No, it’s theft because those delegates never belonged to him. I feel that in accordance with the established rules, they shouldn’t be counted at all. If that’s unacceptable, then there should be a revote with the voters allowed to choose their candidate. But under no circumstances should people who voted for one candidate be told that their votes are being awarded to a different candidate - if you start doing that, what’s the point of having people vote?
Where’s the conflict, then? That’s what’s going to happen, anyway.
The part where you support it with some actual facts and reasoning, not the rationalizations that have become your hallmark on this point. I recognize that you find endlessly repeating a simple assertion comforting somehow, but that isn’t the standard we use here. And that’s without even getting into what *should * be done, not just what *can * be done.
As for what you *claim * to understand about what I’ve been trying to tell you, you don’t; you can’t even be bothered to try.
Do try to take your responsibilities as a citizen more seriously than this, will you?
Perhaps you can explain why Republicans should have a say in picking the Democratic candidate. It’s remarkable that you’re willing to give them veto power, and over an easily-resolvable money issue at that.
I do like to get to the point. You might give it a try yourself sometime.
Note that nobody else is willing to even give you the time of day on the subjects you think you’re raising. I’m indulging you when nobody else will.
I wouldn’t say no bearing, but very little, yes. Surely you agree the reverse is true - that many people with outstanding executive abilities have made poor campaigners?
I do notice that you’re not trying to defend your earlier assertion about performance in the primaries equating to performance in the fall, at least.
They do? On what evidence do you think Obama is at least as likely to beat McCain there as Clinton is? The actual primary results, perhaps? What evidence would you present to the superdelegates as the basis of your assertion?
RTFirefly, you list a few constituencies who are not going to vote McCain anyway, but none who might. The supers can’t be expected to take such a filtered, purist view - not the ones who’ve been part of so many losses in November by the most ideologically-pure Democrat available.
E-Sabbath, thanks for confirming what we already knew, your complete lack of interest in engaging in the actual subject matter here.
I’m not sure how much more clear it could be. If Obama cannot win the support of his own party - in fact, can’t even come very close - in a battleground state while running against a candidate that you yourself claim is dead in the water, that does not speak well for his electability in November. And the superdelegates must take that into consideration.
I mean, I’m not the one who’s syaing Clinton is a dead candidate walking; that’s your position, and Obama managed to lose to her by almost ten points in Pennsylvania. He can’t be THAT popular in PA to lose fairly badly to an allegedly doomed candidacy. So if he can lose to an allegedly dead candidacy, just how badly do you think he has the potential to lose to a real live Republican Presidential candidate?
The superdelegates do have to consider this stuff, and while I do like Obama and loathe Clinton, I can quite understand why a DNC superdelegate would be concerned that Obama has done poorly in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. That’s doubly true of PA, where - and again, this is your claim - the candidate that “Has no chance” won easily over Obama. Candidates who are perceived as having no chance shouldn’t win that easily over alleged juggernauts. If a DNC superdelegate decides to vote Clinton because they really, honestly think she’s a better bet to win key battleground states, that is a perfectly fair way to vote.
And that’s why Clinton isn’t quite dead yet. I think there’s a chance that the superdelegates may decide the issue.
TWEEEEET!!
If the open personal hostility in this thread is not dialed down immediately, I’m just going to close it down–possibly with all the other parallel threads that, wrapped in lots of invective, say little more than my candidate should be given the nomination and anyone who objects is a doodyhead.
[ /Moderating ]
This may be a really stupid question so somebody explain why this couldn’t work if the DNC decides to give full representation to Fla and Mich. Randomly pick a number of registered Democrats in each state and send them to the convention as uncommitted.
RickJay, the supers will decide the issue. That’s the simple math. It’s remarkable how flatly the assertion is made by so many about what they will do or must do, isn’t it?
You do touch on the broader point I tried to make earlier to pantom - that the fall electorate is not the same as the primary one. Votes of people who do not share all of the same core assumptions and worldview as the mainstream of the Democrats are actually in the majority, and their support must be attracted. Bombast won’t do it, insisting that they all certainly would see the world the same way if they only listened, or weren’t so bound up in their own ideologies (or religions and gun ownership), and anyway thereby don’t need to be catered to, or that doing that catering would constitute heresy of some sort has a great deal to do with a long series of quadrennial defeats, broken only by Clinton, who understood how to win as well as the Republicans do. It is about winning in November. If you don’t do that, then all the rest of this stuff just doesn’t matter. If you win the nomination but can’t win the election, it just doesn’t matter. I’d rather have the winner of the election be someone who both generally represents my worldview and will be a diligent executive, but far too many seem to care only about having their nominee be ideologically pure and with clean hands. Those things are nearly synonymous with “loser”, though.
The Dem nominee does have to win in PA, and OH, and MI, and FL, in the full electorate, not just the subset that turns out for party primaries, just like the GOP nominee does. Few of the cheerleaders on this forum have addressed anything past the convention, even with prodding. Too few of the activist base in the Democratic party recognize even the numbers of the people who don’t share their views, much less what their views really are or how to address them - and every four years, they wonder what happened.
They’d actually be making the decision in that case. Since they’d be chosen at random, then the nominee would be getting chosen at random. Might as well just toss a coin.
Unless, that is, you’re proposing a forum of some kind where the candidates could present their cases, including the hard political calculation about what it takes to win in November - that would effectively discard the entire primary process and take its place instead.
And you’d still have the issue of MI and FL having different representational power than the other states.
You seem to be overlooking the fact that in these “key battleground” states, the Primaries are closed, whereas the National Election is open to all. This little tidbit doesn’t seem to have escaped the notice of the superdelegates, thankfully.
Are you suggesting that Obama will run more strongly among Republicans and Independents/Others than he did among Democrats there? IOW, huh?
This is hilarious! You don’t even realize that you’ve just made OUR point with this argument, not yours!
More like worthy debate opponents who make better arguments to support their case than you do, who have discussed this issue ad nauseum, and recognize when you make false claims about their motives or posting habits.
Looks like that very thing is happening to Hillary supporters right now, huh?
What is your basis for concluding that Obama has a better chance at beating McCain in those states than Clinton does?
Read the words and you might not be scratching your head. Obama has the opportunity to attract and appeal to a far wider percentage of the electorate than just those who were allowed to vote in the closed primaries. And he has historically done better with disgruntled Republicans and Independents across the board than Hillary does. IOW, the PA and OH primaries aren’t 100% indicative of how a Dem candidate will fare in an OPEN General Election. To make it even simpler for you, you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Obama will certainly run more strongly among Republicans and Independents/Others than Clinton will. Which is an incredibly important consideration.
Yeah. The idea that Hillary will run stronger among Republicans is laughable on the face of it. Hillary? Attracting a Republican electorate? Whether Obama will run strongly enough to win the general is a topic open to debate. But Hillary and Republicans? It is to laugh.
Oh, she’ll attract a Republican electorate, all right. Right to the voting booth to vote for McCain.
I haven’t overlooked that fact, and quite frankly, you haven’t really made a clear point here. You claim that Obama will do better among voters who are not registered Democrats, which might be possible, but until November rolls around, you don’t know that. And frankly, don’t you think it would be a much safer bet if he DID win Pennsylvania?
Like it or not, it’s perfectly reasonable for a superdelegate to consider the fact that Obama could not win a primary in Pennsylvania against a candidate even YOU yourself say is being “trounced.” If she’s being trounced, doesn’t that carry any negative implication for the guy she just whomped in PA? Did John Kerry lose PA in 2004? Gore in 2000?
So the primaries there are closed. So what? The fact that Obama cannot beat an allegedly dead-in-the-water candidate, or even come close, DOES speak to his popularity in Pennsylvania. But I have a feeling the thread’s going to be closed very soon so there’s not a lot of point in continuing this.
I had to go back and read my original post, because you had me scratching my head there.
My original post only made this very simple assertion: that Clinton hadn’t won according to the set of rules as laid down. The second one built on the first by showing that the reason she hadn’t, IMO, was that she followed the wrong strategy.
Now, if you can’t be bothered to be careful enough to read the rules, understand what they mean, and craft your strategy accordingly, you can’t whirl around and then say that you’re the more electable one in the fall, since plainly you didn’t even do the requisite homework to win your own party’s nomination.
This has nothing to do with how well Obama will do in the fall, other than as a test of his basic skills at actually understanding how to strategize. Whether he can translate that into a win in the Fall is, as they say in the programming world, undefined.
Clinton, however, has already failed this basic test. It is, therefore, nonsensical to argue that she is more electable based on her performance so far.
I hope that was clear.