Memo to CNN: It's Saturday, You Morons.

CNN was on earlier spinning why Clinton does poorly in most caucus states, and trotting out the old excuse of "Well, all her voters have to work 9 to 5, only the ivy-league latte liberals have time to go caucus."

Never mind the fact that your employer is legally obligated to let you go vote, AND to pay you for the time...

IT'S SATURDAY, YOU MORONS.

I would argue the majorty of those people in fact.

Super Tuesday?

Polls allow you to go to them any time in the day. Caucuses do not. I personally would want a national voting day (national holiday), but what can ya do.

boss is supposed to give you the time off, it's difficult to say you'll be out for several hours because your caucusing. Primaries work better with the option to vote before, during or after the workday.

the ones that count.

But the primary and caucus sites this time are seeing record numbers of Dems turning out. Bellyaching means very little right now. Not with people turning out in such numbers.

then you probably really don't care that much.. Heck, take a whole day off for democracy. Bring the kids along. Personally I feel that getting them used to the idea of voting for the president once every four years (twice if you want to count primary day and November) is a lot more important than weekly baseball practice or whatever. In fact, more important than school.

us. Not as easy as you portray it.

That's reality.

Also, some states add bond initiatives and property tax measures to the ballot that get older voters out to vote.

So cut the bullshit. No form of voting is going to be fair to everyone.

The middle ground are the ones who are left out. We've been over it a hundred times before.

They were the easily the majority at the caucus I volunteered at in TX too. You're going to have to find another excuse for why Hillary lost.

It is irrefutable that if you have to show up at a certain time of the day to do something, if everyone had to do it, then a good number of them can't.

Caucuses in this *record breaking caucus season* pull 2% of registered voters (based on Washington state's caucus, and a few others, I need to find the links again). That's all! THAT'S ALL!

IMO, Obama's delegates "cost" more because he earned them by convincing people to devote up to several hours of their day to caucus. He spent a great deal of money and resources setting up offices in small caucus states. Hillary got more of her votes in primaries, many of which are held in states with early and mail-in voting. There's simply not as much of a time commitment for most voters in a primary as there is in a caucus, that is, unless they live in a community where election officials deliberately put fewer voting machines to discourage people from voting (of course, those would be in districts that favor Obama in this election). Add to that states often add local primaries and initiatives to the ballot, thus attracting more older voters. Hillary won states she barely campaigned in, like Arizona, where she benefitted from a closed primary, and a large retired and Hispanic population.

The fact is she hasn't worked that hard for her votes. She assumed she was going to ride in on a wave of inevitability and the incompetence and disorganization of her campaign reflected it. And now she's working the media to keep herself afloat.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that whatsoever. Caucuses are easier to campaign (you can campaign at, in and around the caucus, unlike polls which that is illegal).

Your candidate is the one talking about which states "don't count" not us. And I'm sorry, but I'm not buying your little sob story about campaigning at the caucuses. You can campaign at most polls as long as you maintain a certain distance too.

I notice you completely avoided my point, which is that Hillary didn't work harder for her delegates than Obama did. You know it's true.

fair to me.

Let that sink in a bit.

Though... somehow he seems to do VERY well among those making more than $50,000 per year.

The people making barely 20k if not 15k do not.

Not all people in their 20s are in college, just so you know.

...does so poorly in them, and I believe it is because she caannot get a sampling of the whole of the population and because of the coercion present at caucuses.

She said herself that caucuses attract more of the "activist" types.

That's pretty bizarre to me.

That said, this is the first time in a long time that the pres. primaries and caucuses have not been the sole province of the politically engaged minority. The turnout we're seeing right now is not the norm, and I'm sure you know that. Funny how there wasn't this outcry about people being "disenfranchised" by the system before Obama started winning stuff. The Clintons have been the putative heads of the Democratic party for 16 years now and they've had plenty of time to revamp the system if it was so bad. Bill Clinton loved caucuses when he was winning them, didn't he? But now they are sooooo unfair.

I do see that many folks who have better paying positions have weekends off. I work six days a week.

You must be really, really busy.

at a grocery store. Worked days there for 20 years, though.

go play with someone else

What a joke. Gotta go find that post, I wonder if they missed it.

Like I said, if you can't find time once every 4 years, you're not trying.

The OP claims to speak for the entire voting population. Sounds like that's your hook as well.

You must be fortunate enough to have the time to take off whenever you want. That's special.

Sorry, I've done plenty of blue-collar and minimum wage jobs in my day. I'm not buying this 'impossible' argument - it's pure victimology. According to you guys, no Obama supporters have responsibilities, jobs, or economic hardships to overcome.

People can take an hour off of work during the whole day, yes, that's absolutely possible. I'm flipping burgers, I take my lunch break, I run down to a poll, I vote. A national holiday would remove that hinderance from most people, but it's not happening (we're talking tens of billions of lost revenue for the society).

But with a caucus I have to be off at a certain time, if that time is when I or someone of my class has to be working, someone must take that spot for me or I risk losing my job.

Sorry, I used to flip burgers for $5/hour and I still found ways to take time off if I had something I really wanted to do on that day.

But you didn't mind spending 10 minutes to do something?

There's a reason 2% of registered voters caucus in our record breaking season.

nt

And they can thank the generation that brought us Ronald Reagan for that.

:shrug:

Maybe I should move there.

It's not like it's a weekly, monthly, or even an annual commitment.

Seriously. No one to serve your coffee at Starbucks or flip your burgers at McDonalds for 2-3 hours out of the day is big.

(And these caucuses are requiring that large of a commitment.)

Oh wait, they're not Clinton voters.

Sorry, I'm not buying this silly argument. Using your logic there would be no point in ever holding any kind of public or commercial event that might attract working people, because it might possibly bring society to a halt. Yet somehow people find time to go to sports games, watch tv shows, attend each others parties and so on. I guess from now on whenever I see someone enjoying some time off I'll dismiss them as overpaid elitists.

...naive and untested Obama. If these campaigns are any indication of how they will run the White House, well, I think it's pretty obvious who will win.

$1,200.00 on Dunkin' Donuts in January
$11,000.00 on Pizza in January
$25,000.00 on Luxury Suits in Vegas
$275,000.00 to Sunrise Communications in South Carolina to "turn out the black vote". Good call there, huh?
$100,000.00 for party platters after Iowa.

Nice...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/us/politics/22clinton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Clinton's bakery costs were $5,950.53 for the 10 months up to and including Jan.
Obama's were $1,877.28 during the same period. I guess it was all those Lattes that made up the difference?

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/time-to-count-the-doughnuts/

for, it seems Obama's having a little difficulty filing his campaign finance report correctly. He left off many charges and didn't provide any breakdown on millions of credit card charges. Let's hope he's better at handling a multi trillion dollar budget. Let's hope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/us/politics/18obama.html

...multi-trillion dollar budget if she spends like she has thus far.

I know several people here in MN (where we only had 1 HOUR to caucus for our candidate from 7-8pm!) who were unable to get out of work....They were not able to vote.

Here's how it worked in MN....the caucus was full of college kids who had nothing to do in terms of responsibility...the nurses were at work, the wal-mart employees were at work, the girl that goes to college and works at Barnes and Noble? work. The ob/gyn deliverying a baby? You guessed it again...at WORK.

And they were not allowed to leave to vote fyi.

Once every four years. Anyone who really wants to be there can manage to take some time off, swap shifts, or something like that. I know plenty about being poor and needing every dollar, and I also know that where there's a will there's a way.

OMG.

There's a reason true Democrats want a National Voters Holiday, and espouse the virtues of Direct Democracy where one vote counts equally among the rest (some of us even take it a bit further and favor runoff voting).

If everyone at your workplace wants to caucus, then you can get together and tell your boss you want to close for part of the day. Believe it or not this will usually work out just fine. You can pair off with an opposite voter if it's truly impossible to attend.

The primaries happen once in four years. You have months of advance notice to plan for it. Your excuses are laughable.

I have been vocal about defending Hillary only because of the hateful attitudes expressed here. There is little I can achieve here.

My position has been consistant for 8+ years. I'm against the caucusing system because it doesn't allow everyone to vote.

Your "solution" is what's laughable here, because stores aren't shutting down to let people vote. This is Capitalist America.

tell the lady having her baby to pant through for another couple of hours, let the motor vehicle accident victims lie on the roadside for the caucus time. Why not....they shouldn't impose on our right to vote by needing emergency care.

The individual college student that worked at B&N that I know asked for the shift off in a timely fashion but could not be granted it....and she was mad....she even considered not coming in to work out of protest but she needs her job!

If they can't go, they can't go.

If people had been able to vote in MN all day long then more moms, dads and working people could have shown up before their shifts, while their kids were at school, etc.

Caucus=sham

I'd expect Terry McAuliffe to say that tomorrow, if his satellite feed holds up.

Don't generalize. Generalizations are unfair.

I don't think employers are required to give employees
a whole day to caucus.

Caucusing is very messy and time consuming, and it also
takes training.

So I think there's some validity to the idea that the
poor and working classes would be much less likely to
participate in caucuses.

Sue

I was the only one out of my whole group of family and friends. My husband works Satudays but he is a church organ player so he has Saturday service. But most people still don't work on the weekend.

My state had a caucus, and I am not, nor weree the people around me some kind of rich elitist liberals -- I work my ass off at two jobs and go to school and I was STILL there. And I'll tell you, the people around me weren't some upper class percentile of the electorate.... they were people just like me.

the electorate.

But that doesn't change what I said.