Pledged to delegate the winner

[illusionofjoy]

We all knew the system was fucked up. This is how fucked up it really is. From Taylor Marsh's website:

Right now, we have one candidate who leads in elected delegates and another who leads in the popular vote. It's almost unprecedented, and no one could have guessed we'd be in this position a year ago. Next to Florida in 2000, this has been the most incredible election contest I have ever witnessed, and it's not even over yet.

In August, it will be the Democratic superdelegates who will decide this contest with their votes at the convention. So...what's the most democratic way to determine the winner here? And, all essential questions of electability aside, who has the democratic moral high ground as the voting comes to a close?

Barack Obama's lead in elected delegates is impressive, but I believe it is an extremely flawed measurement. You see, delegates are malleable. With the right strategy and pressure, they can be changed at will. These changes can occur at local conventions, in DNC meeting rooms, or simply in the brain of an elected delegate with a change of heart. The will of the voters often has nothing to do with it.

Ignoring who prefers which candidate at the moment, who is with me for making the Democratic Primary more...well...Democratic?

Comments

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

Who knew that the popular vote was actually entirely meaningless, even within the blue party? Gosh, I guess democracy's just an illusion.

[illusion-of-joy.livejournal.com]

Yes, Democracy is an illusion. When you get right down to it, the United States is a representative republic, borrowing elements of Athenian democracy and mashing them together with Roman republicanism with a dash of European parliamentary procedures.

[mokie]

If I remember right, it was the other way around not so long ago, with Obama carrying more of the popular vote and talk of Clinton winning through the superdelegates, and lots of his folks were grumbling about the unfairness of it then, too...

[illusion-of-joy.livejournal.com]

And it would have been unfair. Such a victory is tainted, and I have trouble supporting it. I want a Clinton victory, but I wanted it to be a "clean" victory (or as clean as politics can get, anyhow). What we have at the moment, it seems, is the 2000 Florida morass without any republicans to blame.

[mokie]

Damn straight. As the_phred put it, "I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that the Democrats are running full-pelt towards losing an unlosable election."

I liked both candidates at the start of this race, and figured that whoever won, I'd be happy to have them in office. I really wish I still felt that way.