Open Thread – Idaho Primary Results

In tonight’s early returns, Obama has a 10-point lead. (Contrast with his 62.3% margin in the Idaho caucuses.)

What else is on your minds?

DNC “Duty to Enforce” Burden Relieved (Thanks, Hillary!)

August 25, 2007, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee tentatively barred Florida and Michigan delegations from the 2008 Democratic National Convention for violating the approved Primary scheduling window. A May 31, 2008 meeting will review this decision and may consider alternatives.

There are three plausible arguments for keeping the sanctions in place.

• Does it advance the competitive interests of a particular candidate? Clearly yes, in that Obama would rather keep Clinton delegates off the floor, in case his grip on the nomination gets unexpectedly slippery.
• Does it advance the Party’s immediate practical interests? Clearly no, in that the sanctions now constitute an unwelcome, unnecessary bone of contention, diminishing our General Election prospects in two key states, and eroding the nominee’s perceived legitimacy.
• Does it protect the Party’s long-term interest in it’s own institutional credibility? Arguably yes, in that penalizing violations in retrospect keeps the attention of prospective violators.

This last argument — that of a Duty to Enforce — was potentially the most compelling, but all the force has now left it. It’s just … gone! … and that’s all thanks to Hillary. Let’s review the historical arc.

Congratulations to gqmartinez- *PhD*!

Looky here, all you Obamaphiles, we got one of them smart people on our side now. Commenter gqmartinez gave his(her?) FPO today and is now one of the creative class. We’re not quite sure what he(she?) was studying but electrophysiology was mentioned (HERG! Damn graphs are hard to read but so QT. Thanks for taking one for the team, gqm)

So far, gqmartinez has not submitted his(her?) resignation from Working Class Uneducated Elderly Sino-Peruvian Lesbians for Clinton in order to join Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models with PhDs in {insert incredibly sexy creative field}} for Obama.

Anyway, congratulations, gqmartinez and thanks for raising the collective IQ on Hillary’s side of the party.

Nomination C.O.P. APB: Cronin’s Primary/Caucus Analysis

Superdelegate, hear my cry! Before you climb astride the magical Unity Pony and plunge into the void with Barack Obama — a likely loser, with not even a secret plan to repeal the Old Rules of politics, who’d face suddenly even-handed media treatment against McCain, and who cannot possibly satisfy his coalition partners’ divergent expectations if elected — please take a Cooling Off Period to review the high-pressure sales pitch which leads you to commit the Party to a disastrous, divisive course of action.

For the sake of your many friends who would jump off the cliff with you, as well as those of us who already know we will not, please reconsider before it’s too late … and remember, it’s only too late when the balloons drop. Nomination C.O.P. is a continuing series of appeals to political wisdom and (where the shoe fits) buyers’ remorse among those who will ulitimately decide our party’s nominee.

A significant analysis of Primary results versus Caucus results (pdf) by P. Cronin is now reported and discussed at TalkLeft.com. Take-aways for Superdelegates:

• As a first determining step, caucuses are neither accessible, transparent, well-regulated, nor representative.
• Obama’s pledged delegate lead is purely an artifact of his performance in caucus states.

I’d further put it to you that Obama’s Superdelegate lead is a secondary artifact, a momentum or “stampede” effect of the much-reported pledged delegate lead. And I’ll have more to say on Caucus Effects, among other practical considerations, in future Nomination C.O.P. posts.

For now, read with interest … and by all means hold your horses!

Tuesday: In the filter, no one can hear you spam

The sweeties just never give up. The little darlings are evolving. First, they thought they could soften us up by appealing to our feminine side, until they found out that most of us are cold-blooded pragmatists and some of us aren’t female and wouldn’t give a damn anyway.

Then they tried reasoning with us. It was, “We’re adults here, we can discuss this calmly and rationally and you will come to see that you are all a bunch of F^*(ing idiots.” (Ok, they didn’t actually write the last part but the condescension was fairly obvious.)

No matter, we see through the sweeties. They fairly drip with treacly flattery but *we* know that they’re really sitting at their keyboards wondering if we unsophisticated hicks are really worth all of the time they spend on us. To them, we have the mental capacity of carrots. There is a stereotypical view of us that we are uncultured, bigoted and simple minded. For example, myiq2xu found this at Balloon Juice from one of the sweeties who was hanging out here last night:

lola Says:

the scary thing is just how much this endless stream of bs is in fact poisoning the well. i was over perusing a pro-clinton site and i tried to make the point that um, hello hillary signed the dnc agreement and that camp clinton pretty much wrote the rule book on this, and they were not hearing any of it. i wasn’t raising my virtual voice or anything and they booted me! hillary and bill have manged to convince these yahoos that the election is getting stolen from them and there is no convincing them otherwise. scar, scary stuff

Yeah, we’re real scary. As if the promise to not campaign in Florida or Michigan has any real meaning when 2.3 Million people show up for their primaries. As if that promise has anything at all to do with keeping your name on the ballot. Whatever. We now know that “lola” thinks we’re yahoos after she made such a big deal about wanting to “debate” us. It hardly seems worthy of her effort.

Many have the misperception that we’re all going to vote for McCain. This is not true. Some people will but friends don’t let friends vote Republican. It’s just that at this point in time, we’d rather saw off our right arms than vote for Obama and the miserable shrunken party that is trying to shove him down our throats.

In any case, the sweeties have met with little progress. They’re easily identified, usually within the first couple of sentences of their comments. Once they start insisting on a debate, they are destined for the spam filter. Do they really believe that if we really listen to their dissent that they are going to present some fascinating or new detail that hasn’t already occured to us? Is this because they think us incapable of our own critical thought? They must spoon feed it to us?

Here’s the deal, sweeties: we are sick of losing and we don’t like Obama or his stupid strategy of writing off half of our party while expecting us to vote for him anyway. And despite the fact that I am in the creative class, I consider myself working class. In fact, we are *all* working class if we earn less than several million a year. Do you understand what I am saying, sweeties? There is nothing special about you to the people who have the money and the power. You are flattering yourself. The only way you have any influence in the world is if you stand in solidarity with the rest of us. That you choose not to do. So. we’re not interested in your dissent.

But that won’t stop them. The new low is that they claim to be former Hillary voters but they now see that her chances are zilch and it is time to face the music and work for Obama. Like they can’t wait another week to see how the primaries play out. We must all jump aboard the Obama express before the party gets ripped in half and Obama loses in the fall.

Too late for that sweeties. But thanks for playing. Enjoy the filter. Last time I looked, you had lots of company. Er, unless you are like lola, who is really caroline. In that case, enjoy talking to yourself.

One more thing: Don’t forget that there is a protest in Washington on Saturday, May 31. I’m thinking of taking the train. For you other mass transit afficianados, here’s my best guesstimate for how to get there by train: take Amtrak regional or Acela express to Union Station in Washington. Then, hop on the Metro Red Line towards Shady Grove. Get off at the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan Station. The protest site is about .12 miles from the metro station. I calculated a round trip on the Amtrak regional for me is about $116. Given the cost of gas, I probably couldn’t do it more cheaply than that. According to the train schedule, the trip time is about 2 hours one way. I could do the whole thing in one day and have the BFF and Brook go to the Smithsonian while I’m “carrying signs and chanting slogans”.