Honest question for Clinton supporters. don't want any negative comments.

Please try to restrain yourselves, Obama and Clinton supporters alike.

How can Hillary say that she wants the votes of EVERYONE to count, which is part of her justification for staying in the race, and then say, and i quote "There is no such thing as a pledged delegate."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080403/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_delegates;_ylt=AqNKuo_E_JEXa_nNVZOIiwms0NUE

So, if she wants the vote of the people to count, and the way that their votes count is through the delegates that they elect to represent them and their candidate at the convention, how can she claim, with a straight face, that those delegates should be free to vote however they want regardless of who they were elected to support?

their state, and Richardson blowing off the voices of the voters in New Mexico and said "why the hell should i just sit back and take this?"

The final tally had clinton winning by less than 2,000 votes out of over 148,000 cast. That's barely one percent, after a recount, where ~7,000 provisional ballots were thrown out. There's no mandate from the voters with that small of a margin.

Some justification. Surely there are larger straws to grasp at than that.

a super has no choice but to use his or her own judgement.

when they hadn't voted yet when he endorsed.

Meanwhile, are they superdelegates? Is Richardson a superdelegete?

How does one find out who the superdelegates are? Is there a list?

Meanwhile, it does seem we are talking about pledged delegates, not superdelegates.

Still bugs you that Kerry and Kennedy and Richardson prefer someone else, eh? It doesn't bother me that Wilson and Murtha picked someone not to MY liking.

By your backwards logic, if Pennsylvania doesn't go for Hillary, then Murtha will have ignored the will of his state, even though they hadn't voted when he endorsed.

Hard to blow off a voice one hasn't heard yet.

every vote being heard when she expected to be the nominee by early February?

Delegates slates are intentionally loaded with the most loyal of supporters to avoid that situation.

She says she wants the will of the people to be represented, but at the same time is using a stupid loophole in the rules to get regular delegates (not supers, not talking about those) to vote against the way the people did.

and state delegations are assigned on a percentage basis via the popular vote of the state in question. Delegates are seated per candidate unless there is only one guy or gal standing. The votes of everyone do count in terms of candidate selection per state. In some instances delegates are deemed uncommitted and they too become independent.

Unless you're part of the not quite 50 state Dean strategy, Florida and Michigan.

major candidate on the Michigan ballot, so i don't agree that that is a fair result.

Edited to take out "she was outvoted by uncommitted". I was wrong about that, sorry.

And no, contrary to your assertion the vote was 55-Clinton and 45- Uncommitted.

i edited the uncommitted part out, i was wrong about that, and already apologized for it.

not counting the votes when it is Michigan and Florida.

and since Hillary was the only major candidate on the Michigan ballot, and was outvoted by uncommitted, that is a completely different scenario.

http://miboecfr.nicusa.com/election/results/08PPR/01000000.html

How exactly does that translate to "uncommitted" outvoting her?

able to follow along. Question. A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right? Wrong.Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.In fact, the actual rules of the party allow for such switching.The notion that pledged delegates must vote for a certain candidate is, according to the Democratic National Committee, a “myth.”

“Delegates are NOT bound to vote for the candidate they are pledged to at the convention or on the first ballot,” a recent DNC memo states. “A delegate goes to the convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular presidential candidate. At the convention, while it is assumed that the delegate will cast their vote for the candidate they are publicly pledged to, it is not required.”

After the April 22 Pennsylvania primary the pledged delegate count looks very close, “both sides will start working all delegates.In other words, Clinton and Obama will have to go after every delegate who is alive and breathing.

being forsed to vote their "pledge" even on the first ballot.

Now explain to me how, if they do that, they are following the will of the people that voted for the candidate they pledged to support?

The argument put forth in the original post was that Clinton cannot have it both ways. She cannot claim she wants the votes to count and then encourage delegates to go against that vot.

Before I get a lecture, the delegates in question ARE NOT super delegates.

It must be, because your oh-so-cogent post seems to be taken word for word from this editorial:



In light of the FACT that you seem to have no moral qualms lifting entire paragraphs from someone else without attribution, I decided to search DU to see if you were one of the indignant "PLAGIARIST!" posters re Obama using the phrase from Deval Patrick and found this here and here.

Goodness. Such sanctity. Such high moral ground! But were these, too, your own words? Just for kicks and grins, I checked and found this. You even took part of your post from the comment section.

"The Audacity of Plagarism : Plagiarizing a speech during a presidential campaign was enough to end Sen. Joe Biden’s first bid for the presidency. In 1987, Joe Biden ran as a Democratic presidential candidate. When the campaign began, he was considered a frontrunner because of his moderate image. However, the campaign ended when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party. Though Biden had correctly credited the original author in all speeches but one, the one where he failed to make mention of the originator was caught on video. In the video Biden is filmed repeating a stump speech by Kinnock, with only minor modifications.

If just one or two phrases repeated, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a coincidences…but 4 phrases repeated with the same cadence, tone and intonation? Obama uses old school “gold dust preacher” tricks to hypnotize crowds: steadily increasing volume of voice and music, steadily increasing his cadence, chanting/repeating the same words and phrases over and over and over, swaying, saying something very general that can apply to all then quickly saying specifics to grab different parts of the crowd and pull them in. If it gets really warm where he’s speaking, that’s another technique."

written by BigheadDC and commented on by Worth Repeating.

repeated verbatim at DU by BenDavid with NO ATTRIBUTION


Hypocrisy, thy name is BenDavid

That backfired like hell in Iowa. Likely to do so again. Keep talkin', Paulette Revere!

Aren't both candidates wooing and trying to sway delegates? Sincere question.

What does "poaching" mean exactly? What has Senator Clinton actually done?

Poaching is a term I used, I am not sure if it is in wide circulation, to describe the act of trying to persuade pledged delegates to vote for a candidate other than the candidate that they are pledged to, which legally they have the right to do.

My question was that if Senator Clinton uses the idea that votes should all count as one of her main pillars of her argument for staying in the race, and as we all know the will of the voters is represented by the pledged delegates, how can she also claim, as I said in the OP, that persuading pledged delegates to vote against the candidate they were elected to represent fits into that idea.

Wouldn't both candidates try to do that? Why wouldn't they? What evidence do we have that Clinton is doing that? (I really don't know, by the time I am aware of these controversies about either of the candidates the bitter battles are so far down the road with charges and counter-charges flying back and forth between the two camps that it is hard to find the original cause of the uproar.)

She exposed her strategy to Axelrod/Plouffe, and they pounced. Long before this quote, but man, that just kind of nails it, doesn't it? The "entitlement" and "this is gonna be easy" thing?

Heckuva job, Hill.

She thought the race would be about states we'd win in the GE.

It was a political mistake of epic propotions.

You call this an ethical discussion?

She's picking where she can but she's not going to really 'take' pledged delegates.

BTW, unless you didn't see politico, DNC just seated FL and MI.

So, you know, they recognize that 10% of the voting population is a big deal and disenfranchising them is a bad idea.

The DNC will seat Florida and Michigan at the Standing Committees (Credentials, Platform, and Rules). Not at the Convention itself. The DNC has vowed to play the Florida/Michigan matter completely by the rules, and ensure that the losing campaign does not walk away from the table feeling that they were cheated out of every legitimate chance to win the nomination. Excluding states from Standing Committees would do just that, as the rules governing the seating of nominating delegations did not include membership in these committees.

The relevent committee concerning the FL/MI primaries is, of course, the Credentials Committee. It should be noted that neither states' members on the Committee will be allowed to vote on whether their respective Convention delegates will be seated. All it does, essentially, is open up the possibility for vote trading. So it does not explicitly benefit either campaign.

And you know the first vote on the schedule will be to seat them for the nomination.

If it's shot down then they will be quite loud about it. :)

Just going with raw political muscle: Notwithstanding the 25 DNC appointees, and the FL/MI members who won't be allowed to vote on their own seating, Obama currently holds 65 of those seats to Clinton's 56. And it's mathematically impossible for Clinton to win enough of the remaining seats to cause the committee to vote out a majority report in favor of seating those delegations without winning over a significant portion of the people Dean appointed.

You think DNC appointees are going to be sympathetic to State Parties that have been lambasting them in the newsmedia for the past six months? Politics 101: You don't cross bridges that are burnt.

They could publish a seperate minority report and have the Convention floor vote on it, but you are still left with the same problem. All you accomplish is turning the floor into a shitstorm for the national newsmedia. That certainly won't curry favor with anyone aside from the most dogmatic delegates.

accepting loss despite your best efforts is a very tough thing.
It tough on the little league baseball field and its tough at this much higher level.
It not complicated at all.

When this is the precise attempt to steal North Dakota delegates I was referring to.

I expect another half dozenas this must be some new talking point coming from somewhere.

:sarcasm: