Posted on 04/17/2008 6:20:23 PM PDT by Red Steel
(CNN)— An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”
“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”
After facing criticism for a mostly hands-off leadership style during much of the primary season, Dean has been steadily raising the rhetorical pressure on superdelegates. He said Thursday that roughly 65 percent of them have made their preference plain, but that more than 300 have yet to make up their minds.
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Op CHAOS, Yearrrrrghhhhh!
Pretty interesting since the primary is next Tuesday and they want to lock up the votes before Hillary wins it.
This is truly a weird primary. I’ve never seen anything like this.
Sweet little message.
they cant call it, thats the beauty. if they pick one or the other in the backroom they are doomed. beauty
Can I ask a foolish questions? If the Dem super delegates make the decision as to who runs for president does it mean all the
Dems who voted in the primary are disenfranchised?
Rush, you magnificent bastard!
Captain, the engines canna stand the strain. The dilitithium crystals are going to crack. Har........
Hillary will give up now. /sarcasm
No, Dean. You let the process take it's course....
Sure. It's like when ballot initiatives are passed by the conservative public and then ignored by the scumbag Democrats or taken to court by scumbag Democrats to be overturned by scumbag Democrat judges.
Scumbag Democrat politicians, including "super delegates", know best.
Choking kitten picture please.
They’re not disenfranchised. It’s just that in the democRat party, some people get 1 vote and others get a million.
“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,”
YES WE CAN!!!!!!!
Oops...I think I made myself faint on that one. ;>)
Someone should start using the disenfranchised word more. I don’t think Dems know what is happening to them.
Now might be the time to ask a question that keeps popping into my head. Do the superdelegates have opportunity to also vote in the primary elections in their states? I realize that a superdelegate vote (amazingly) carries more strength than a singular vote by themselves or anybody else, but even so, would they not be voting twice which would most certainly be illegal?
I'm sure I can find a comparable in ye old fables.
LOL-good one. Don’t faint until the Dem convention, though.
Read the comments at the bottom of the article at the CNN site. Libs attacking each other and attacking Dean. Visualize CHAOS. Too funny.
The remaining states (Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota,and Nebraska) all need to be told repeatedly that the Dimocrats are trying to nullify their votes with the party insiders.
This is so good. Who’d have thought a Dem nomination race could be so much fun?
There's really no such thing as "illegal" when it comes to a political party determining its own candidate(s). They basically make up their own rules for themselves, and determine their candidate(s) however they want.
/johnny/
Primaries are not elections. Parties make there own rules. Blue eyed people could vote twenty times if they chose to make their rules that way. Nothing illegal about it.
From your typical well-informed Dim voter.
“This is so good. Who’d have thought a Dem nomination race could be so much fun?”
Not Hitlery, for damned sure. Gotta love it.
Why is he telling this to Wolf Blitzer? Because the delegates aren't paying any attention to him?
Egads! What a situation! I always thought that even primary elections were governed under some kind of broader law. How did we come to this?
“One think she’s queen, the other thinks he’s the second coming....”
Thanks. I was afraid the choice was between antichrist A and antichrist B.
I thought he was the queen.
After the lousy performance by the Democratic candidates Wednesday night, I can understand Dean’s panic. I’m getting fairly sick and tired of the 1960’s radicals, Howard Dean included, who occupy the Democratic Party. I would love to see the Dems lose the Presidential election, and Dean lose his job.
Absolutely!
Hillary needs to steal the rat nomination. Can you imagine that? Buh-bye at least 20% of the permanent black Democrat "base", not to mention another 20% of the guilty-white-liberal Democrat "base". A Hillary nomination would castrate (no pun intended) the Democrat party for at least a decade.
It's the Clintons doing what they do best: trashing everything they touch.
I know some Democrats in Michigan and Florida who were disenfranchised.
Tanya K likes to shout in all caps too. That must mean she is “really serious.” LOL
The primary system needs to be changed to prevent Iowa and New Hampshire from picking our candidates, and the national party committees should be told to butt out. Who is Howard Dean to tell Michigan and Florida when to vote, or that their delegates won’t be seated. Elections are governed by State law. Add in all the idiot quotas that Dems have, and the national party gets to pick all the delegates.
In truth, you don’t want the government regulating parties. If you want to form a political party tomorrow, which selects candidates based on their place in the phone book, that should be your right. Remember, no one is forced to join your party.
I thought he wanted them committed by June 1 (and yes, I think that they should ALL be committed, but that’s another story ;’}...you’re right - he IS in a panic!
It's always been this way. I've been involved in a couple of lawsuits over primary politics and the judges in each case have said that the courts have historically stayed out of the workings of the parties because they are private organizations. We could make up a FReeper party and let JimRob choose our candidate. It would be perfectly legal.
CHAOS
“Elections are governed by State law.”
Well, yes, that is what I had always thought. And now I see that it doesn’t work within that context for primary elections. This is so bad! And to think that WE are the ones supposedly teaching other nations to organize elections in their newly birthed democracies!
This simpleton actually thinks this is an insult to Bush...
Dammit Jim, I'm a constitutional Republican, not a freakin Democrat!
I agree for years all the late states have had no say in who gets the nomination. Now they are having their say and the DNC can’t have that.
I want a debate in each state or two! Come on they deserve it!! No 3 or more!!!! Good-luck with that Dean no way are the Supers going to miss the perks that await them. Denver!!!!
Well if Hill steals it don’t be surprised if we get LA style riots.
It’s not double voting. The Superdelegate vote is a separate vote that takes place at the convention, like the Republican delegates will vote at their convention. They say that Superdelegates have the equivalent of 10,000 votes because unlike the republican primaries, the democrat primaries basically only count partially. It’s like this:
Republican primaries are winner take all delegates per state. So the majority of rep votes in a particular state guarantees all those delegates will vote for that candidate at the convention (technically, they aren’t legally obligated, but it’s extremely rare that they’d flip).
For Dems, the delegates in each state are awarded proportionally. Say there are 100 delegates available, and Hill takes 70 %. That means she gets 70 delegates and Obama gets 30. Sounds more representational, right? But smarter Dems realized that their people had a tendency to popularize unelectable candidates, so they created “Superdelegates” who were the elected party leaders plus a bunch of favored lackeys. These superdelegates are added to the state-elected delegates and they vote along with the elected state delegates at the convention. Because superdelegates number just under 800, they can easily swing the nomination (about 2500 delegates total are needed to win the nomination). “Proportionally” speaking, each superdelegate wields the equivalent of 10,000 votes by the dem primary voters. Thus, the democrat party is far less democratic than the republican.
It’s now mathematically impossible for Hillary to win the nomination without 2/3 of the superdelegate vote. Obama, on the other hand, is increasingly looking unelectable, thus the Dem leaders would have to overturn the will of the dem primary voters to give it to Hillary who even McCain believes is the tougher candidate (and he’s quite right about that). This prospect terrifies the dems because, despite the fact that this is exactly the point of the superdelegate system, their own demagoguery since Florida 2000, has painted them into a corner. And, of course, there’s the debacle with Michigan and Florida delegates this time (though those delegates would still not give hillary the lead without the supers).
Quite hilarious, but also a bit scary. If Hillary gets the nomination on a superdelegate vote, Obama supporters will flip. Never mind that this was the whole point of the superdelegate system, never mind that primaries themselves are a relatively recent invention. The Dems will live and die by their own demagoguery, but I do worry about civil strife caused by obamaniacs at the dem convention and general election.
In the past when the Republican party held the White House, the Democrats held their convention in July, and vice versa. This convention is held later than normal because the Democrats want to ... "maximize momentum for our Democratic Ticket in the final months of the Presidential election".
From http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/11/week_in_review_9.php
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