Yup.. Hillary Clinton and her 49% "formidable baggage".

What crap.

I do wish Hillary hadn't opened this particular box in the first place.

I agree that the process needs to be improved, but I find it odd to be lectured about the "will of the people" from someone pushing the flawed "popular vote" meme.

Please accept that the race is over. Clinton might have made a decent VP choice before Super Tuesday, but you don't get to throw the kitchen sink, the toilet, and the industrial sewer system at your president before sliding into the cockpit.

It's over. She won't be on the ticket. Democrats will rally around our nominee, the person who got the most delegates in the delegate race known as the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Let's move on to McCain. Let Obama pick his VP. He will not be cajoled, boxed, or forced to pick Clinton simply because her supporters haven't acknowledged her loss.

Marc Ambinder's take on the VP

Here's what I know: the campaign has taken a collective vow of omerta when it comes to answering questions about the process. I know that, when I've asked senior officials whether James Johnson, a major Obama fundraiser/superdelegate wrangler/Washington hand/Kerry veepstakes vetter has been tapped to run Obama's search, communication abruptly stops, as though I've mentioned "Skull and Bones" in the presence of a member. I know that Barack Obama regularly says that he won't begin to think about veepstakes until after voting ends on June 4, so I suspect that, if Johnson, or Valerie Jarrett, or anyone else, has been asked to help Obama, it won't happen until after that.

Here's what else I suspect: that Obama will wind up vetting more candidates than one might suspect; that the vetting will be extremely thorough and private; that several women will be vetted NOT as tokens but as actual potential choices; that Hillary Clinton WILL be asked to submit the vetting documents IF she signals that she wants to be considered; that Obama DOES NOT have a frontrunner in mind; that the campaign, even if it uses another vetter, will seek to emulate the Kerry/Johnson process; that Obama, or his campaign manager, has asked senior staff to say not word one about the process, ever, thus accounting for the reticence of his press staff even to joke about it.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/arch ives/2008/05/obama_and_the_vice_presiden tia_1.php

accept BO's VP slot - we don't want her to be his mommy and clean up the crap that he lays down - and also have to do all of his heavy lifting for him.

He is clearly not qualified for the job.  HRC will be blamed - under every scenario - when he loses in November.

We are all currently writing to her supporters to ask them NOT to accept second place on his ticket.

The gall of this person is beyond belief.

From earlier comments by myself:

Primaries and nominees have been decided numerous times not on the basis of popular vote but on delegates.

You can go all the way back to when Woodrow Wilson didn't even campaign but showed up at the convention and won the delegates and went onto win the Presidency.

Delegates decide it - today it's more democratic in a sense but this is not a one person, one vote society.

It hasn't been; it may trend that way but it's actually one of our greatest checks on power.

And:

While Caucuses Violate the Spirit: the will of the people is the biggest falsity every propagated.

This country isn't a democracy, it isn't decided by popular vote, one person isn't entitled to one vote and it likely won't be.

Mob rule is the worst method by which to run a government: see Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and the hundreds of socialist/communist countries where there are no checks and balances.

The Electoral College is one of the biggest checks on the people of America. Popular vote can be right sometimes (Al Gore) but can be wrong other times (Adolf Hitler).

The Electoral Votes decide the election - not popular vote.

And yes, delegates decide the nomination; not the will of the people.

The will of the people are represented in delegates, pretty much - and no amount of complaining changes that.

Again. America isn't a democracy. It was designed by people who didn't trust the people (Hamilton) and rightfully so.

That's my personal opinion; it's my understanding that Senator Obama does believe in the will of the people and using sanctioned contests, he carries the will of the people in both popular vote and delegate count.

I'm unaware of what unsanctioned contests do to that - I've heard various scenarios. I don't speculate on what isn't.

If that changes sometime at the end of May, we'll discuss it then.

Until then, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party don't recognize unsanctioned contests and they aren't reflected in any vote total or delegate total.

So the diary is wrong in that respect.

I still stick by that.

I'm very Hamiltonian in that sense and I don't speak for most of Senator Obama's supporters or Senator Obama.

But mob rule isn't an excellent form of democracy and Hamilton saw it in the late 1700s.

I like the Electoral College - we can have a debate as to whether it favors smaller states or larger states (see New Hampshire in 2000) or discuss delegate apportionment which is designed to favor activists and minority groups as well as areas and states where Democrats run strong but I reject the will of the people out of hand.

The will of the people in 2004 was George W. Bush. I don't trust the will of the people.

I agree that a raw popular vote would be superior to proportionally deciding things, but it's still a big step forward over the winner-take-all system that the Republicans use in the primaries and we use in every other election.  60% and 50.1% getting the same extra delegate is a lot better than 80% and 50.1% both counting for everything.

I'll be impressed if Clinton uses her political capital to seriously reform the nominations process.  Seems to me that one of the reasons we have the electoral system we do is that candidates don't expend much energy to fix the system after election day.  Hell, that's why we've still got the electoral college after the Florida debacle!

There is no VP that can save Barack Obama in the GE.

And it is beyond comprehension to send some of our best, tried, tested  & true Democrats- among them Wes Clark, Hillary Clinton or James Webb to prop up this profoundly underqualified & underequipped junior first-term Senator.

Such a selection underscores the terrible national security weakness & electoral vulnerability of this flawed candidate. And once again, as we see played out in workplace after workplace, the tried, true & tested are supposed to come rushing to the aid of the hip new thing.

Kinda tragic, really. Strike "kinda."

Hillary should do whatever she feels is appropriate. Personally I hope she takes it all the way to the floor.

"Let me put it bluntly, anyone holding up the pledged delegate count as representing the "will of the people" is simply full of it. It does not. It thwarts the will of the people. BY DESIGN."

Omgz, Wyoming gets the same number of Senators as California? OMGZ! It's thwarting the will of the people!

This is ridiculous. We live in a Federal Republic. It is, yes by design, made to give people more of a say than others. Acting as if the nomination system is some unheard of oligarchy is insane.

SHE'S NEVER GOING TO BE HIS VP CAUSE SHE WILL BE THE PRESIDENT ACCEPT THAT. ONCE SHE ACCEPTS THE VP POSITION, SHE WILL LOSE MANY FANS INCLUDING MYSELF.

and lead us to victory in GE. If Obama nominated, McCain will win in landslide, so Hillary's role to save us from a disaster and way to do it to make her our next President

What scares me is if once we have a nominee, these issues (and yes, I agree some changes are needed in the primary process, but that can't happen this year in this almost-concluded primary) will continue to be thrashed out, and the nominee will have to not only contest the GOP but also implications of illegitimacy from his or her own party.  Sort of like rachetting up the whole concern scenario and feeding the Republican campaign well.  

how allocating 0 votes to obama in MI and discounting 4 party-approved contests accurately reflects the will of the people.

Hate the game.  Hillary knew what the rules where and  she just didn't play the game well enough to win. Obama won it fair and square. More voters selected him, he has more States, and he has more delegates. Its the math stupid...She and McCain are no more competent than Senator Obama.  I wish Senator Clinton all the best but she created the mess she's in now. She was for the rules barring Michigan and Florida from the primary before she was against it.  She also  mismanaged her campaign and finances from start to finish.  It makes me wonder if she could run the country if she can't even lead and manage her own campaign. With that said, I hope Senator Obama will invite Hillary into his campaign as a full fledge member.  I embrace all of the Clintonites.  We need to quit arguing about who is the better nominee and focus on beating John McCain as a unified effort in the fall.

I agree that there should be reforms made to the primary process, starting with ditching caucuses, putting tighter restrictions on the primary calendar to make sure FL & MI don't happen again and the like.

However, this primary process has rules and they are the ones we started with. Unfortunately, "but the rules are unfair" is only an argument you can present when it's all over.

Complaining about the process when it doesn't go the way you want is a surefire way to get people on board for change.

Where was this championing before Clinton squandered a huge lead in recognition and super delegates?  Shall we go hunting for quotes from HRC and Co. stating that this is a delegate race?  Doubt we'd have to look far....

It's Obama who has formidable baggage unprecedented in a Dem candidate.

It's Obama who is the most divisive figure I've seen in my 60 years on this planet.

If there were any sense in the Democratic party, we wouldn't have such a screwed up system that doesn't nominate someone like Hillary who could actually win against McCain but does nominate candidates like McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis.

If Hillary is the nominee, we won.

If Obama is the nominee, we lose.

This contest isn't over so stop talking as if it is. If the remaining SDs have any sense and want to win in November, they'll give the nomination to Hillary. If they don't care about losing, it'll go to Obama and lose he will.

Obama is a godsend to the RNC.

before the time when Hillary fell hopelessly behind in delegates? But hopefully they'll keep up the good fight to reform the process in the future.

Yes, caucuses suck and superdelegates too. Let's not wait until the next time they don't favor our preferred candidate to call for their elimination.

In fact, lets have a popular vote national primary system where every vote is equal in weight and impact to every other and most candidates aren't elimated before the overwhelming majority ever get to participate.

If this is all about just conniving to help Hillary now that she's lost under the current system, then "reform" is just a buzzword to be used for crass political manipulation.

"Clinton, I'm betting, has more interest in using her capital to reform the nomination process."

I hope not.  None of the candidates running, including Sen. Clinton, had a problem with caucuses before this primary season started.

If she does what you think, she will come across as sour grapes.

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/orego nian/index.ssf?/base/news/12110019071075 30.xml&coll=7

33,500 double ballots sent in Oregon.  

Not sure about mail-in, seems kind of prone to this.

Superdelegates were created to mollify party insiders who wanted to lessen the chances that another McGovern or Carter could win the primaries.  This whole idea that pledged delegates aren't necessary bound to uphold the preferences of voters was done at the behest of Kennedy supporters (because he tried to win this way in 1980).

It's a pretty sure bet, actually, that Clinton supporters will have a lot of influence in rewriting the rules.  The also rans are always the ones who have a greater stake/chip on their shoulder.

Doesn't mean they'll come up with a set of better rules.  Both of the changes above (which came out of the 1984 reforms), I'd argue, have made this race a hundred times more divisive than it should have been (since voters now think the party is in the business of judging the "worthiness" of the winner, the intensity of support for both candidates, and other qualities which are highly subjective).  

When this contest ends, whatever happens, it looks as though approx. a quarter of Dems will feel as though the party betrayed them.  If we can fix that, great.

Very interesting article extract.

For some time now I have thought that Senator Clinton would find far greater satisfaction in choosing Senator Obama's VP pick than being on the ticket herself - I take previous reports that Clinton in her own mind does not think Obama can not win the general election to be accurate.

I also reckon that as part of the negotiated 'peace settlement' she could make it clear that she expects to replace Harry Reid.

(but a week is a long time in politics, anything can happen in the next half hour)

This diary is a transparent part of an effort to delegitimize Obama's victory by claiming that he fell ass-backwards into the nomination due to a flawed process. This really has more to do with sour grapes at this point than it does with trying to get the SD's to award Hillary the nomination--but the effect is more or less the same...namely it feeds the polarized attitudes on both sides and prevents the party from reunifying in time for November.

There are a minority of Hillary supporters who honestly believe that the correct path to reconciliation is for the Obama crowd to crawl up on hands and knees and beg them to pretty please vote for our candidate; and the whole "admit that your candidate won because of a flawed process" meme is just one of many hoops they want us to jump through, along with "admit that your candidate won only because he's a man", etc. Well, Obama does have the responsibility (as the winner) to approach Hillary & her supporters in a humble way and ask for their support--and there's certainly things that Obama's side can and should apologize for (there's things Hillary's side should apologize for as well, but the winner should go first).

But there's no way that nodding and smiling while this "illegitimate process" crap is floated around will lead to reconciliation. It will just lead to continued polarization.

The process may well be flawed, but it was equally flawed for both candidates. Your subtext is that Hillary would have won given a different set of rules--but you have nothing but opinion to offer to back that up. The one datapoint that we have suggests that Obama is just a better candidate than Hillary.

If the rules were different, then the tactics would be different on both sides. Obama has a large, extremely motivated, and well-financed base of support across every region of the country. It's incredibly dismissive to write him off as a fluke who only won because the planets aligned in a bizarre way.

It's pretty fucking easy to rewrite the rules at the end of the game and then claim that your candidate would have won under that set of rules. That may make you feel better, but you frankly just need to find a better way to make yourself feel better--because the "illegitimate process" meme is dangerous to the party's chances in Nov.

I saw BTD's post last night and did a double-take.

Apportionment by district inherently leaves votes out.  That should be obvious.  Any time you have delegates at all you're going to have votes not counted.  And of all primaries to complain about the Democratic party's weighting rules, this seems like an odd one - I've seen pro-Hillary people who don't understand how apportionment works complain that "Democratic areas should have more of a say then places that usually vote Republican".  Yeah - actually they do.  Want to change that?  I'm not sure I do.

And the popular vote is even worse a measure of the "will of the people".  It will matter the day there's a national primary with a straight vote count, and there's nothing like that here.  A resident of a caucus state is going to have about 1/100th of the say of someone from a primary state, who will have a greater or lesser say depending on the size of turnout, which is influenced by extraneous things such as which party finishes their primary first, and whether it's an open or closed primary.  Want more influence?  Open your primary to Republicans.  Want less?  Keep it democrats only.  Wnat none at all?  Have a caucus, which prior to all this Hillary Clinton called "a wonderful tradition."

Anytime you have a close election you'll have people complaining that there's something wrong with the process.

If the Democrats do not reform the primary process, I am switching to Independent.

The whole process was an embarrassment.

From a previous diary...

If you count all valid contests and include estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):
Obama 16,438,697 / Clinton 15,734,865 = Obama +703,832 +2.1%
--

If you count all valid contests but exclude the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 16,104,613 / Clinton 15,511,003 = Obama +593,610 +1.8%

--

If you count all valid contests AND the State of Florida, and include estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 17,014,911 / Clinton 16,605,851 = Obama +409,060 +1.2%  

--

If you count all valid contests AND the State of Florida, but exclude estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 16,680,827 / Clinton 16,381,989 = Obama +298,838 +0.8%

--

If you count all valid contests AND the States of Florida and Michigan (giving Obama the uncommitted vote) and include estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 17,253,079 / Clinton 16,934,160 = Obama +318,919 +0.9%

--

If you count all valid contests AND the States of Florida and Michigan (giving Obama the uncommitted vote) but exclude estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 16,918,995 / Clinton 16,710,298 = Obama +208,697 +0.6%

--

If you count all valid contests AND the States of Florida and Michigan (giving Hillary all her votes but Obama zero votes) and include estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 17,014,911 / Clinton 16,934,160 = Obama +80,751 +0.22%

--

If you count all valid contests AND the States of Florida and Michigan (giving Hillary all her votes but Obama zero votes) but exclude estimates of the caucuses that don't reveal popular vote totals (IA, NV, ME, WA):

Obama 16,680,827 / Clinton 16,710,298 = Clinton +29,471 +0.08%

I think we all know which scenario some which choose.
(Hint: It's the only one that serves Hillary's interests.)

It would be an awful mistake as evidenced by the opinions that support her as VP.  Many of you act as if it would be a Co-Presidency, it wouldn't.  Many of you assume it would acknowledge a flawed process, a process you were fine with when Bill got nominated under the same rules.  

If getting close was the standard for a mandate for shared leadership, Al Gore would be VP to Bush.  

One won, one lost, now the person who won gets to decide how he chooses to use the talents of the one who lost.

That's just the way it is...

Another commentary on this overall process over on The Economic Populist and how policy and agenda is being drown like a dead cat.

For all of you who actually research out policy, votes, legislation, the money behind legislation and so on, The Economic Populist is a community blog but a deep analysis, fact based blog. We write about the statistical details, facts on trade, economics, labor,subprime, CPI, inflation and so on, which currently are nowhere to be found on most major blogs.

Such sore losers. Your candidate lost and now you want to change the rules to suit you. We are a country of the rule of law.

Everything about Obama is known. Known.
Prhaps you might like consider the 1600 page dossier they have on HRC. Oh of course, you won't.

I agree that there are problems, but it seems that every example you cited are those that worked against Clinton.

If you wanted to be intellectually honest and get Obama supporters on board, you could've mentioned how Clinton also benefited from what could be considered flaws in the process. Examples:

* Entering the primaries with an enormous amount of committed superdelegates. The SDs were envisioned as  an emergency veto of another McGovern, so it hardly seems fair that so many should've cast their lots with few or no votes actually having been cast.

* States jumping the primary calendar. For all the complaining about so-called "disenfranchisement" of Michigan and Florida, how are you proposing to  hold the states to a calendar otherwise? Stripping half the delegates doesn't seem a big loss to me. It's risk vs. reward--lose half your delegates but have your election matter, or keep all your delegates and be buried in April or May, when almost every primary has long since wrapped up by then.

Florida benefited hugely from the Republican primary--it knocked Giuliani out, kinged McCain and gave the state massive coverage. That's worth a loss of half the delegates alone. In the modern era, I'd imagine no nomination has ever been decided by the margin of half of any one state's delegates.

So there are plenty of problems to be fixed here. Focusing only on the ususal "caucuses suck/rural people have too much power" complaints seems like stacking the deck.

Face it we had two great candidates, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. I would work hard for either one of them. Obama is the nominee whether anyone chooses to believe it or not.  I support him 100%.  As a former military member who has served this nation for over 27 years, I know a few things about Commander in Chiefs.  I served under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II and the one thing I know is that we need a leader who is willing to tell the truth and use sound judgment to pick and choose the battles we commit our military forces to fight. We also need someone to lead all of this nation not just parts of it. We do not need the politics that continue to divide us by state, party, race, religion, and gender. Senator Obama meets and exceeds this criteria 100%. We military people need you all to rally together despite your differences to get us out of Iraq now...not in 100 years not in 2013. We need relief. I got out of the military 8 months ago so  I can fully participate in the effort to remove Republicans out of office and to save someones child's life. I could not do this while I served.  Please UNITE and work together to REMOVE all remnants of the Bush Legacy to include John McCan now.  Who cares if you liked Clinton better than Obama or vice versa. We need to unify to take our country back. Stop this unhelpful dialogue and  let's take the Presidency back.