United States Elections, 2008

So, in Iowa, Edwards got more votes and state delegates than Hillary did, and yet Hillary gets more national delegates than Edwards.

Anyone have any idea why this is?

Because we use a fakachta system, pardon my yiddish, that is REALLY confusing and compounds several ideas in an incoherent way?

Because election votes are easy to rig?

Also, despite the fact that Obama has one more pledged delegate, Hillary has a gobload of more SUPERDELEGATES! *Superman theme begins playing*


Often times, the electoral process just never makes sense to me.

You know what else bothers me? Florida and... Michigan, I believe, both moved their primaries before the "Super Tuesday" February 5th date, the earliest any state (except for Iowa, New Hampshire, etc (almost arbitrarily)) is allowed to hold their election.

So what happens? The Democrats decide that their votes now don't count in their primaries, but the Republicans do. This means that the Democrats in those two states' votes don't matter at all in choosing the next Democrat candidate. It just doesn't seem right.

Iowa and New Hampshire have laws.

Iowa's law says that they MUST be 3 weeks before everyone else.
New Hampshire's law says 2 weeks. They don't count each other, unfortunately. That would be amusing.

Its one of the last remnants of States Rights left. And it is damn stupid.
THe parties like ti that way for some reason.

There's also Nevada and South Carolina. Which probably also have laws, yeah. But it still feels arbitrary. I mean... why can they all get earlier primaries, but not Florida and Michigan? And why should the republicans be allowed to use those primaries, but the democrats refuse to?

becuase.

To be fair, that's also true of all those primaries that come in March or later.

Apparently no one told Richardson that it didn't matter. He dropped out because of the low ranks in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Why don't they have all the primaries on one day?

You know like say instead of all this Super Tuesday BS...have it November 12 2007 which would give The Candidates a full year to say how evil the other one is.

Becuase Iowa and New Hampshire wouldn't like it. Like I said, state's rights.

Also, maybe they think its more controlable this way. Only need to campaign in a few states, much cheaper for them.

The justification is that candidates with low resources wouldn't be able to campaign nationwide as well as ones with lots of money, so they spread them out so the poor (comparatively; these guys are all rich bastards) guys can get to everywhere.

I'd still prefer a national primary where you just go to a poll station and vote, like for the presidential election. Having it on Election day would work, too.

So, Obama tied with Clinton in NH and beat Clinton in NV by number of delegates, and yet they're both being touted as big Clinton victories. Especially NH. "Holy shit, what a massive comeback; the original frontrunner tied the guy who won by a bit last time; what a miracle!"

Gee, I wonder who the media supports.

It's gonna be like that episode of Futurama where Leela becomes the first female blernsball player, isn't it?

Well, the current polls have 42/32/14 in favor of Obama in South Carolina, the last primary before super duper tuesday. And South Carolina is as large as Iowa was, making it tied for the largets pre-super duper tuesday "primary".

Hillary will, however, obviously win New York come February 5th, in addition to the several states' more delegates she has due to superdelegates. As I see it, Obama needs to take California hard to win.


On the other side, looks like Romney is out ahead. Mit Romney smash?

You're talking about the same people who all but pronounced the Clinton campaign as dead, buried, and being eaten by worms twenty seconds after she lost Iowa.

The media overreacts. News at 11.

Overreacting is one thing. Basically lying about the facts, though?

It often feels like the Media works on a "winner takes all" standpoint, which is totally how the primaries don't work.

Not only that, but Hillary didn't win Nevada. And Obama also won New Hampshire.

The general layman doesn't give a damn about delegates, they're just paying attention to the popular vote.

And considering that all the polls in NH were predicting a 5-7 point win for Obama...yeah, NH *was* a pretty big win for Clinton.

Fact is, the media focuses on people who win the popular votes. Delegate counts won't matter unless we have a brokered convention.