And you know what the final punnishment will be, hmmm?  FLORIDA VOTERS VOTE FOR MCCAIN.

It's called shooting yourself in the foot.  You may end up getting your candidate because you denied Florida, but you'll have won the battle but lost the war. (The War being the November election.)

The path to electoral victory is pretty rocky without Florida.

It would be in your best interest to try thinking ahead.

...To spite your face.

That's what this is called.

If nothing else I point this out because I have seen a great deal of teeth gnashing over how horribly undemocratic the role of Super Delegates is. I have seen a great deal of teeth gnashing over how disenfranchising it would be for a candidate who won a slim plurality less pledged delegates to possibly win the nomination with the votes of super delegates. Well that, just like the disenfranchisement of Florida voters, is also "in the rules."

It is also "in the rules" for caucus goers to pick delegates to the National Democratic Convention with their votes weighted up to 10 times heavier than those of primary voters, because across the board only small fractions of the Democratic base participate in caucuses relative to primaries. The same link I used to get turnout numbers for caucuses does a statistical comparison of participation levels between them and primaries by the way.

There are appeals built into the rules to deal with situations like Florida and Michigan, but I am commenting on something broader. I am commenting about all of the complaints that mostly come from Obama supporters about how inherently undemocratic it would be - leaving "rules" aside, to allow Super Delegates to be the swing vote in this nominating process. Leaving "rules" aside, I am pointing out some other undemocratic features of this nomination process.

I think the Democratic Party stands for increasing voter turn out, not suppressing the vote by sharply restricting the voting hours, by forcing voters to remain present on location for hours at a cacus in order to make their voice count, or by allowing crowds of advocates for one candidate to potentially get in the face of and intimidate supporters of another.

I thought one person one vote was the standard Democrats strove for, not one person one vote IF your candidate has 15% of the attendees supporting him or her, otherwise you are forced to give your vote to someone else or leave. I thought Democrats are moving away from power broker deals like the ones cut in smokey rooms AND in caucuses where candidates make mutual pacts to temporarily throw their vote support to one another.

I like elections. I like them better than any other system I have seen.

If it is OK to disenfranchise 1.7 million Democratic voters because we have to follow the DNC roles, why then is it disenfranchising Democratic voters if we follow the DNC rules regarding Super Delegates?

I never deny that Obama is an impressive candidate. It the race was over at this point he would probably be the victor fair and square. Obama did nothing wrong by doing well in caucus States; everyone knew the rules for them in advance. It was a failing on the part of Clinton's campaign to not focus more on them, just like it would be a failing for either campaign to not focus on winning the support of individual Super Delegates; it's all in the rules for how this game is being played.

But the race is not over. There are a number of important primaries still coming up including very large and critical States like Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  There are at least two more one on one National Debates between Obama and Clinton scheduled to be broadcast also. The race is very much still on.

He's not, if you include Florida and Michigan. He's considerably behind.

Yeah, because the Democratic Party should be a closed door party.  It's a great way to encourage new people to join our party.

And Florida and Ohio voted for Kerry

because thats what exit polls told us in 2004...

Give me a break.  If you're going to claim a lead in Democratic votes, you better have some real numbers.  If no real numbers, you better be able to show a huge disparity in the exit polls because an estimation 700,000 out of millions of votes cast is not outside an exit poll's margin of error.  Furthermore, those exit polls better cover every state, which in this case, they do not as none of the caucuses (many of which Senator Obama won 2-1) on Super Tuesday were polled.

If you must make that analogy, it comes closer to games played under protest. The voters who voted in Michigan and Florida were not "buying tickets to exhibition games" when they showed up at the polls on Primary day - they were voting for who they wanted to have as the Democratic nominee, just like voters in all of the other primary states. Florida and Michagan were not "pre-season" games, they were both in the heart of the primary season.

Perhaps more telling, there were statements made by both candidates suggesting that Florida might ultimately get to seat their delegates, and in fact the official rules of the National Democratic Party give the final decision regarding delegate challenges over who is to be seated at the Democratic National Convention to the National Democratic Convention itself. Unlike "an exhibition game" it is still now and always has been possible that the results of Florida and/or Michigan will be certified and accepted in the final standings by the National Democratic Party.

I didn't say that over a half million more Democrats voted in Florida than will vote in all of the past and future Democratic caucuses combined; I listed the 12 Democratic caucuses that have been held to date in my Diary. The point isn't changed much if at all by what will follow. I fully expect that more Democrats voted in Florida than will participate in every Democratic caucus in the nation that takes place this year. And if that turns out not to be the case it only would show that it takes 20 State caucuses, or whateve, to equal the participation level reached by Florida's Democratic voters.

Before I found that single web site source I was surfing individual turn out records, and usually it is the State Party that releases turn out figures for each caucus.  

And frankly, a super "accurate" caucus "vote count" isn't required for the sake of this discussion, it is commonly accepted wisdom that only a small fraction of the number of voters who would participate in a primary participate in caucuses. These figures could be off by 25% and it wouldn't really change the implications that can be drawn from them.