Once again, as much as I hate to defend Hillary, I can’t really blame her for wanting to use the superdelegates to her advantage. It has nothing to so with “democracy”. It’s about the rules the Democrats set up a generation ago to select their candidate. Still, I would be very surprised if those party leaders went against the popular vote. Many of these guys are Congresscritters who are going to worry about their own re-election prospects.
The ironic thing about MI and FL is that they wanted to have more influence in the selection process. But had they just kept them where they were, they would have had even more influence than moving them.
Do you really think that a freshman senator has more political clout than someone who is the wife of a 2-term president and has twice as much experience as a senator? Come on. I’m not “nursing outrage,” quite the contrary…I find myself too unsurprised by any shady deals Hillary might be involved in to work up even a little bit of outrage.
DtC - no he did that in MI, not FL. His name was on the ballot there. And no, he didn’t campaign there.
Hippy- that link says that he’d seat them if he was (already) the presumptive nominee. And having a presumptive nominee already being establisjed allow their seating has been what everyone was presuming was going to happen. Having their delegates decide who the nominee by altering the rules in the endgame would kill any chance of a Democratic victory.
Plus, I don’t know of any Hillary supporters who won’t vote for Obama if he is the nominee. But… I know a few Obama supporters who won’t or might not vote for Hillary. I’d put myself in that category. If it’s Hillary vs McCain, I’m not quite sure whom I’d vote for.
The state legislature of Illinois is, in fact a “congress,” under the generic definition of the word. It is conventional for us to understand “Congress” (Capital C) as reffering to the United States legislature which happens to be bicameral but that is not the only definition of the word, and bicameralism is not a requirement for a congress to be a congress.
All of this is still irrelevant to the point which was about why Obama voted “present” on a particular bill, not who has a greater pedantic knowledge of the Illinois legislative system.
What, I get no love for the sex joke? This thread is one uptight congress, or assemblage of people. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get impeached, man.
I’ve been reading about this present vote thing, and though I am inclined to give my man Barack the benefit of the doubt, I have yet to have it sufficiently explained to me, to the extent that I feel that I could explain it to someone else.
I read Shayna’s link upthread, but I believe that there is more to it than this- and if Obama expects such an explanation to battle the charge of “100 present votes”, it’s gonna need some serious succinctifying, anyway. I’d be most happy with a little piece on, hey, this is how a present vote is part of the culture of the Illinois state legislature, or assembly, or congress, or whatever, as opposed to Barack saying, “This is how the legislature works- I voted present, there were potential constitutional problems with the amended version of a bill that I had originally co-sponsored, and rather than vote for it, or vote “nay” against a bill I had sponsored, I voted “present” which is tantamount to saying, this bill has my support assuming that we can modify it somewhat”. That is a wonky explanation which will satisfy only fellow wonks. This layperson wonders why he did not vote “nay”.
I know that this has been covered in several threads at several times, but this cannot be overemphasized. There is a solid core of hard Democrats just like there is a solid core of hard Republicans. Then there are soft Democrats, independent sorts who just happen to have found the Democratic candidate more appealing in every election so far. Next are true independents. Finally there are soft Republicans who may swing over in a general.
The core will is really ready to get a Democrat in the White House and they will come out for either HRC or Obama. They are a given but they may not be enough to take the White House on their own, no matter how revved up they are.
The soft Democrats would likely come out for HRC if they are not turned off by the process of how she gets there, but if she gets there in ways that smell of back room deals, without a clean win, they’ll stay home in some significant numbers or even vote McCain.
True independents more so and the soft Republicans will come out to vote against her. They like McCain’s independent streak.
As a “soft” Democrat (I’d like to think I’m an Independent but I’ve never not voted for the Democratic candidate so far, since coming of voting age 30 years ago), I’m with you John. I could vote for HRC only if she won it with a majority or at least parity of pledged delegates and without any tactics that smelled of dirty pool. Otherwise I think a McCain Presidency it is. Better that than the damage an HRC victory would do to the Democratic Congressional majority.
Once again, I think the various superdelegates are starting to be aware of that too. They understand that this is an election that will be won by appealing to the independent and swing voters and by not helping rev up the Pubbie base. Obama appeals to those independent and swing voters and does not rev up the Pubbie base. HRC doesn’t appeal to the independents much, doesn’t attract any swing votes, and revs up the Pubbie base against her.
Loyalty to the Clinton machine, fear of it, or not … I suspect that when push comes to shove the superdelegates would decide this election for Obama, even against a slight lead for HRC in pledged delegates if it came to that, because they want to win the White House and keep a Democratic majority and they too recognize that he is more likely to achieve that than she is.
Then he’d have people right now asking him why he voted “nay” on stuff he said he supported.
Cherry picking voting histories is one of the oldest political games there is. Things are rarely as simple as voting yes or no on things. There are drafts, there are poison pills, there is wrangling, there are specific versions of bills which need to be worked out. many of the votes are part of a process of settling on a final bill and voting “present” is sometimes part of how the sausage gets made. It isn’t fair to try to pigeonhole anyone in any legislature based on preliminary votes on bills and it would be virtually impossible to find anyone who appeared to be 100% ideologically consistent in how they vote.
But if he votes nay for something he previously supported, then he says “because they changed it”. Simple explanation.
I am not suspicious of him here, but I still don’t understand the apparent tradition of the present vote in the Illinois state legislature. I seek some third party documentation that it is common for state legislators to vote present, and the message which this vote sends to one’s fellow legislators. So far I’ve heard this explanation only from Obama himself, and it’s a bit of a mouthful.
Maybe there is no easy explanation, but if that’s true, this could end up being his 87 billion dollars.