Just for fun, I dug through the exit polls from the Dem primaries, specifically looking for how many self-professed Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Democrats.
I'll warn you up front: there isn't too much value, if any, in these numbers. There's no guarantee of accuracy in exit polls, and no guarantees that every registered Republican even fessed up. Still, I wanted to take a look if for no other reason than to try and glean how much of an impact a certain increasingly irrelevant blowhard had on the primaries.
As a Discordian (hail Eris!) I've got a natural bias towards chaos. Chaos is just more entertaining than Order, when you get right down to it. But did the grandiosely-named Operation Chaos actually earn the right to that moniker, or had Limbaugh's knee-jerk sexism reached into a higher sphere and sullied the good name of a Goddess?
For her last hurrah as a presidential contender yesterday, Hillary Clinton repackaged herself yet again, this time as a vocal and thoughtful feminist. I like this Hillary. Where has she been the last six months?
Just a quick diary to express a current thought...
Sure it's a jury-rigged affair, with a mix of different kinds of elections and caucuses involving wildly varying rules, with a schedule that could charitably be called confused, and with a super-delegate system whose efficacy and legitimacy many called into doubt.
Yet somehow, against all odds, the Democratic primary system actually worked.
It allowed time for a large candidate pool to get sorted out and vetted. It allowed time for two front-runners to emerge and introduce themselves nationwide.
It allowed time for the front-runners to be battle tested and in the process grow a new and larger electorate.
Now is not the time for debate between us, there will be time for that later. Many of you know me and for those that do not... I am a somewhat regular McCain supporter/Conservative. (I have posted other diaries here if you are interested).
All of you who were so sure she would be gracious in defeat? Those who scolded me, and others of like mind, for not embracing Hillary in a warm fuzzy Hug of Unity -- do you get it yet?
This nomination process has left a lot of raw feelings among segments of the democratic constituency, but allowing 24 more hours of "uncertainty" will help this party come together and forget the bitterness of the primaries before the convention.
Puerto Rico is next in line to be disenfranchised!
or not ...
how exactly is it that they vote for the primaries but can't for the general?
Poor Hillary's about to lose her 'popular vote' claim to fame after South Dakota and Montana since the PR votes don't count for the general election ...
the smallest violin in the world is playing somewhere
Given the hoopla over the R&B's Florida/Michigan decision this weekend, I've been thinking about ways to improve this byzantine and at times arbitrary primary system for 2012. Of course, the candidates knew what they were getting into this cycle, so I don't accept any ex post facto complaining, but since we hope to have an uncontested primary in 2012, it seems like as good a time as any for reform.
Let me start by saying this: I like proportional allocation. No, it doesn't work like the ever-loathed Electoral College, but it's...well, democratic. Republicans like to choose their nominee by making states like California, Florida, and New York winner-take-all, but as Democrats we like underdogs a bit more than that.
Let me also say that I like the early four states used this cycle. Maybe we should try to rotate these early four every cycle, but I think we should always aim for a similar regional, ethnic, and ideological balance: one labor-heavy Midwestern state, one Western state with a marked rural/urban split, one independent-minded Northeastern state, one heavily African-American Deep Southern state.
I don't pretend to have the answers. But I think I've got a decent proposal, on which I'd like to hear input. It is far from perfect, but it is a start. Read below the fold...
Suppose, though, that instead of changing the Democratic system to approximate the GOP or the general election, we changed the distribution of electoral votes in the general election to the approach used by the Democratic Party to allocate convention delegates. What would be the outcome of that change?
God bless Hillary Clinton. Here's the thing--Hillary Clinton learned the lesson of 2000. You don't give up. Hillary gets postmodernism. Look at the way that the popular culture has changed since that time. Look at tv and film. Every outlet has explored the idea of what happens when the rules become meaningless. Look at Heroes, 24, Cloverfield, Memento, Hell--Look at LOST--just because you die on that show, it doesn't mean you are off the show. American culture has begun to embrace the postmodern--a world where rules no longer apply. It is a challenge to order and meaning. Think how many times in the last decade that our our collective culture has had to embrace the idea that everything we know, all our conventions, all our folkways, our entire way of making sense out of the world is now rendered meaningless. Blank slate. Nothing you think you know applies anymore.
I'm an Obama supporter. I have been since before S. Carolina. It was up until S. Carolina that I believed that I could be happy with either candidate, and would forgive Sen. Clinton's AUMF, vote for Kyl-Lieberman, and that I would suck back the refusal to ban cluster bombs (and that was the vote that's soul shattering to me. Clinton, again, voted with the Republicans on an action that is just incomprehensible). For supporting Sen. Obama, I was met with the criticisms that I'm a kool aid drinker, an Obamabot, a Judas - self-loathing woman owned by the patriarchy, that I'm an idealistic child who can't make rational decisions for myself, and that I'm starry eyed and don't know the difference between pretty words and real action. Those were the insults leveled at me by Dems supporting Clinton - not by Republicans.
The Michigan/Florida situation is tricky: On the one hand, it is deeply problematic for the Democratic Party not to count two entire states; on the other hand, these states did break DNC rules that other states complied with, that both sides knew about in advance and based their campaign strategies on, and that HRC's people actively supported. A rock and a hard place.
Even if one wants to "count" the states, the results of the two unsanctioned contests that occurred in January are clearly not reliable indices of public support for the candidates. The results are, in fact, highly unreliable, because the candidates didn't campaign in the states and because many voters doubtless relied upon the fact that, at the time the elections were held, the DNC's rules made the elections meaningless. The results are also particularly unfair to Obama, who was disadvantaged as the challenger by abiding by the mutual agreement not to campaign in the two states. To use the results of the two unsanctioned contests as if they reflected real elections is not a legitimate means of "enfranchising" the two states -- scarcely better than arbitrarily assigning them random election results would be.
I came across today's Gallup polltracking presidential nomination preferences in the democratic party. According to this poll, Obama should have no problem uniting the democratic party behind his candidacy. Here are a couple of interesting facts from this poll:
Barack Obama's lead over Hillary has increased from four percentage-point in early May (O:49% C: 45%)to 16 points from May 16-18 (O:55% C:39%).
I know you can’t wait to get Hillary out of the way so you can, as the pundits say, pivot to the general election. But until the vast majority of her supporters, supporters you will need after you wrap up the nomination, until they feel she has had all the many, many chances she is entitled to, it will not go down well with them if you do anything that looks like claiming victory. It will look like another man has stepped on her ambitions (you) and thwarted her aspirations. Something she and too many women legitimately feel has happened to them. And thus you will pay a political price for it.
I have a confession to make. I've gotten complacent. For the past week and a half, I have not made many phone calls, and I laughed off Obama's 41-point loss in West Virginia. I have been telling Obama supporters in the blogosphere to lay off of Clinton, figuring she was just staying in until Tuesday or until the end of the primaries and then would bow out gracefully. I did not think we needed to worry much about what she says or does anymore.
Last night, I got a wake-up call. I listened to the audio of her conference call with bloggers, which a DUer was kind enough to partially transcribe, and I realized that while she may bow out on June 4 and endorse Obama and encourage her supporters to vote for him, there's more to her strategy than meets the eye. I don't think she is planning to take this to the Convention, and she could be angling for the VP slot. But there's a far more troubling possibility here. From the sound of what she encouraged her bloggers to push last night, it sounds like she is trying to delegitimize him or cloud his legitimacy when he eventually clinches the nomination, as part of a stealth campaign for 2012.
There's only one way this ends, and it's not going to be pretty. Hillary Clinton has deliberately driven a stake through the heart of the Democratic Party, and not because she's a sportman's and refuses to leave the field of play until the last whistle, it's because she want to position herself as completely indespesible to Barack Obama in the fall.
She's been more than willing to pander and try and bribe the electorate with her gas tax holiday scheme. She's been willing to bait and pander to poor, ignorant West Virginian's like these...
Listen to this Hillacrat dreck, "Obama's a Muslim - he's doesn't know the Pledge of Allegiance or the Star Spangled Banner - he doesn't believe in America the way Hillary or McCain do..."
Why is Hillary willing to win on the back of this swill?
