America....

[Zanadu]

Surprised imms are letting it go on and on...its kind of like a hockey fight...where the refs just sit back and watch the punches fly.

[Occum]

as long as it dont get personal i dont really see the problem. Aside from that i find it enlightening as an outsider both regarding mindsets and arguments

[Rig]

as long as it dont get personal i dont really see the problem. Aside from that i find it enlightening as an outsider both regarding mindsets and arguments

This. Only I'm not an outsider like Occum!

[Zanadu]

Yeah it only gets personal when someone admits they support Trump. <--- Like me.

[sauin]

Ooookay:

Come on faul, this is now the third, or is it the fourth time you're refused to respond about the DNC's actions during the last primaries that were in direct contravention of both their party charter and any notion of fairness.

favoring a loyal Democrat over someone who ran as a Democrat out of convenience

My issue is that the DNC shouldn't be picking favourites at all, let alone manipulating their own intenal electoral process in favour of one of the candidates. You seem to keep missing this point.

This doesn't make any sense, considering that argument wouldn't actually apply for 2016, which is all you were talking about. Since, you know, the popular vote wasn't actually subverted "as you've admitted over and over again".

Let me go over it for you then:
We have two ideas here, the notion of superdelegates which has been used in the past to overturn the popular vote, and the DNC ignoring their own party charter to provide benefits and boons to one candidate over another. The former is seen in 2008, the latter was seen in 2016. Both of these issues relate to the DNC going out of their way to favour one candidate over another, and both of them relate to them doing it in different ways.

It's only almost contradictory if you don't actually understand the nature of superdelegates and lazily write them off as "establishment donors" and nothing more, when a number of them are extremely devoted to progressive causes and care enough about them to accept incremental change over potentially fifty steps backwards.

Once again, you're valuing ends over means; apparently you don't care that the electoral process was subverted in the 2008 primaries, because your issue is a more important ends than democratic means. You've just argued in favour of ditching democracy to impose some end goal.

And you've sort of been circling around the idea that Obama was more established than Clinton with the Democratic Party -- just stop. That's just not true, no matter how much you creep towards saying it.

I'm circling it because I cannot prove it either way. If you can please do so.

And I have no idea why or how you've confused American democracy for something it's never been. I'd love for popular vote to be the be-all, end-all, but if that's not how it is at the generals level, then there's always an argument for running primaries in some other way.

If you'd love for the popular vote to be the be all and end all, why are you so determined to support the notion of superdelegates? And once again you've only addressed half of my point, as far as I am aware, the general elections do not have government functionaries blatantly supporting one side over another (or at least they shouldn't and when they do it's considered to be and absolute scandal, looking at comey and the bush election in 2000). So why is it ok when a party does it in its own primary?

Even for being "so undemocratic" in their process, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote twice in my lifetime while losing the electoral college. This does not point to a lack of popular support among voters as an overbearing issue for Democratic candidates.

Once again you're dodging the point. I never claimed a lack of popular support for democratic candidates. My point is and continues to be that the DNC has now taken a direct hand in their primaries twice in a row. The first time they subverted the popular vote, the second they went out of their way to break their party charter to favour one candidate over the other.

You have made it clear that you don't care about the subversion of the popular democratic vote, that the effective aristocracy of superdelegates is somehow a good thing, and you've repeatedly avoided discussing the DNC's breaches of their own charter. If I am to be accused of repeating my points, it's because you continue to avoid responding to them.

[sauin]

Couple of things: we conveniently/incidentally have no idea what the back end of the Republican primary process really looks like.

Ah, so we're back to the "But the other side are worse!" argument rather than addressing the problems that exist.

Totally unprofessional email to send, but it's obviously something neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign ran with at any point, unless you can point something out. Strangely not pictured by Wikileaks: the responses or chains that resulted in this not going anywhere (if they exist).

Firstly, email with responses as requested.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
As for whether it went anywhere, the emails were sent roughly a month before the public release, there is no evidence to say whether it was or wasn't going to happen as if it wasn't then there's no evidence, and if it was then it was made public before it could be.

Plurality - you can win 30% of the popular vote if you're different enough from 3 other very similar candidates that split the other 70% by less than 30% each. Superdelegates typically ensure that does not happen and that the nominee represents the whole party.

Or you don't just use a first past the post system and instead have preferential voting or any of the other methods other countries have developed to deal with this exact problem without creating a political upper class. Problem solved, no aristocracy required.

We can probably infer there was a solid chance that HRC would have lost to McCain, even if she edged Obama in the populars. Can't do anything if you can't get there.

No, all we can infer is that the superdelegates had some preference for obama over hillary. It could be that he was better connected with DNC sponsors, it could be that they're all secret lizards and obama was the king secret lizard, we have no evidence to state why they did what they did.

Consistently viable candidates - Dems were consistently putting out candidates that could not win the generals prior to superdelegates - in fact, they were getting straight smoked. Retrospectively

We aren't winning elections? Quick, ditch democracy! On a more serious note, you're once again putting the ends before the means, to you it appears to matter that a democrat wins more than it matters that the process is fair or democratic.

[Reyne]

Well if nothing else at least we live in interesting times.

[faul]

Come on faul, this is now the third, or is it the fourth time you're refused to respond about the DNC's actions during the last primaries that were in direct contravention of both their party charter and any notion of fairness.

Yeah, definitely the fourth time, but only if you count the three other times you ignored my response after I already responded to it. Party charters are as binding as parties want them to be and you're confusing something not matching your notion of fairness with any notion of fairness.

My issue is that the DNC shouldn't be picking favourites at all, let alone manipulating their own intenal electoral process in favour of one of the candidates. You seem to keep missing this point.

That's your problem, and their prerogative. It's nice that you have an opinion; it just doesn't matter. I don't know what else to tell you.

Let me go over it for you then:
We have two ideas here, the notion of superdelegates which has been used in the past to overturn the popular vote, and the DNC ignoring their own party charter to provide benefits and boons to one candidate over another. The former is seen in 2008, the latter was seen in 2016. Both of these issues relate to the DNC going out of their way to favour one candidate over another, and both of them relate to them doing it in different ways.

So there's no real consistent pattern of superdelegates behaving favorably to insiders or outsiders, you're just hung up on the fact that a certain percentage of delegates "favor one candidate over another", rarely against the popular vote, but usually with the popular vote. I really don't know what to do for you. This doesn't actually sound like a massive problem to me.

Once again, you're valuing ends over means;

No firetrucking dung, did I stutter?

apparently you don't care that the electoral process was subverted in the 2008 primaries, because your issue is a more important ends than democratic means. You've just argued in favour of ditching democracy to impose some end goal.

Thanks for making "my" arguments for me -- I'm just over here appreciating how adorable it is that you think democracy in practice comes in one flavor and it's the one you want it to be everywhere.

I'm circling it because I cannot prove it either way. If you can please do so.

No, you're circling because some part of you recognizes that the idea is asinine. I don't know what proof you want, read one of the many moratoriums of the primaries from that time. Here's one: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... inton.html

If you'd love for the popular vote to be the be all and end all, why are you so determined to support the notion of superdelegates?

Because superdelegates going away doesn't actually directly result in the popular vote becoming the be-all end-all?

And once again you've only addressed half of my point, as far as I am aware, the general elections do not have government functionaries blatantly supporting one side over another (or at least they shouldn't and when they do it's considered to be and absolute scandal, looking at comey and the bush election in 2000). So why is it ok when a party does it in its own primary?

Sort of mind-numbing statement and yet another shifting of the goalpost. The generals have the electoral college. This is literally another form of what you keep calling "the aristocracy" -- but because they're not "blatantly supporting one side over another", it's somehow more democratic or doesn't affect the process as much? Oh, and I think you left off an example there.

It's much more acceptable at the party level because, at the end of the day, the party doesn't actually have to be an objective apparatus - no amount of crying over any organization's charter is going to result in that being a legally or even ethically binding thing (and please feel free to comically simplify the concept of ethics in your response to this, I assure you, it'd only be a trap if I gave a dung). If the DNC decided to appoint me their candidate for 2020, they could do that. Unfortunately, I don't really feel like playing nice with them, so I can run as an Independent, just like anyone else who doesn't want to enjoy the benefits of a party apparatus. My chances are lowered, but at least I get to jerk off over 100% pure unfiltered integrity that won't accomplish anything for anyone.

Once again you're dodging the point. I never claimed a lack of popular support for democratic candidates. My point is and continues to be that the DNC has now taken a direct hand in their primaries twice in a row. The first time they subverted the popular vote, the second they went out of their way to break their party charter to favour one candidate over the other.

You have made it clear that you don't care about the subversion of the popular democratic vote, that the effective aristocracy of superdelegates is somehow a good thing, and you've repeatedly avoided discussing the DNC's breaches of their own charter. If I am to be accused of repeating my points, it's because you continue to avoid responding to them.

It's pretty clear from your description of superdelegates as effective aristocracy that you've got an incredibly shallow idea of who superdelegates are or how they get there, and the worst part is, you don't really care. It's just simpler to claim (lie) that they're "donors that write checks" and go from there.

And I've answered pretty much all of your points as bluntly as I think I can -- repeating yourself with the same theme of dissociation between how things are ("there are many ways democratic processes play out all over the world") and how you want them to be ("there is only one true democratic process") isn't going to suddenly make the answers change to something you want.

[faul]

Couple of things: we conveniently/incidentally have no idea what the back end of the Republican primary process really looks like.

Ah, so we're back to the "But the other side are worse!" argument rather than addressing the problems that exist.

Yeah, OR I'm directly commenting on this:

As much as I dislike the GOP I have to admit their primary process seems a lot fairer.

But thanks for butting in and feel free to read what you want to read, however you want to read it.

Totally unprofessional email to send, but it's obviously something neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign ran with at any point, unless you can point something out. Strangely not pictured by Wikileaks: the responses or chains that resulted in this not going anywhere (if they exist).

Firstly, email with responses as requested.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
As for whether it went anywhere, the emails were sent roughly a month before the public release, there is no evidence to say whether it was or wasn't going to happen as if it wasn't then there's no evidence, and if it was then it was made public before it could be.

Been there, done that and what I meant was it's weird that there was NO mention of this in any of the other leaked emails and no clear conclusions, no additional strategizing around this, etc. A month is also forever, but feel free to pretend like it was actually going to happen or even really made broad strategic sense, or if it's something you'd even want to share with any kind of broader audience with the DNC (where Jews are pretty well represented in leadership) if you spent more than three seconds and a throwaway email thinking about it.

Plurality - you can win 30% of the popular vote if you're different enough from 3 other very similar candidates that split the other 70% by less than 30% each. Superdelegates typically ensure that does not happen and that the nominee represents the whole party.

Or you don't just use a first past the post system and instead have preferential voting or any of the other methods other countries have developed to deal with this exact problem without creating a political upper class. Problem solved, no aristocracy required.

It's tough to wave a wand and do away with FPTP because of various state-level issues in the United States. I know at least Maine had issues with their state constitution. Fundamentally though, the pros and cons of FPTP vs. other systems aren't as black and white or purely good and bad as you're making it sound and I don't have the time or inclination to rewrite Blais for you here. I'm not going point by point just to argue with every point, but just be aware that some people are capable of holding ideals while still maintaining the ability to assess and operationalize in existing contexts as they are rather than as they'd prefer them to be immediately and instantly.

We can probably infer there was a solid chance that HRC would have lost to McCain, even if she edged Obama in the populars. Can't do anything if you can't get there.

No, all we can infer is that the superdelegates had some preference for obama over hillary. It could be that he was better connected with DNC sponsors, it could be that they're all secret lizards and obama was the king secret lizard, we have no evidence to state why they did what they did.

Infers that the DNC and Clinton campaign were going to collude to Jewshame Bernie until Wikileaks saves the day; proceeds to dung this out. And again, you're showing your ignorance of the Obama strategy in 2008. The Obama team played for delegates and convincing them he was the best candidate; that included the ones-that-you-wish-didn't-exist-but-actually-do. It was a pragmatic strategy and maybe anybody who was around and knew me and what I was doing for parts of 2007 to 2011 will let you in on why I think so highly of that strategy.

As far as Clinton...yeah...I'm comfortable with my inferences, but your opinion was appreciated. Her team, as amazing as they were at organizing, miscalculated hardcore in the primaries in 2008. And again, as competent as her team was in 2016, they once again miscalculated in both the primaries and the generals in a number of ways. A lot of that has to do with Clinton herself; would have gladly taken her as president, but some varieties of wonks don't make the ideal candidates.

Consistently viable candidates - Dems were consistently putting out candidates that could not win the generals prior to superdelegates - in fact, they were getting straight smoked. Retrospectively

We aren't winning elections? Quick, ditch democracy! On a more serious note, you're once again putting the ends before the means, to you it appears to matter that a democrat wins more than it matters that the process is fair or democratic.

Now you're getting it. firetrucking finally. Of course, minus the part that you don't recognize any democratic process as democratic unless it's exactly the democratic process you're thinking of, but incremental progress is still progress, good job.

[Jaster]

You can't talk dung on the middle class and expect to win an election to govern the united states. That just won't happen.