The biggest lesson of this election is that good candidates bring out voters.  The lesson shouldn't be that caucuses suck, but that we need to put forward the type of politicians that can get people out to vote.

The article did state that the voters turned away were allowed to cast provisional ballots that would be counted if both candidates agreed to that modification of the rules.

OK, two things:

1)  Just because they suck (and they aren't as good as primary), doesn't mean we should rhetorically discount their results.  In Wyoming and a number of states, that's the only way the D voters could choose a candidate.  When I hear a Clinton supporter saying "well, caucuses are unfair and they mean nothing"... well, sorry, to those voters, they did mean something.  To deny that is to disenfranchise voters via rhetoric.

2)  I agree with the "caucuses are worse than primaries".  But let me ask you a question:  should it be the state's responsibility to fund what is, after all, a party's selection process?  Forgive me, but in order to have a primary in a lot of states, it costs money that the state has to allocate.  I think a primary is terrific -- but in some states and some areas asking voters to fund the D party and R parties mechanisms for a candidate isn't something we should expect.

OK, flame away.

This is the best argument around for a re-vote in FL and MI.

I agree that there are good arguments against caucuses and obviously, with these kind of crowds, they don't really make a lot of sense on the surface.

But there are also arguments in favor of caucuses and I'm not so sure that all the biased Clinton supporters will see things the same way once this primary is over and well behind us. The arguments in favor are very simple:

It is one thing to get a lot of people out in a primary, that's fine but it's not everything. What you actually want is to have as many people as possible seriously committed to a candidate and to the Party. That means people who will GOTV, who will donate money, who will advocate their candidate to their friends, and so on. The motivated bunch, not just the passive voters. These people are worth much more to the party than ordinary voters and can make a huge difference in the general election. And that's why they have a special role to play in caucuses, where they make up the large majority of participants.

Ignore that at your own peril.

If there's no evidence that Clinton supporters tend to be more tardy than Obama supporters, then excluding late comers has no impact on the outcome.

People have to get to a primary before the polls close, too, so this is not an issue regarding caucuses versus primaries.

Not today's caucus!

It's really amazing to watch our mainstream media bend over backwards pimping for Hillary.  She managed just a handful of delegates in the big, delegate-rich state of Ohio on Tuesday, but Obama offset most of that with his win in Texas.  Then the next day California certified its primary, and Obama ended up with a net of 8 more.  Later that same day, 3 more superdelegates declared for Obama.  And now it looks like Obama will net 3 more in Wyoming (2 + the add-on in May).  But to read the papers and watch the bobbleheads on TV, you'd think Hillary was on a rampage and bound for victory.

What has happened is that Obama's 12 straight primary victories created a dynamic where the bar has been set so low for Hillary that anything that resembles a win for her, no matter how slender, is heralded as major news.  It's also interesting to note that when this race began she had all the advantages and was the presumed nominee;  but that has been turned around 180 degrees, and now she is perceived to be the scrappy challenger battling from behind.

The worm turns...

A move should be made to get rid of the awarding of delegates through caucuses in the convention going forward.

Maybe he can get a job as a lobbyist working for Daschle.

If only Daschle had been this forceful with the Republicans, maybe he would not look like a loser!

I think after Tuesday, a lot of the pundits will be making the case that Obama has a bigger delegate lead than he did a week earlier and - hopefully - the news coverage will recognize that.

It is interesting to see folks on here defending caucuses since caucuses are the paramount form of the organized party elite. It was exclusive caucuses that precipitated changes in the Democratic rules in the 1960s, you know the smoke filled rooms?

Why are they more democratic now? Because your preferred candidate wins them? This just goes to show that the commitment to democratic 'values' or better representation is empty words.

People just want their preferred candidate to win, no matter the costs.

I am quite sure that if Clinton was winning caucuses that the Clintonista opinion of caucuses would be totally positive.  I feel that if Obama was in second place that he wouldn't suck either.  A primary in Wyoming would have yielded the same result.  With the Clintonistas the rules suck, the states that don't matter suck, the math sucks, the eroding superdelegate lead sucks, it just all sucks sucks, sucks.  Reality sucks when you are losing.  Get used to it.  A deep apology and contrition from Clinton might allow her the Demo VP slot, unless she would rather run on McCain's ticket.

The doors are closed according to the schedule in the rules. Is someone saying they rules were broken or is this just idle complaining?

Very soon Clinton will be telling us that the voters suck, democracy sucks, the progressive wing of the party sucks, everything in this growing nightmare of a poorly run campaign sucks.  It seems that everything sucks except for McCain.  Even the honesty of promising in the debates to support the Democratic nominee seems to suck, totally.

Also, I was just talking to someone about the possible redo in MI and how it may be a "caucus" acting like a primary.

Even tho I do not like mail in or early voting, I have ALWAYS believed that people should have the ability to do a true absentee ballot.

If they are going to be away or are elderly and have trouble getting out, then they should be able to vote by absentee ballots.

Well, enjoy this today because according to the NY Times, this is the LAST CAUCUS for the Dems this year.

Is anyone here arguing that excluding late-comers advantages Obama?

If so, why?  Do Clinton people have a problem getting places on time?

"they had to turn people away..."

This is really incendiary. Why the hell are people OK with this? An election isn't a concert. It's not a 1/2 price sale at Costco. It's not "one free cone day" at Baskin-Robbin. There should be no such thing as turning people away when it comes to an election of any kind.

Now there are all sorts of smart people who will argue that in fact as a matter of law no explicit right to vote exists, and much less so in the circumstance of a preference poll undertaken as a  service/function of a mere local political party. However, I'm sure that if asked, 99.99% of all Americans or even unregistered adults, who affirm the idea of a "right to vote" and even most constitutional and historical scholars would  concur that THE CONSTITUTION (and much moreso, the whole developmental arc of American political history) implies such a right.

A single vote has ample moral value. Lots of votes have, together, profound moral value. Lots of votes turned away is a profound moral outrage. Caucuses are a profound moral outrage insofar as they pretend to be anything like a vehicle for regular people to give voice to their poltiical views. They are exclusive and have little worth beyond being a really expensive focus group. They are the tool of the aristocracy, not the tool of the common person.