Your concerns about the general election are very real. I see your anger and frustration, and I too wish that the process to choose a leader does not leave room for hanky panky. I'm all for dropping the electoral college and choosing the president/vp by most popular votes received.

Thanks again.

State senators have approved a bill that would deliver the state's electoral votes to the U.S. presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.

So fundamentally Barak Obama could win Washington, lose the popular vote, win the electoral college by a smidge and then along come Washington and throws its votes to McCain and voilla we have McCain as president and not Obama.

This is the kind of stuff Im pointing to that needs to be stopped and people need to stand up and start making their feelings known.

While I understand the popular vote sentiment it in effect cancels the founding fathers understanding that some states will not be as populated as others and therefore they need to have their integrity maintained and have a sense of being involved in a nation that values their influence as much as a state with a much greater proportion of population.

Under the national popular vote drive coalition which is working to institute this policy what we are going to find is that states like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Utah etc…..etc….are going to find their roles minimized in government and could very well lead to a states right issue no less daunting then was the case prior to the civil war in which a contenious policy was deemed states rights issues and not the national governments issue.

I call this the road to perdition if left unchecked.

Their greatest assest has always been every vote counts……cept in their primaries. They then have rules everywhere in the primary process to prevent the will of the people in each state from being influenced by whatever they perceived as non democratic when they made up these rules to begin with.

A process that does not declare a winner by the rules THAT REFLECT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE when its over is flawed. This process did not declare a winner. Neither Candidate won enough delegates to win. Therefore it then became a popularity contest within the democratic party big shots for the nomination.

The process itself left the party bitter. Any process that leaves the party bitter is just wrong. I compared it to the 2000 Election in which the democrats felt bitter and felt as if the will of the people was negated. Gore won the popular vote. Bush won the delegates………..sound familiar?

Yet here we are 8 years later in our own party with the same dilemna. The Obama side says…….its the delegates…………The Clinton side says its the popular vote. Obama is technically right. So was Bush but that did not stop the anger did it?

This needs fixing. It was originally designed to fix the 1968 fiasco and in its attempt the laws in each state are inheritantly unfair. For Example in one state the caucusus were held at midnight. Lots of old folks that support Hillary just didnt make it……….ahhh too bad.

Im not complaining about Hillary's lost Im complaining about the process and if we do not begin looking at it now. It will never be fixed and we might very well have the same thing in 4 or 8 years and once again divide up the party down idealogical lines which is bad for not only the party but its bad for the country as well.

The very fact that I point out that Obama did not win 2118 delegates. The very fact that I pointed out that Hillary by some sources won the popular vote. The fact that I can point to these things and then get read the riot act supports my contention that this is a flawed process and needs to be fixed.

Will it? No. Unless people stand up and start talking about it and putting pressure on the party to make positive changes to make sure this does not happen again.

Yesterday I would have disagreed but today I think she should not go to the convention but rather start her own third party run for the presidency.

This nation has been begging for a third party for decades. What better time then now??

If Clinton had clinched the nomination by Super Tuesday (as she was expected to do, to confirm her strength, as opposed to the weakness of everyone in the GOP), there would have been no gridlock. The close contest this year among the Dems was not “deadlock.” It simply was close and exposed differences of Dem voter preference. The starry-eyed crowd has adored Obama from the start but many like Clinton; others have chosen Obama or Clinton for other reasons (including preference of Obama because of Clinton's historically-and-behaviorally-based negatives), while others have chosen Clinton because they want someone who already had been proven (as co-President, unofficial President, already, in fact!) while they distrusted Obama (and some dislike the uglier-left baggage he has had exposed, or dislike the more strident anti-war types among the Obama set).

There is no gridlock, just a situation that puts the meaning to a word so often badly and wrongfully (and dishonestly) misused by the Dems: “Split.” The word connotes roughly equal division into two parts (when a wedge is used correctly), and normally the word is used to cloud or conceal how little support the Left has for a position on an issue. (For example, scientists knowledgeable on the subject might favor nuclear power 98 to 2 per cent; the lib media and activists will say that opinion is “split.”) There is no misuse of the word this time and nothing wrong with a near 50-50 voter choice among the Dems this year. The contest is the best thing that has happened to the Dems and to electoral politics in ages. The race has been of real interest, meaning, and substance, for once in many, many years.

Guess what. Dem voters are (honestly) split between Clinton and Obama this year.

There is no gridlock. Dem voters are not obliged or compelled to all choose the PC candidate of the elite-minions' choice at the start of the “election.”

Clinton should not “un-suspend” (and end) her campaign until the convention. Not merely until she gets what she wants (a future position; money to service her campaign debt), but until the convention. There is nothing wrong with a convention that could feature controversy and activity and which would constitute an event worth observing, again for once in generations. (If the superdelegates had any brains, they'd now shut up and not say what decisions they would make and not make any until the convention. Think of the advertising revenue effect!)

Not true, no more than pro sports competition should be reworked if there is parity among the teams and the teams are good, not bad (leading to close contests that are interesting, even to those who aren't fans of the contestants).*

What's this pathological opposition to that which is interesting, robust, vital, and superior to what we have experienced

Or did you just want the result decided at the start (to make it more than 100% serious, say with a single one-day nation-wide primary election or election day) and end the unnecessary competition (elections) cancelled, which is where your opposition leads ultimately? After all, the best thing would be just to have a non-contest with only the contestant you want. No need for a game; it's already over.

* The San Francisco Forty-Niners (pro football) became, while I was still living in the Bay Area where I grew up, the greatest sports team and organization in history. During several years they played against the one team acknowledged as their peer (at times, a better team on the field on a single day), the Dallas Cowboys. The NFC championship games between the 49ers and the Cowboys were correctly known as “the real Super Bowl.”

This Dem primary season was the Real Election this year. This was the best thing to have happened in electoral politics for the past several years, decades.

Not hubris, but a lot of derangement from the hate. This has been so for months.

If you believe the laughable lies that McCain is a Bush clone and he offers nothing but a continuation of Bush-Cheney, you have not been paying attention. Note.

There is no point in pointing out Neocon/s many errors of stating fact.
Like Hillary, he/she will renvent, redefine and reconstruct the real world in the hopes that if a falsehood is stated often enough, it will magically become true.

Yes. There was a time when Hillary and her closest advisors accepted that Michigan and Florida would not count. There was a time when they actively pursued superdelegates. There was a time when they thought caucuses were legitimate.

Of course, all of that was thrown out the window at precisely the moment it was no longer politically advantageous to hold those positions.

Sorry Hillary. Sorry Neocon. You can't change the rules after the game has begun or after it has ended.

I'm glad Hillary lost, and Obama won.
But Hillary is still a human being. I don't lose sight of how hard it is to come out of the intensity of being focused on a goal for so many long months. I don't spit on losers any more than I spit on graves.

I think people like Neocon should actively seek to rewrite the rules for the next Dem primaries, instead of engaging in endless and useless 'what could have been'
In fact, I like that idea. Then, if neocon's candidate lost by the new rules, we could all discuss once more what could have been or should have been.

Every vote does not count for the democratic party.

Thru the normal process of the primary season the democrats found a way to trump the will of the people by having a process designed to create gridlock.

What I am saying is that the will of the people spoke and now the democratic party is finding a way to alienate HALF of its voters in a process that should be scrapped and reworked.

Thus no matter how you slice it. Obama did not win. He was crowned king by the democratic party when quite possibly more people voted for Hillary then did Obama based upon the numbers.

Examples of what Im referring to which failed to get any press coverage at all.

In the Iowa Democratic caucuses Democrats had no right to cast a secret ballot.

In the Democratic Nevada caucuses, rural votes counted more than urban ones, and while Hillary Clinton got more popular votes in the state than Barack Obama, it appears Obama will capture 13 of Nevada's Democratic delegates compared to Clinton's 12.

Orthodox Jews complained that they couldn't vote in the Saturday morning Nevada caucuses.

In California if neither Clinton nor Obama gets more than 62 percent of the vote in a congressional district the delegates are split down the middle.

The point I make is that the democratic primary process is a farce and it needs to be dealt with.

And now we have two states that have voted to run the general election along the same lines as the democrats run their primaries. Winner does not take all in two states this coming election but in fact the delegates are split according to popular vote with the delegates not bound to cast an electoral vote the way it appears.

Thus its conceivable that in Washington you could win the state but the electoral delegates could vote for the other fella. The democrat have just proven the folly of this concept and yet the drive unabated to anarchy continues.

1766.5 Obama.
1639.5 Clinton.

And Delegates NEEDED to SECURE the nomination. 2118.

Are you saying the superdelegates should have overturned the will of the delegates directly elected to support Obama in the primaries/caucuses and chosen Hillary (even though Obama had nearly 8% more delegates than Hillary)?

Or are you merely pointing out that the superdelegates validated what the elected delegates decided?

Barack Obama = 2,158
Hillary Clinton = 1,926

He won the elections and he's more popular among the party elite. You have NO argument.

I believe the smitten will overwhelm the concerned this year and Obama will defeat McCain this year, but you never know

As if concerned voters that have actually paid attention to the last eight years would vote for McCain.

A vote for McCain is a vote against your own economic interests (unless you're a millionaire). A vote for McCain is a vote for unfettered executive power. A vote for McCain is a vote for more war.

“She was battled to an essential tie by a very good Orator and a party that wants desperately to swing farther left.”

Farther left than the 1990s, obviously; farther left than 1980, may the USA truly fear such a prospect. I do not believe things would get that bad, that there would be another well-earned 1994 if that movement even farther to the left were attempted.

Obama is a good orator and a pretty boy and he's young and has the starry-eyed even more in love with him than they were for Bill Clinton and Gary Hart combined, but that is worrisome if it continues to be all that Obama offers the US public or at least it is worrisome to those of us who have other, more substantial criteria by which we will assess Obama as a future President. Is he going to bring naive or worse, aggressive activists to Washington, or just do what's most likely and talk grandly while the Democratic Party machine and Washington insiders seize more power and influence and control over Americans' lives than they've had before?

I believe the smitten will overwhelm the concerned this year and Obama will defeat McCain this year, but you never know — it will depend on concern about what not only Obama but other Dems in Washington threaten to do if they have full control of DC, and if it's a large enough push factor to overcome the lack of pull factor for at-times-Dem-Lite McCain. Heh, heh. “Safe and sane — John McCain.”