasons, but the most important issue for me is faith in the electoral process. The Clintons obviously don’t care about healing the country, nor do they care about compromising the integrity of the Democratic Party. An honest election is the last thing they want. Instead, the Clintons choose to fan ignorance on Fox, intimidate elected officials, destroy a fellow Democrat with smear tactics, and dismantle the Democratic Party. I have come to loath the Clintons.
I fear we are watching the final demise of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
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[QUOTE=BwanaBob]
I’m a bit confused over the idea that Obama has this popular mandate.
Fact is, if FL and MI followed the rules the delegate race would either be a dead heat or HRC in the lead. Obama is ahead by a technicality, a valid one, but a technicality nevertheless. He does not have the popular lead.
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As others have noted, your premise is flawed. However, your conclusion is not far off the mark. This race is pretty damn close. If the superdelegates were to swing it one way or the other, I’d call that “doing their jobs” not “stealing the election”. If the Democratic party wants a purely democratic process for choosing their nominee, they should set the process up that way in the first place. As it is, it is not wholly democratic on purpose.
If they’re going to pick the candidate who’s best for the party and has the best chance of winning in November, they’ll pick Obama. Like I’ve been saying, the only thing that will get the Republicans to the polls in November in greater numbers than Clinton would be a mid-October invasion of Gay Muslim Mexicans crossing the border to grab guns so they can force Christian doctors to give them abortions at gunpoint.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
If they’re going to pick the candidate who’s best for the party and has the best chance of winning in November, they’ll pick Obama.
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Is someone who supports Obama, I do agree with you. But I can see where others might have a different take on things.
Well, if they do it with guns, that might be OK. No 2nd amendment violation at least!
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I think those delegates are very concerned about the idea of “overturning” the popular vote. They don’t want to do it.
[/QUOTE]
I think you’re right. And since she’ll have the popular vote by then, if they voted Obama then they’d be overturning the “popular vote.”
Just because FL and MI got their delegates stripped doesn’t make the popular vote somehow not “count” – I mean, the popular vote doesn’t count anyway as an official determining factor in earning the nomination so it’s only value is as a fact to be taken into consideration in situations like this where Obama will fail to earn the number of pledged delegates needed to secure the nomination. HRC will also fail to do so. That means that all bets are off and more voters will have voted for her by then than have voted for Obama. Seeing as how the delegate count is out the window since it wasn’t enough to secure either one the nomination, it will be fair to consider the popular vote.
And, by the way, in FL Obama was the only one to break the rules by campaigning there through his national MSNBC ads that ran due to the inability of MSNBC to exclude FL from their national ads.
I think the OP may be right about what will go down. I certainly hope so (except for the McCain part )
[QUOTE=Merkwurdigliebe]
Today on Fox News she said, “That’s what credentials fights are for” with regards to MI and FL, so it is apparent that she intends on going all the way to Denver with her little sad fucking game.
The superdelegates have never had such a clear choice. It’s either now or when? At least if they go to Obama to put him over 2024 we won’t have to pay attention to Hillary any more.
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Were they to do that right now, they’d disenfranchise all the remaining states that haven’t voted yet. Which would be ironic since the Obama camp’s entire superdelegate argument has been that they’re not supposed to “leap over the will of the voters in one bound.”
[QUOTE=9thFloor]
Were they to do that right now, they’d disenfranchise all the remaining states that haven’t voted yet. Which would be ironic since the Obama camp’s entire superdelegate argument has been that they’re not supposed to “leap over the will of the voters in one bound.”
[/QUOTE]
Would it be wrong of me to note that, IF the primary season had gone according to Clinton’s original fantasy, she would have been the candidate after February 5, thus “disenfranchising” every state that voted after?
Or is that just too much cold water reality for your Clinton fantasies?
And can you explain to me, please, how a nationwide ad buy is breaking the rules to not campaign in Florida? That was an economic decision…one nationwide ad buy is cheaper than buying in every major market. The fact that the ads aired in Florida is a limitation on the options the networks give buyers, not a deliberate violation of the rules.
[QUOTE=unconventional]
Instead, the Clintons choose to fan ignorance on Fox, intimidate elected officials, destroy a fellow Democrat with smear tactics, and dismantle the Democratic Party. I have come to loath the Clintons.
I fear we are watching the final demise of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
[/QUOTE]
Smear tactics? HRC is running against an opponent. The intimidation of the elected officials isn’t connected to the Clinton campaign. There are, you know, donors that are genuinely angry at the idea of what Pelosi suggested and don’t need HRC to egg them on in that view. Some folks really don’t like Obama, without prodding (such as Fox News.) The rise of the cult of Obama isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
Would it be wrong of me to note that, IF the primary season had gone according to Clinton’s original fantasy, she would have been the candidate after February 5, thus “disenfranchising” every state that voted after?
Or is that just too much cold water reality for your Clinton fantasies?
And can you explain to me, please, how a nationwide ad buy is breaking the rules to not campaign in Florida? That was an economic decision…one nationwide ad buy is cheaper than buying in every major market. The fact that the ads aired in Florida is a limitation on the options the networks give buyers, not a deliberate violation of the rules.
[/QUOTE]
I’d like to ask you not to refer to my different view as “your Clinton fantasies.”
To address your post: that’s different because if she’d won by February 5, there wouldn’t have been superdelegates jumping in to ‘decide’ the election and she would have accomplished what it is clear Obama will **not **be able to accomplish: winning the majority of the pledged delegates outright to earn the nomination, according to the rules, just as things were intended.
The objection (by some) has been to the notion of superdelegates voting OVER the ‘will’ of the voters. The objection is not that voters vote and that those votes lead to a clear winner in advance of every state having been given the chance to vote. Disenfranchising refers to the superdelegates overriding votes, not votes leading to a majority of votes in a designed system before every state has voted.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
And can you explain to me, please, how a nationwide ad buy is breaking the rules to not campaign in Florida? That was an economic decision…one nationwide ad buy is cheaper than buying in every major market. The fact that the ads aired in Florida is a limitation on the options the networks give buyers, not a deliberate violation of the rules.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, sorry I forgot to respond to that part.
The rules were not to campaign (including advertising) in Florida. He did so. She didn’t.
It’s not that complicated.
Both names were on the ballot, neither campaigned on the ground. She won.
Just because FL and MI got their delegates stripped doesn’t make the popular vote somehow not “count”
[/QUOTE]
The popular vote doesn’t count because voters were told it would not count, how can anyone possibly think any vote under those conditions is valid is completely beyond me.
[QUOTE=9thFloor]
Oh, sorry I forgot to respond to that part.
The rules were not to campaign (including advertising) in Florida. He did so. She didn’t.
It’s not that complicated.
Both names were on the ballot, neither campaigned on the ground. She won.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, his advertising was only part of a 50 state package (ie, ads to be run nationally, not locally) and was approved by the DNC. Hillary could’ve done the same thing if she wanted. No rules were broken.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
If they had something that would guarantee a win they would have used it a month ago, if not longer.
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I’m not so sure about that. Because the campaign has teetered on the edge of real mudslinging for so long without toppling over, and with Obama taking the higher of the two low roads, the real dirty stuff HAS to be saved for the last 30 seconds of the 10th round, otherwise her goose is well and truly cooked.
[QUOTE=buttonjockey308]
I’m not so sure about that. Because the campaign has teetered on the edge of real mudslinging for so long without toppling over, and with Obama taking the higher of the two low roads, the real dirty stuff HAS to be saved for the last 30 seconds of the 10th round, otherwise her goose is well and truly cooked.
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That ticket has been played, and according to a lot of folks, it didn’t hit it mark to the extent it was intended. Your last 7 words are what is going on now.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
That ticket has been played, and according to a lot of folks, it didn’t hit it mark to the extent it was intended. Your last 7 words are what is going on now.
[/QUOTE]
Time will tell, but I think when something like Wright happens to Obama even the HRC haters can’t blame her for that. Things like that won’t, IMO, be counted or perceived as HRC ‘playing’ that ticket. That’s just the reality and Obama responded to it with a speech that impressed many.
Were something of that sort to happen again – something totally not invented by the HRC campaign at all – to Obama, I think the cooking could begin on his side. And that scandal hasn’t died yet anyway, with a new story about it earlier today where Obama stated a new position about leaving the church if Wright stayed.
If HRC comments on any such future scandal, she’d get blamed for the entire thing of course, but I think that ticket’s been played too: blame HRC for everything while Obama gropes for the ‘high road’ and then goes on vacation.
Frankly, I think they’ve both played pretty much all their cards. HRC, however, is a proven survivor over the course of decades in an often harsh public light.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
That ticket has been played, and according to a lot of folks, it didn’t hit it mark to the extent it was intended. Your last 7 words are what is going on now.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps, but knowing the Clinton Machine, and because the chances aren’t yet mathematically zero that she will flap her way onto the white house roof, I’m not convinced that there isn’t something more up her sleeve. Hell, I’m kind of shocked that no one has picked up and made light of the fact that Obama was in St. Thomas the same time Wright was in San Juan. Hell, there’s only a few hundred miles seperating them, why they coulda met in secret!
I think, seriously, that the other shoe has yet to drop from her craggly talon.
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