Hillary Clinton Supporters Ask: ‘How’d She Lose to This Guy?’
Caucuses are quaint throwbacks to an agricultural time when the entire voting population could easily participate. That’s simply not the case anymore in the vast majority of states.
I have to say—as one who votes mostly Libertarian and therefore without a dog in this race—I actually think better of Hillary now than I did before the primaries. Back then I’d have figured that She would have eaten Obama’s liver by April, but she did not. I think both candidates have demonstrated considerable amount of restraint. As tough as it was for Democrats, it could have all been much worse.
The best comments in this thread were by those who realized that the Democrats rules need to change. They are correct. I think this Democratic primary season is well described by the the explanation given by the late Molly Ivins for the 2000 presidential race: it was a tie, but George W. won on the rules. When you factor in all the arguments from both sides and determine a margin of error, you wind up in the same place. Clinton and Obama essentially tied, and Obama is going to win on the rules.
Close elections suck, period. This isn’t a partisan thing, it’s a democracy thing. The smaller the margin of victory for the winner, the less credibility is awarded to him or her. The elimination of caucuses in favor of winner take all elections should be the DNC’s first order of business following this presidential election. Currently the DNC awards delegates as if the government they were trying to participate in had a proportional representation form of democracy. Our government does not. All offices are winner take all. DNC rules need to be consistent with this reality whether they like it or not. And most of the time winner take all elections tend to make the victory of the winner appear more decisive than it actually was, as does the Electoral College. The more decisive a victory of either candidate appears, the less internal dissension. If either Obama or Hillary had won a victory as decisive as McCain over Romney, the current conflict amongst Democrats, as evidenced by many of the comments above, wouldn’t exist right now.
yours/
peter.
