Delegate Manipulation
I've heard a lot of talk recently about the possibility that the election results from Florida and Michigan may be used to help decide who becomes President. Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton was the only one who campaigned in Florida – and you know she campaigned; her entire victory speech was a big old Florida pander – and she was the only one who was even on the ballot in Michigan. The party line is that it's unfair to deny these states their part in the electoral process, as though some other entity, a vengeful god acting against the will of the DNC, had capriciously imposed the punishment. They're also claiming that it would be unwise to alienate voters in two swing states, something they maybe should have thought of before they locked Florida and Michigan out. Hillary Clinton stayed silent on the issue all the way up to when she realized that she was in a close race with Obama and she was polling well in Florida and then – only then – did she start talking about fairness and inclusiveness.
Because Hillary Clinton took the most electoral votes from Florida and Michigan, the only reason to include those states in the total tally would be to tip the balance of votes in her favor. And you know, if the democratic party wants to shoot itself in the foot, changing the rules for the purpose of crowning their establishment candidate would be an excellent way to do it. I've already talked about how if Hillary is nominated when the popular vote has gone to Obama, a good portion of democrats are going to take their ball and go home. If she's nominated through rule-bending when the popular vote would have otherwise gone to Obama, that number gets even bigger.
The other option would be to hold new primaries and/or caucuses in both states, allowing both candidates a chance to campaign first. Despite the fact that this would still give Hillary a slight advantage (since most of the people who voted for her before in the unfair primaries will probably vote for her again) Obama's camp has agreed to this. Florida, however, is digging in its heels, saying that caucuses would be unfair to its elderly and its military, and primaries would be prohibitively expensive, and Michigan Senator Carl Levin said that it "would be neither practical, nor fair" to hold new caucuses in Michican.
I'm hopeful that this talk is just that – talk, totally unfounded on reality. If it were any group of people who had ever in their lives impressed me as being competent individuals, I wouldn't believe a word of it. But these are the democrats we're talking about here. All I can hope is that Obama manages to sew up a big enough lead to make such vote manipulation irrelevant.
Yes We Can
I was amused to discover that my remarks on the awesomeness of "Yes we can!" a couple of days ago were right on the money. Recently, I ran across a link to a video wherein a whole bunch of various artists, actors, and famous people sing 'Yes we can!', with occasional interruptions for a bit of oration from Obama. The overall video isn't actually very good, but even so, it's powerful, and it's powerful because of the repetitions of 'Yes we can!'. I thought I'd go ahead and link it here so you can get the idea.
Yes, I know that it's stupid to make political decisions based on what celebrities think, but most people do it anyway.
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