An argument can be made for Florida, but claiming Senator Clinton "won a decisive victory" in Michigan is just plain ludicrous....she was the only MAJOR candidate with her name on the ballot.
Obama had his removed before the DNC ruled to penalize the State. Who's fault is that?
Still doesn't change the fact she won a flawed, specious victory in Michigan, not a decisive one
keyword: won.
Yeah, she totally pwned Mr. Uncommitted.
by only 15%.
Mr. Uncommitted is precisely the correct name for someone who voted present as frequently as he committed to a position on anything. Thanks for the chuckle.
On the one hand, I'm tired of hearing that dishonest old talking point.
On the other hand, I would not have thought of that connection on my own, so I had to chuckle as well. Kudos to you!
Just in case you're looking for an honest discussion...
Link? My impression is that "uncommitted" is a parliamentary maneuver in IL, and basically all of his "uncommitted" votes were for parliamentary reasons.
So you're saying the burden is on him to prove he's not a closet America-hating Muslim? Sorry, not gonna buy that...
Hey keep remembering that keyword.
Actually Clinton didn't win. She pledeged not to participate. People who don't participate in something cannot win it. Kucinich won Michigan they were the only ones that didn't say they wouldn't participate, get over it.
Any delegates for a candidate that didn't participate, or uncommited candidate, should remain for uncommitted. Woo them at the convention if they get seated at all.
Popular votes for Michigan:
(checkmark) Kucinich : 21,715 votes 3.7% Gravel: 2,361 votes 0.4% Uncommited: 566,437 Votes 95.3%
I thought Gravel had a chance at this thing, but Kucinich really put it away. The demographics were really much more in his corner.
Were you in MI? Obviously not, or you would know that Obama supporters in Michigan ran radio, tv and internet and newspaper ads to get voters to vote uncommitted. If you want I can post the links. It was well covered here on the news and the blogs. MI Democratic voters, particularly Obama supporters knew that they should vote uncommitted for there candidate. Unfortunately, some of them decided to be cute and follow Markos suggestion to vote in the Republican primary instead. Now they have remorse. But the vote Uncommitted was well advertised here before the primary. It was flawed because people squandered their votes by following the suggestions of someone who doesn't live in the state.
Were you in Florida when this was being decided...? I mean the penalties not the primary....
I was and did what I could to avert this... but the state party held fast to the idea that the primary should be moved up... and then incurred the penalty of not having the delegates seated... which was threatened before it was decided....
And my votes counted... and I was able to vote... so I was not disenfranchised.
Yeah. I was there. And we were told the election wouldn't count. Period. End of story.
And then the MI court ruled the election unconstitutional. Period. End of story.
That ruling had nothing to do with the outcome of the election, nor did it void the results of that election. The ruling said that the provision of the election whereby the public would not have access to the lists of who voted was unconstitutional.
The primary should not have counted (and it won't). But you don't need to go around saying stupid lies to make that true.
Then I was misinformed, which seemed to happen a lot in Michigan this year. Thanks for clearing it up.
And for being so nice about it.
I was taking my cues from the overall tone of this thread. I have no specific issue with you and I wasn't going out of my way to be a jackhole.
S'ok. I hate to go around spouting something at the top of my lungs that's inaccurate (unless it's personal measurements ;).
Tips for the use of "jackhole."
A vote for "Uncommitted" was a vote for "Uncommitted," not Obama.
Our primary was fatally flawed, and it was our own doing.
that we should have known to "write-in" Obama in that election we were told would not be counted towards the nomination.
Our primary does not allow for write-in votes.
I didn't think so! I didn't recall seeing any such opportunity. Okay, one less thing to feel bad about.
Despite the best efforts of Obama supporters, they were not able to embarrass Hillary Clinton by having her lose in MI to "uncommitted" as I'm sure was their intent. We weren't all born yesterday - she probably got a few extra votes, because people don't like that kind of mean spiritedness (sp?).
And Romney beat McCain... due in part to the efforts of the netroots to get Dem voters to support him....
Thank you markos for that brilliant move.
</snark>
It didn't end up having much impact. Do you think the Democratic party would have been better off somehow if McCain had won Michigan?
The impact that it had was in giving Rush LImbaugh the idea (and the moral excuse) for gaming OUR primary.
Get it?
Oh, and THANKS FOR THE TR"S!!!
:)
Not only that Obama and others removed their names from the ballot in Michigan to pander to Iowa.
And tell me again why Clinton's surrogates voted on the rules committee to sanction MI and FL, and agree to abide by those sanctions?
I used to agree with your position on Michigan, but I've learned a few things since then. The fact is that Obama and Edwards took their names off the Michigan ballot as a strategy to game the system and win favor in Iowa. That was their choice. No rule required it. Now, Obama does not want to live with the consequences, so his team is trying to fool the public about what the rules are.
You should ask yourself if we really want a candidate who has to have so many breaks to win the nomination. We are supposed to throw out millions of valid votes in Florida and Michigan to help him; he has a biased press pushing his candidacy but he still can't close the deal; he whines when he gets a hard question once a month while being silent or piling on while HRC is trashed by the press; with a 3-to-1 money advantage he still loses Penn. by 10 points; he's lost all the critical Dem. states but the one he lives in. Most of the delegates he does have come from states where a single vote counts for more in delegates than it does in more populous states -- in other words, overstating his victories. This is your candidate???? You must want to lose in November.
"That was their choice. "
The word 'participate' certainly seems to mean a different thing to Clinton supporters than it does to the rest of the English-speaking world.
OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I see. It's not a "fairness to the voters" argument. It's a "too, bad, he have known" argument.
Then, MI and FL won't be counted, because their own elected representatives violated the rules. Too bad, they should have known.
Even though that's true, what do you think about the fact that Obama and Edwards intentionally and voluntarily removed their names for strategic purposes? And that they were able to profit from that in Iowa, at Hillary's expense? Whose fault is that?
Nobody forced them to remove their names. The DNC Rules which state that the final decision on delegate seating is made at the Convention were fully in place at the time they made that decision, so they had full knowledge of the potential consequences of their decision.
They removed their names so that a bogus election that voters were told would not count, would not become a bait-and-switch and "made to count" later.
And sure enough, that election was ruled unconstitutional.
They removed their names because they signed a pledge that said they wouldn't participate in a primary or caucus before 2/5 except in NH, SC, NV, and IA. It had nothing to do with people coming back later and saying MI should have counted.
"""And sure enough, that election was ruled unconstitutional."""
Holy shee-it. This is not an election. It's a primary.
Thus, its rules are not covered by the constitution.
Therefore, nothing was ruled unconstitutional.
ffs
