I want to add I really appreciated this earlier comment from you and the understanding shown towards the fact that Clinton supporters here have some stuff to work through, so I was saddened to see you jump on this thread with a dispute.

I spent a fair share of my tenure working on the Kerry blog in ’04 working on the goal of bringing the supporters of the other candidates around to supporting Kerry as each candidate subsequently dropped out and supported Kerry.

So I’ll stress again, it’s important that people here will be understanding all the way around.

It’s always been my intention to support the nominee. I’ve always made that pretty clear here. As I have said twice now in this thread, Clinton supporters have a place here and I expect our old readers to respect that and remember what it was like as a Kerry supporter here online not so very long ago.

It’s my understanding the HRC will continue to be active on the issues that matter to so many of us and I plan to support that here.

Rather than dispute and discount what is the valid opinion of writers here who are Clinton supporters, I’m advocating that old friends of The Dem Daily like yourself and Beachmom, have some respect for our Clinton supporters who are going through something not unlike what we all went through after the ’04 election.

Emotions are high right now.

While I strongly advocate supporting the nominee and will personally work towards defeating John McCain, Clinton supporters will be welcome here, and I hope in time we can all start to work together.

I also intend on continuing my support for HRC in whatever she may do next be it in the Senate, as perhaps the VP nominee or whatever.

There are five actors here. The DNC, Clinton, and Obama, MI and FL.

DNC
The DNC decided to have four small states go first. Small states force candidates into retail politics.
Iowa and New Hampshire started and Nevada and South Carolina were added for their representation of
urban voters, unions, Latinos, and blacks. The Feb 5 rule was in place, as Terry McAulliffe had done 4
years before, in order to have a period where the candidates were not incentivised to campaign in the
big states.
Furthmore, the candidates made a non-compete agreement with the four early states not to campaign in the
big states. When Michigan and Florida went early, Obama and a couple other candidates took their names
off of the ballot in Michigan with the understanding that the delegates would not count.

Clinton
She abided by the non-compete agreement in both states but her name was on the ballot in both states. She had
an appealign candidacy and had 16 years as a national celebrity, and not surprisingly, she won both states
handily.

Obama
Obama, as stated above took his name off of the ballot in Michigan to honor the spirit of his accord with
the four early states. The expectation was that the delegates would not count.

As for Florida and Michigan, the facts are a bit different. Michigan was in more control of Democraitc state officials, however Florida party officials seemed to support what the Republican politicians did in their state. The RNC, by the way halved the delegate in Florida for the same punishment.

More facts: we do not have any popular vote tabulation from four caucus states, three of which were won by Obama. We do not
know the popular vote. Without campaigns, we do not have a realistic view of what MI and FL would be. One
candidate had significantly more name recognition than the other, and those are big states.

The above are facts, I think I was fair in context, and in the narrative.

Now for my opinion….Simply put, Michigan and Florida made a calculated risk that backfired. Party officials
in both states thought that the race would be over on February 5 and that the delegates to the convention
would be extras in an informercial as usual. MI and FL officials sacrificed their own delegations so that they
could have the candidates campaign in their states. It turns out, all 50 states got attention. Now they are
complaining that the punishment is too harsh with the changed circumstances.
As an American who by the way happens to be black and an attorney, I was offended by the comparison to equal protection and voting rights. These primaries are the internal
processes of a private organization. Even though the government helps count the votes in primaries, these
are private matters. No constitution lawyer could claim these are real legal issues.

Lastly, both states could have appropriated public money for another contest and declined to do so. MI and FL
officials wanted instead to use in internal party mechanisms that they had flaunted, to salvage the participation
of their state’s delegations.

So in sum, MI and FL flaunted the rules, the circumstances changed, and they didn’t want to deal with the consequences.
Clinton wanted to change the agreed up rules (that Terry McAuliffe enforced in his DNC capacity) midway way their
interest changed.

I guess that’s Senator Obama’s problem to solve… but his campaign has strategized so well so far, I don’t see any problems here.

Besides, there is nothing stopping him from campaigning for the GE and the rest of you to help him do that. So, quit wasting time on blogs and go fight the Republicans.

(I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with this, which I’ll do at my own place, out of respect for Pamela)

Do me a favor as longtime Dem Daily reader and give our Clinton supporters the chance to process their grief and frustration.

I know full well that you understand that grief and frustration as a longtime Kerry supporter. So now is not the time to pick a fight here about Hillary conceding or over the opinion of one front page writer about going to the convention.

I have been actively urging readers here for weeks to support the nominee, and many are frustrated with me for that.

As the editor/owner of The Dem Daily, I will work towards the goal of winning this election in November, and continue to urge the same of everyone here.

As to Denver, you have got to be kidding me. Everyone knows a fight at the convention spells general election defeat. We know the history on that. I find your arguments for Hillary (using DIFFERENT RULES than were agreed upon way prior to 2008) unpersuasive. If Obama had to deal with different rules, then his campaign would have had a different strategy. And enough already with the bogus popular vote metric, including Hillary Michigan votes while giving Obama zero. You’re telling me Obama got zero votes in Michigan, or would have if his name was on the ballot? (The Clinton campaign admitted the majority of Uncommitted votes were for Obama at the RBC meeting.) And her popular vote count blows off 4 caucuses that did not report popular vote figures. That is why it is not an accurate metric, since every state held a different election with … a different set of rules with only delegates being the real count. Look at your post again (linked to TalkLeft), and tell me how it doesn’t sound exactly like this?

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/06/03/a-sports-parable.aspx

A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars:

I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan Solution. No, not that travesty of justice. I’m talking about a fair, common-sense resolution of the Eastern Conference Finals.

…

But back to the series in question. Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it’s hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than “games won.” It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don’t count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.

Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.

Hillary needs to concede.

It’s not so much optimism. There’s a lot of issues that will be hashed out at the convention and beyond.

And I get that many look at the rules committee decision as unfair. I do too. But we have to keep moving forward and focus on what needs to be done. That includes changing the system for the future and putting a Dem in the White House.