Tuesday, May 06, 2008

A Change is needed

Two more primaries are occurring right now in Indiana and North Carolina, and while the focus is clearly on who will end up with what percentage in these contests, the bottom line still comes down to this:

Super-delegates.

Sen. Clinton has to perform well in order to continue pushing the message that she is the one who is in a better position to beat Sen. McCain in November, but with the way the Democratic Party assigns delegates, odds are neither one is going to end up with a huge boost in numbers after today’s votes are cast.

The Democratic party needs to make some changes in the way the primaries/caucuses/etc are handled.

My preference; get rid of the caucuses, throw the concept of super-delegates out the door and base the nomination on a truly democratic process… vote in the primary, winner of the states wins the delegates.

Pretty damn straightforward if you ask me… and then, and only then, would we truly have a system where everyone who was eligible to vote had the ability to do so, and the decision of who gets the nomination would be made by the voters themselves…

What a concept… a concept that should seem more vital now that Sen. Clinton’s campaign has openly stated that the campaign will attempt to get their allies on the Democratic Convention’s rules committee to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations… something that would not only give approval to breaking the rules, but would also showcase how dysfunctional the Democratic party can be at times… which is something we do NOT need right now.

(I am going to assume everyone reading this knows about MI and FL and how the legislatures in Michigan and Florida decided to hold early primaries despite the DNC telling them they would be held accountable and that their votes wouldn’t count… and how all the major candidates agreed not to campaign in those states… and that most voters stayed away from the polls in those states because they knew that the results would be insignificant) [Co-editors note: And don't forget that Sen. Obama's name did not even appear on the ballot in Michigan as he knew that the votes would not be counted due to violating the parties previously established and agreed upon rules - sorry for interrupting, Scott]

Ms. Clinton has wanted to seat those delegated for some time (electoral math shows she has no chance in hell to win without those states), and she now plans to use the rules committee that she stocked with her own allies to swing a backroom deal that would, essentially, thwart the will of the majority of Democratic voters.

Big, big mistake.

I personally will vote for whomever gets the Democratic nomination, but I know for certain that others won’t.

If Clinton wins in that manner, not only will a plethora of voters stay home in droves on Election Day, but it would be easy for Sen. McCain to paint her as the candidate who’s willing to do anything to satisfy her (blind?) ambition.

In other words, it’s one thing that might throw the election to the republicans and give us four more years of Bush 2: Electric Bugaboo.

And we can’t have that, can we?

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