Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Anti-Democratic Caucuses

Run, do not walk, to Jeralyn's incredible post about the anti-democratic effects that caucuses have had on the delegate selection process.

Caucuses vs. Primaries : A Report

Whatever the outcome of the nomination process, what is shockingly clear is that Hillary Clinton is the preference of the majority of voters in the states that will win the Democrats the White House in the fall. Further, it is clear that Obama is not nearly as popular as his sycophants would have you believe. He simply does not have the votes. Further, if exit polls and polls by major polling agencies are to be believed, far more of his supporters will vote for her than the other way around. In short, the top draw for the average voter is Hillary, not Obama.

This report demonstrates the basic proposition I have been saying for the last two months:

Nominee = Hillary = White House
Nominee = Obama = Loss

Anglachel

25 comments:

CMike said...

Eriposte closes a post at The Left Coaster with this parenthetical note:

******************
(Finally, I'll try to get back to this in a future post, note that the voter turnout in MI was 20%, which was a much higher turnout than in most of the caucuses and even approaching the turnouts of some other primaries this year. The voter turnout in FL was 34% - amongst the high-end of turnouts this year.

So, obviously most voters in these states could care less about the memo declaring that their vote didn't count. If these races didn't represent the wishes of the voters in those states, they are no worse than the representative effect of most caucuses and some of the other primaries.)

******************

Those are pretty good talking points.

orionATL said...

it's late where i live; time to go to bed.

but these two bits of information have been going around in my had all day.

they are more related to jeralyn's very compelling post more than might be apparent, but i'll just note them and go:


1)in a nytimes magazine article (ben wallace-wells,4-1-2007) which some weblog pointed me to,

there appears these paragraphs:

[ Axelrod ... appears on television in Chicago so frequently that construction workers and subway conductors recognize him on the street. He drives, charmingly and humbly, a Pontiac Vibe, but he also has a vast weekend house in Michigan that makes the reporters who talk to him jealous...


... the Daley circle, a bunch of reformers who brought about a restoration of the machine with its attached pathologies...

“David Axelrod’s mostly been visible in Chicago in the last decade as Daley’s public relations strategist and the guy who goes on television to defend Daley from charges of corruption,” Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who is now chairman of the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me. Axelrod sees it a little differently. He says that Daley’s election was necessary as a “moment of racial healing” and that he is “proud of the mayor’s progressive record.” ]


and


2) orion remarks -

every president who takes office receives the resignation of all the united states attorneys in the 50 states, etc. it is a tradition; a tradition i learned about while observing the
bush adminstration' manipulation of the dept of justice for political gain.

patrick fitzgerald, the extremely principled u.s. attorney for notrthern ilinois, would be among those who tendered his resignation.

patrick fitzgerald's office has tried and convicted a number of illinois officials and political operatives

and is currently trying senator obama's friend and patron of many years, antonin rezko.

when our new president takes office in jan, 2009, he/she will have the power to reappoint fitzgerald or to replace him with a new u.s. attorney for northern illinois.

i wonder if david axelrod, the daley machine, rezko, gov blogojevitch, and senator obama might have thought this possibility through some time ago?

it might explain what seems to me to be a desperate fight for the democratic nomination.


i am not the only or the first to so speculate.

Matt said...

The post that you referenced makes a great argument to get rid of the caucus format. I doubt that you will find many people that will disagree with you. It is an arcane process and isn't representative of the voting base.

However, if you go to www.realclearpolitics.com you will see that Obama is still ahead in the popular vote. Before you go crazy I understand what you are saying about the difference between the caucus numbers and the popular vote if a primary had been run.

However, these are the rules that the campaign's were given. Obama is going to win the delegate count and you can't just take that away because the system that they played under is broken. The campaigns hire people to make sure that their candidate does what it takes to win. Unless your Hillary. Mark Penn is on line one trying to get his job back.

I love the comment about Obama voters are more likely to transfer their votes to Hillary. Does this suggest that Obama supporters are more interested in the health of the country then getting their candidate nominated?

Thanks.

Matt
www.idealcrap.com

CMike said...

OrionAtl,

Raise $150 million and win the presidency -- that's someone's plan to get rid of Patrick Fitzgerald?

CognitiveDissonance said...

Matt, you need to put your glasses on and read ALL the data before claiming that Sen. Clinton is not ahead in the popular vote. It, of course, depends on which primaries and caucuses one counts when computing the popular vote. Of all the voting that has so far been done, Sen. Clinton is definitely ahead.

But we have 3 primaries left. Puerto Rico is expected to have over 1 million voters. Sen. Clinton will win that by a large enough margin to remove all doubt as to who is the popular vote winner. And let's not forget that this weekend will determine the disposition of FL/MI.

Making sweeping claims about your candidate at this stage of the game only underlines why so many people no longer even listen to Obamabots. They often have no ability to distinguish between what are Obama campaign talking points and what is reality. The two are being proven over and over every day not to be the same. (Check out what Obama said about his uncle and Aushwitz today for just the latest example).

Anonymous said...

The TalkLeft post is illuminating and detailed. It's written by a person that due to disability couldn't caucus. This minority perspective is what we folks at the real left, not the clowns Kos and Josh, care about the most.

The big picture behind the post is well known and became crystal clear after the Washington State caucus/primary sequence, Feb 10, 2008.

In any event, it's kind of late to do anything about it.

I want to point you to the FITH series by Vastleft in Corrente. Obama's accidental success is accompanied by blogs with typical Nazi terminology targeted at Hillary.

Healing and unity is, therefore, not an option. In November, if Obama is the candidate, stay home.

gendergappers said...

We're told that the DNC does not count the caucus votes.

If that's true, what is the source of BO's numbers and how authentic are they?

What is still true is that many of HRC's base [day workers, women etc.] were not able to cast a vote since they could not leave their jobs.

Shainzona said...

cmike: do you know what Michigan's historic turn-out totals were? Was 20% normal, high or low?

orionATL said...

cmike -

you're right, of course, it is absurd on the face of it to even speculate in this manner.

by the way, i think the total raised by the obama campaign is closer to $250 million.

there are even lost souls who have questions about whether it would be possible to launder money using the obama campaign's small- donation, computer-based money raising techniques - see speculative posts by myiq2xu at corrente.

for me the central question of the obama effort to become president is: why now?

this man has 4-5 years TOTAL experience in government. he was a fifty-five-days-a-year state senator and has two years in the u.s. senate.

he has never held an executive political post (mayor, governor, prez). he has neither diplomatic nor military experience. i mean this latter in the sense of being a commander, not in the sense of "did he ever serve or not". he has never led a company; as they like to say in politics "never met a payroll".

so where did obama come from and why now?

i don't know.

the simplest explantion is that he is a person of great self-confidence. his lack of experience does not trouble him.

what i have summarized in the above paragraphs might be called the individual view of history, "the great man, highly gifted individual, makes history" view of history.

should this inexperienced fellow's desire to be president now trouble others around him? perhaps. but it obviously does not. why not. why are the cadre of advisers supporting senator obama's campaign for president not troubled by his inexperience?

my view is that senator obama is NOT the moving force behind his candidacy. my view is that he is essentially a puppet, just as george bush was a puppet for karl rove and dick cheney.

speaking of posts by jeralyn merritt, which is where i began this oddyssy, she has a fine post up entitled "a theory on obama's family history misstatements." i personally infer from this that obama is indeed the puppet and his advisors are the peppeteers.

this was also clearly the case in obama's personal response to sen clinton's south dakaota statement about why strenuous efforts were being made to force her out of the race early.

so, one might wish to consider the motives behind the obama-promoting cadre. they do not have to be malign, but again they do not have to be chaste.

it is death-and-taxes certain, though, that these folks do NOT have the best interests of the nation at heart. that is prima facie evident.


i'll return to this hypothesis in time. i do not have any insider knowledge of scandal to impart. i do, however, have a lot of question to ask.

Matt said...

Cognitivedissonance, this numbers are taken from www.realclearpolitics.com. It is a polling website that has no agenda other then collecting polling information from all over the country.

Popular vote totals
Obama 16,685,941
Clinton 16,227.514 (-458,427)

w/IA, NV, ME, WA (estimate)
Obama 17,020,025
Clinton16,451,376 (-568,649)

w/Florida
Obama 17,262,155
Clinton 17,098,500 (-163,655)

Now if you count MI then Clinton does take a lead by 164,654 but I fail to see how that is fair since I got just as many votes in MI as Obama did.

If you have numbers from a legitimate source that refute these I would love to see them. I don't tell me, "If you count MI" it isn't going to happen without some kind of revote.

Let me know how Clinton is ahead in the popular vote.

Thanks.

Matt
www.idealcrap.com

CMike said...

Shanzonia,

Your question has led me to discover what I posted is a bit misleading. If you go to the data source Eriposte uses you'll see that the reference is to the combined turnout for both the Democratic and Republican primaries in Florida and Michigan. The percentage participation Eriposte gives is derived from dividing the total votes cast numbers by the respective states' "voting eligible population."

There's no break down for party registration. More voters participated in both the Florida and Michigan Republican primaries than participated in those states' Democratic primaries.

In Florida, voters in the Dem primary made up about 47 percent of the combined total Dem/Repub vote (1.73/1.92 million votes) in that Republican controlled state. The Florida primary was a closed primary - you could only vote in a party primary if you were registered for that party.

In the Michigan primary, the Republicans turned out at a 3:2 higher rate than Dems (868/592 thousand voters). I don't know, but I would think Democratic registration in Michigan is higher than Republican registration (and that was an open primary anyway, IIRC). (In answer to your question, Michigan Dems held a caucus in 2004.)

So, in conclusion, the case I was making for legitimating the Michigan vote might be weaker than I thought.

orionATL said...

to understand my persistence in asking "why obama NOW",

you need to understand that obama is an affiliate of the daley machine in chicago. his wife has worked for that machine. his campaign money raising chief worked for that machine (as his wife's boss).

his campaign strategist is a long time servant of that machine, or the machine is a client of his. take you pick.

i believe that you cannot understand the obama presidential bid without also considering it as a product of big-city machine politics.

and, i would add, obama is an affiliate of an illinois state political machine referred to as "the combine" (meaning both parties combined) in which democrats and republicans repress their party differences in order to share in the graft funded, ultimately, from state coffers.

it is this later "combine" that has drawn the repeated attention of a u.s. department of justice team headed by u.s. attorney patrick fitzgerald.

if you want an overview of this situation you need to read investigative reporter evelyn pringle's series "curtaintime for barack obama". i read it first at http://rezkowatch.blogspot.com some weeks ago.

rezkowatch is now running "condensed versions" of that six part series which it calls "cliff notes" for "curtaintime for barack obama".

if you want to print out the entire six part series for study, the easiest place to do that is at pringle's website http://www.smirkingchimp.com.


back now to,

why obama NOW?

suppose you have some possible criminal involvement arising from your "work" for either a city or a state political machine, or both.

suppose, like barack obama, you have been a state senate enabler of a machine by sponsoring dubious legislation that helped establish certain state boards used later for kickbacks.

suppose, like barack obama, you have received campaign contributions from folks involved in these activities.

suppose indictments by the u.s. attorney's office involve persons to whom you have been politically very close and who might have information about your own conduct that could earn you one of those coveted grand jury indictments.

what to do?

well, if you decide to become a candidate for a high profile political office, such as president, you might calculate that your candidacy would buy you time and shelter, since scrupulous political attorneys (and fitzgerald is one of the few of those left in the bush doj) avoid legal action in the midst of a campaign for fear of being perceived as favoring one side (this of course never stopped the bush doj, fitzgerald excepted).

and, of course, if you won the prisidency, you would have the option of doing away with the entire prosecution team

before your beautiful career could be permanently ruined.

CMike said...

OrionAtl,

Ambitious politicians run for higher office when they think they can win. They don't need other reasons. Backers of politicians tend to like to see their guy advance just for the sake of advancement.

orionATL said...

cmike -

you're absolutely right.

and yours is a simple, plausible explanation.

i am just speculating, partly for fun, partly out of partisanship, and partly because things are never quite what they seem to be in politics.

motives, especially, have a public and a private side that aren't necessarily the same.

Shainzona said...

orionatl: your initial post about Axelrod being such a familiar face around Daley and his machine makes me think that the machine was looking for a puppet to become master to. And lo and behold, Obama appears.

I also believe that Michelle Obama has her fingers all over the machine's knowledge and view of BO...and handsome AA couple, with Harvard educations, etc.

I liked Obama in 2004 - even remember writing to someone and saying he will someday be POTUS. The thing that really really really set the stage for my personal dislike of him is that he is so unqualified for the job of POTUS, I can only assume that his/Michelle's egos got the best of him and he decided to go for it now.

I remember being in business and when an empty suit got promoted over his/her head, we all rolled our eyes and knew disaster was in the future. The fact that he could not see that/was not willing to see that is so disgusting that I have never looked at him in a positive light since.

Shame on him for what he wants to do for himself...and for the detriment of this country.

cmugirl said...

cmike - As someone who voted in Michigan in 2004, I can tell you that while it may have been called a "caucus" in 2004, we all went to vote in booths. Michigan, as far as I recall, has never had a caucus like we see in Iowa. 124,000 or so votes were cast in 2004, so the 600,000 votes that were cast this year were indeed, a very good turnout.

CMike said...

Julie -- I guess I should be a little more systematic about this. Here's what I'm finding now, maybe 160,000 people were at the caucus.

From your description, I'm wondering why it was called a caucus.

alibe said...

I think the DNC set up MI and FL from the get go. It was done a long while ago. But don't forget that Obama was an original Dean Dozen. Donna Brazile and Howard Dean and who knows who else conspired to hold off Hillary's juggernaut till the states that Obama could win via caucus intimidation, high Black Democrat registration and high white latte elites with white guilt were in the bag and the bought media would do what they always do.... lie and fabricate and facilitate the propaganda. Just like they did as per Scott McClellan's book. Have you ever seen the MSM promote a progressive Democrat for more than 3 days? GE and NBC are so in the bag for Obama as to be laughable. CNN is not far behind. ABC was the butt of a smear from Obama and the other networks, just for asking somewhat probing questions.
And to think Dean and Brazile aren't in on the conspiracy with the DNC and the media is nonsensical. How many times have we seen Brazile on TV in the past 4 months? Like all the time. How many times have the media lied about the true picture of MI and FL and the race? Thousands?? Is this just by accident? I don't think so. And couple this with the misogny. It is so over the top. The problem is that we can do very little about it. Just look at what we have endured over the past 7 years. Does one really think the media was duped? or complicit?

orionATL said...

shainzona,

i feel that way myself. plus, i have had to watch my extremely capable wife struggle with just such a situation.

for me, the central issue of the obama candidacy is his lack of experience.

i have referred to it over and over in my comments the last several months.

it is astonishing to me that people are so insouciant about a presidential candidate's having sufficient political experience before being nominated or elected.

being president is NOT something any one of us could do with one hand tied behind our back.

it is NOT something like picking up table-tennis or bridge.

the presidency is an extremely demanding job involving persuasion, representation, patience and emotional balance, high intelligence, calculation of opportunities and lack thereof,

and

the willingness to make a decision for the nation.

in my view people need a LOT of experience to do this job well.

having tons of experience (plus high intellignece)was the key reason bill clinton was such a competent president. it was why lyndon johnson was so effective.

it is the reason why hillary clinton is the perfect person for this job at this moment, given the extremely serious problems this nation is facing and will face in the near future.

that so little attention is paid to this key factor leaves me angry and shaking my head, over and over and over again.

with a comparable level of experience in an industry that he has in politics,

senator obama would not even be considered as a candidate for the ceo of general electric, or ford, or home depot, or boeing, or bank america, or general dynamics, or safeway, or merck.

but the ceo of the united states,

oh hell yes,

anybody could do that job.

that attitude, widely shared, is how we ended up with the very inexperienced and monumentally incompetent george w. bush.

Shainzona said...

orionatl: Amen to all you said!

SergeiRostov1 said...

I love the comment about Obama voters are more likely to transfer their votes to Hillary. Does this suggest that Obama supporters are more interested in the health of the country then getting their candidate nominated?

Thanks.

Matt
www.idealcrap.com


No, it's the result of the fact that - unlike the other way around - Hillary's supporters *haven't* called Obama's supporters 'racist','vile', 'horrendous', 'evil' (and on and on)...not even close.


SR

[Sergei Rostov]

SergeiRostov1 said...

However, if you go to www.realclearpolitics.com you will see that Obama is still ahead in the popular vote.

But if you go the the far-more-detailed www.thegreenpapers.com it sayd the opposite.


However, these are the rules that the campaign's were given.

And Obama wants to change the rules and be declared the winner before the convention.

Obama is going to win the delegate count

So you have a crystal ball or something? Can you tell me next month's lottery numbers, too? Gee, how nice. The rest of us have to wait until the delegates actually vote at the convention....


and you can't just take that away because the system that they played under is broken.

Actually, the superdelegates can vote any way they like. In fact, in some states, even the 'pledged' delegates can change their vote at any time. And any of the delegates can change their votes after after the first ballot at the convention.

The campaigns hire people to make sure that their candidate does what it takes to win.

Well, to be more specific, the Obama campaign apparently does .

The Hillary campaign, on the other hand, apparently only hires people who will only do those things to win which are ethical, fair, and honest.

SergeiRostov1 said...

If you have numbers from a legitimate source that refute these I would love to see them. I don't tell me, "If you count MI" it isn't going to happen without some kind of revote.

Since their vote totals were certified by their respective Secretaries of State, MI (and FL) count in the popular vote totals. The DNC is a private organization which has no say in this matter. Period.

Let me know how Clinton is ahead in the popular vote.

Thanks.

Matt
www.idealcrap.com


Easily done:




http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/D.phtml


Clinton, Hillary Rodham 17,444,378

Obama, Barack Hussein 17,291,906



SR

Shainzona said...

Thank you, SR!!!

orionATL said...

i think i've figured out what obama and axelrod are up to.

why the obama campaign seems so stange, so ruthless, its behavior so much like the bush campaign's behavior in novembber/december, 2000.

the insight came while reading an article on chicago's political/business power structure written by mel and published at NO QUARTER.

the article is entitled "ayers, obama, philantropy, corruption..."

my comment there:

Comment by orionATL | 2008-05-29 10:06:12

this article by mel could use a good editor, but it provided me with a key insight.

OBAMA AND AXELROD REALLY ARE BENT ON HIJACKING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

they intend to TAKE OVER AND USE the democratic party to radically reform american politics,

these guys are left-wing ideologues little different from the right-wing ideologues who have run the bush presidency for seven and 1/2 long years.

throughout this campaign i keep reading comments from democrats and clinton supporters to the effect that

- the obama campaign is trying to hijack the democratic party.

- obama is some sort of manchurian candidate.

Mel’s article tells me that their intuition was correct.

read between the lines in the followng two quotes and i think you will see what i mean.

from Mel’s article:

[(mel asks rhetoricaly)

..the Democratic Party feels someone like this is the future?
>
> Answer:

Dohrn stated: “I don’t look to the Democratic Party. I don’t have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big ‘us.’ “Stay vigilant. The light will come”…….is the light Obama, yes to them he is! JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!! ]

and this

[ … David Axelrod happens to come from a politically communist family: his mother use to write for the NY paper “PW” which was a communist oriented paper. Axelrod also met Obama in the early 1990’s (1991 to be exact), when Obama was a community organizer leading a voter-registration drive on the South Side. Axelrod served as advertising director for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign. A former political reporter, Axelrod, 53, left the Chicago Tribune in 1984 (started in 1977) to become press secretary for then-Rep. Paul Simon, D-Ill., who was running for the Senate. He established himself as a fixture in Windy City politics, as well as statewide. In 1989, Axelrod went to work for Richard M. Daley in his first successful bid to be Chicago’s mayor, and he has remained close to the Daley machine ever since by displacing the African-American leadership from City Hall. Read More. ]

bernadine dorn is bill ayers wife. i’d bet that obama and ayers and dorn and axelrod have had lots of conversations about taking over the democratic party in order to transform american politics.

axelrod’s communist family background suggests to me that axelrod was raised to hold a deep contempt for american political traditions and for the democratic party.

know we know

obama is the means for axelrod and ayers and dorn to “reform” american politicis.

that’s what this strange race is all about.

and the superdelegates are going right along with that.