Everyone I've talked to today has been thoroughly dispirited. We've spent four weeks building up to a primary that will . . . change nothing. No one wants to cover a campaign that revolves around the slender mathematical possibility that Hillary Clinton could, in a massive miscarriage of justice, take the superdelegates and thwart the poll results; it's like watching a World Poker Tour comprised entirely of librarians drawing to inside straights. At this point, her most likely winning strategy seems to be arranging for Sirhan Sirhan to get out on work-release.
Nonetheless, your brave bloggers soldier on, bringing you the freshest updates from cable news. As usual, I'm watching this with a passel of bloggers who are vastly more interesting than the talking heads on television.
Is that a proper use of "comprise?"
Ooh, Megan, you write some dumb things, but that Sirhan crack was really nasty. It's a very bad thing to make assassination jokes. (Write that down for future reference.)
That Sirhan Sirhan "joke" needs to be taken down--it's simply offensive in so many ways that you'll never understand that I won't waste time explaining. There's something to be said for censorship, especially ugly, racist comments like that. For shame.
Ooh, Megan, you write some dumb things, but that Sirhan crack was really nasty.
And easily the funniest thing I've heard today. Keep it up.
Funny how most people can never appreciate black humor.
Megan, I thought it was hilarious.
Racist? How is comparing Barack Obama to Bobby Kennedy racist?
I think you are confusing Sirhan Sirhan with James Earl Ray, who shot MLK. I agree that that joke would be disgusting and out of bounds. I was comparing Barack Obama to Bobby Kennedy, who I think attracted the same kind of emotional investment, especially from young people.
Absolutely hilarious, Megan. Anyone feigning outrage over that is just a hater.
Everyone I've talked to today has been thoroughly dispirited.
What is the breakdown of the people you talked to? Were they all Obama supporters or was it evenly split between the two candidates? Did you talk to any Republicans?
Also, what is the point of the superdelegates, if not to thwart the poll results? And since this is an election, I don't see what's wrong with a candidate trying to get people to vote for her, whether those people are ordinary voters or superdelegates.
Maybe one difference between you and me, Megan, is that I am old enough to remember when RFK was shot and killed (I am 54). I wouldn't joke about something like that because it is real to me, which I guess it isn't to you. Do you make jokes about 9/11?
I worked at the disaster recovery site for a year. Black humour was pretty much endemic. And yes, I lost more people in the towers than almost any of my readers.
I do believe we have an oracle here!
MM wrote: I was comparing Barack Obama to Bobby Kennedy, who I think attracted the same kind of emotional investment, especially from young people.
Karl Weber wrote: Maybe one difference between you and me, Megan, is that I am old enough to remember when RFK was shot and killed (I am 54). I wouldn't joke about something like that because it is real to me
Was real, or is real? That could explain quite a bit here.
If two or three more decades of my life pass by and someone twenty years my junior makes a comment that maybe the best way someone will find to deal with an awkward situation is to "fly a plane into it", I should hope I am sufficiently over 9/11 to just let the kids have their fun. Especially if I had wandered over onto their lawn.
Ya' know, Karl, by December 7, 1981, Pearl Harbor jokes were fairly unremarkable, and often told by veterans. One my favorite punch lines is "Other than that, how'dja' like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?", and I still manage to get fairly emotional every time I visit D.C. and drop by the memorial to read The Gettysburg and the 2nd Inaugaural. Get a life.
That Sirhan Sirhan "joke" needs to be taken down--it's simply offensive in so many ways that you'll never understand that I won't waste time explaining.
The only way that McMegan would remove this comment is if Osama bin Laden flys a plane into her house, killing her and knocking out the atlantic servers somehow in the process.
Get it... that's a joke. Funny right guys? Right?
Actually, Mouse, I was a Gene McCarthy kid who resented Bobby Kennedy's getting into the 1968 race--not a rapid Kennedy supporter. But his assassination was one traumatic blow in a year filled with them.
Everyone has a different level of tolerance for black humor, I guess. It's a matter of taste and judgment--not a hanging offense. But I didn't realize there was some kind of eligibility rule for reading and commenting on Megan's blog ("I wandered over onto their lawn").
No, not only is it wrong, it's completely nonsensical if you bother to read the definition and etymology. But everyone does it these days and people think it makes them look smart to use it like that. There's a perfectly good and correct word to use in that situation, but people just follow the crowds rather than think about what they're doing.
No eligibility rule, karl, but one of the consistently tiresome things about comments sections on blogs are commenters who see fit to give advice about what is a fit subject, while other people are paying for the bandwidth.
But I didn't realize there was some kind of eligibility rule for reading and commenting on Megan's blog ("I wandered over onto their lawn").
As far as I know, there isn't. However there probably will be (or simply no comments section at all) if people continue to do nothing but harangue the hostess over the texture and toppings of the free ice cream. Needless to say an eligibility scheme is worrisome for I and my people, because anytime that sort of thing happens the mice are the first to go. I've gotten pretty good at avoiding traps over the years but if they bait one of 'em with Havarti and smoked Gouda, then *SNAP* gaaaaakk! and...well, you know what mousetrap does.
I mean, assuming it's not too soon to be bringing that up. You haven't lost any mice in the past fourty years, I trust?
"massive miscarriage of justice"?
I'm with Hei Lun Chan (and George Will) on this one: What's the point of superdelegates if not to exercise their own judgment (independent of rank-and-file voters)? I'm not necessarily saying I favor the system - but it is what it is, all candidates understood the system going in, and no one (to my knowledge) protested until the race became as tight as it is.
If Obama were the one behind - yet had the possibility of benefiting from the superdelegate system, would you still be so quick to point out the injustice?
And, anyway, don't Florida and Michigan represent at least major handicaps - if not outright injustices - for Hillary's candidacy?
Signed -
Impartial observer/McCain supporter/Megan fan
i most certainly would be against the superdelegates throwing the thing to Obama; I think the superdelegate idea is pretty stupid and antidemocratic. I mean, it's not my party, but I'm against it in principle.
Florida and Michigan were, I think, a tactical error on the party's part . . . but Obama wasn't even on the ballot, so I don't think you can seat Michigan, and Hillary seems to have carried Florida because she violated the agreement not to campaign there.
The Democratic Party made the rules for the primary -- including proportional allocation of delegates, party insider superdelegates, and refusal to seat the FL and MI delegations. If the popular vote determing the winner was a goal, why not simply use the aggregate national popular vote to select the nominee? If a dominate winner was a goal, then why not have winner-takes-all-delegates in each state contest? If a (small d) democratic contest was a goal, why have superdelegates and such draconian treatment of misbehaving states?
The sad part is the current state of affairs will give the Democrats not the smallest bit of humility regarding their ability to craft effective laws, which is a far more difficult task than selecting a nominee.
I agree that the superdelegate concept is stupid and undemocratic, and if I were in a position to do so, I'd argue against abolishing them.
However, the rules were specified in advance, and both candidates knew about them. If you don't want the risk of having superdelegates override the voters' choice, well, win by a sufficient margin that they can't.
As I understand it, the whole point of superdelegates is to be undemocratic: to allow party elders the chance to reject an unelectable candidate. Given Obama's failure to win any big states (other than his home state of Illinois), they might reasonably conclude that he's a weak candidate who can't win the general election. Under such circumstances, going to Clinton is sort of the point of having superdelegates.
"Florida and Michigan were, I think, a tactical error on the party's part . . . but Obama wasn't even on the ballot, so I don't think you can seat Michigan, and Hillary seems to have carried Florida because she violated the agreement not to campaign there."
I wouldn't deny any of that. My point was that both of those states seem demographically skewed in Hillary's favor (age, in the one case - class, in the other). But, due to circumstances unrelated to the popular expression of voter will, she's unable to benefit from (what I believe are) her natural advantages there. In the unlikely event of superdelegates swinging the nomination her way, might not Florida and Michigan cancel things out on the cosmic "justice/injustice" scale?
- Still impartial, still a Megan fan
Megan,
I must say, as a reader of your work for 6 years, you're starting to lose me with all this Obama worship. Why would Hillary taking enough of the remaining superdelegates to win be "a massive miscarriage of justice?" It's not like the DNC system was designed to be democratic in the first place, as that's why the superdelegates were created.
More importantly, why should your libertarian readers prefer one of the three stooges to the others? I'm still waiting for a compelling case (from anyone, not necessarily you).
I think you are confusing Sirhan Sirhan with James Earl Ray, who shot MLK. I agree that that joke would be disgusting and out of bounds. I was comparing Barack Obama to Bobby Kennedy, who I think attracted the same kind of emotional investment, especially from young people.
Posted by Megan McArdle | April 22, 2008 8:52 PM
wow MM,
you are a vapid and hateful person, no wonder you're so comfortable spreading lies and furthering untruths. Sirhan Sirhan didn't act alone in killing RFK, and James Earl Ray was even personally forgiven by Coretta Scott King, MLK's wife, and posthumously exonerated..
If I were a superdelegate I'd look at one thing:The electoral college
In other words who has a better record in the states the democrats may or may not win. I'd disregard the states that democrats have no chance of winning or are sure of winning.
Total delegate counts and voter counts don't mean jack in comparison with getting electoral votes. A party that doesn't understand that doesn't deserve to win the presidency.
It sure would have been nice to have some reliable data for Michigan and Florida ... but thanks to the wisdom of the democratic leadership we don't and won't have that.
"Massive miscarriage of justice."
Megan, you're off base on this one.
First, there's a pretty good argument that Hillary has a majority of the popular vote right now.
Yes, the rules don't care about the electoral vote, and Obama has rocked the caucuses, but so what? If you want to follow the rules, then the superdelegates are supposed to vote for whomever they choose. If you don't then it is (1) perfectly possible for Hillary to win a majority of democratic primary voters and (2) if she does, it's certainly not a "miscarriage of justice" for her to win the superdelegates. Yes, it's very unlikely, but it's not unjust.
Alternately, Louis Menand said it better and shorter:
"Kefauver ran for President in the Democratic primaries in 1952 and received 3.1 million votes, about three million more than the eventual nominee, Adlai Stevenson, received. That was then."
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/03/31/080331crbo_books_menand
I think you're confusing a legal argument with a justice one. The superdelegate system is legal, and should operate the way it was set up, because rules are good things. But it is not just.
Thanks, Megan
I thought I had set up two horns of a dilemma for you. In case it wasn't clear, here's the one that I think is currently goring you:
Assuming Hillary wins the popular vote of Democratic primary voters, and it looks possible that she may, why is it not just for the winner of the popular vote to be nominated?
Other unjust things:
The electoral college
The U.S. Senate
A republic
"Everyone I've talked to today has been thoroughly dispirited."
Meet some people that aren't Obamaphiles. Hanging out with only the "cool kids" is not cool.
So you think the electoral college isn't just? The superdelegate system was selected by the Democratic Party as the way they wanted to select nominees. They could do whatever they want... also, the system was in place at the beginning of the process, so they've all known about it the whole time.
If the system works as intended (and I can't imagine that the superdelegates were seen as being bound by the popular vote or they would have been, you know, bound by the popualar vote), then it's as just as any other way to select a nominee, actually probably more just than a lot of othe ways.
I'm thinking Obama supporters are the sad ones... Clinton supporters are probably a little happy and McCain "supporters" are giggling at the drama. Keep it up!
Joking about assassinating a political candidate (especially Obama) is not appropriate, and you should be ashamed for laughing.
Also inappropriate were the Christa McAuliffe jokes after the Challenger blew up ("what was the last thing to go through Christa McAuliffe's head? Her seat"), or jokes about 9/11. They are sick, not funny.
Aggie jokes are funny.
"Aggie jokes are funny."
So the Aggie was trying to infiltrate a terrorist organization in the Mid East. They said to prove your loyalty blow up that bus. He burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
Megan said, "I think you're confusing a legal argument with a justice one. The superdelegate system is legal, and should operate the way it was set up, because rules are good things. But it is not just."
That's true. But neither is it just that millions of Democratic voters in Michigan and Florida will not have their voices heard in determining their party's nominee due entirely to the shortsightedness of their state party's leaders.
Remedying that "massive miscarriage of justice" would tilt things pretty significantly in Hillary's direction, and make the "massive miscarriage of justice" you're concerned about much less "massive."
Why does one deserve more concern than the other?