There's an old political saying that the most dangerous place you can be is between Chuck Schumer and a microphone. But, as one internet political blogger (Matt Bai of The Caucus) pointed out, it looks like the most dangerous place you can be is between Hillary Clinton and elected office.
She's really starting to worry me. It seems like she'll stop at nothing to get power, and when Karl Rove starts singing your praises, I think there's an underlying assumption that you sold your soul at some point. Consider the Nevada caucuses. According to ABC's Political Radar,
"Do you really believe that all the Democrats understood that they had agreed to give everybody who voted in a casino a vote worth five times as much as people who voted in their own precinct? Did you know that? What happened is nobody understood what had happened."
The implication being that the state Democratic party is run by a bunch of idiots who didn't bother to read the caucus proposal or something.
But, in a stunning example of journalistic integrity, ABC actually points out that Clinton is wrong, rather than say "the facts are disputed" or some such parsing. Political Radar goes on to say (emphasis added):
Clinton is being disingenuous, however, when he makes it sound as if this feature of the Nevada caucuses was only recently discovered. It's been known for months.
What has changed is knowledge that the Culinary Workers, the union which represents the casino workers, is backing Barack Obama.
Clinton also criticized the casino causues saying: "This is a one-man, one-vote country."
What Clinton left out, however, is that it's not just the at-large casino caucuses which is at odds with "one-man, one-vote."
The regular Democratic precinct caucuses in Nevada are also at odds with "one-man, one-vote."
In rural parts of Nevada, five people are needed to produce one delegate.
In Clark County (home to Las Vegas), 50 people are needed to produce one delegate.
Democrats in Nevada and Iowa structured their caucuses this way in order to encourage candidates to campaign in rural parts of the state.
No one had a problem with Iowa, right? Iowans reading this blog, did anyone freak out during Iowa's "unrepresentative" caucus? Oh, wait. Hillary thought she would win Iowa.
2 comments:
There wasn't as much furor here about the caucus, although there are plenty of people who don't like the system. One of the main things I don't like about it is that it forces you to choose a viable side, or your vote is not counted. In our precinct, there were lots of Richardson people whose vote went nowhere because they were not viable and did not come over to another candidate. It's their choice, but it seems silly to me that people get left out like that. The Republican caucus is different in Iowa. They just vote by ballot at the site. That way everyone's vote counts for something.
Keep blogging, Jake! Love the blog.
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