jasonrh

As you know, it is designed so that the people of each state get a say in the election.

For those who have no clue what the fuck exactly is going on...

It is designed to keep the most populous states from dominating the electoral process. Of course that means giving small states a disproportionate say, but hey-ho, there you go.

The parties used to choose their nominees in private meetings (the so-called smoke filled rooms of US political lore), but eventually democratised and created the same style system as the federal general election (down to 'delegates' replacing the electoral college) to give people more say in their parties. Caucuses are just mini-primaries, except that they are more like town hall meetings where everyone gets a say. Normally only hard-cores show up for those where a lot show up for primaries.

Each state gets to choose its own rules for deciding how those delegates are apportioned. With more than 50 jurisdictions each making various political concessions as well as compromises of all sorts over the decades, there are some enormously complex systems - Texas screams out with both a primary that awards delegates by Congressional district, plus a caucus, plus more delegates arranged by the winner of the popular vote of the state over all!

It used to be that every state everywhere in both parties awarded delegates via winner-take-all based on the popular vote of the state overall (like electoral votes are). After the disaster that was the Democratic campaign of George McGovern in 1972 (anyone who can not manage to beat Richard Nixon qualifies as a "disaster"), the old-school Dems tricked the newer ones into splitting things up proportionally in every state, but left it for the states to decide how.

The only rule was that the party could set a date which is the earliest that a primary can be held. This is designed to spread things out and preserve some old-time Presidential politics traditions, like Iowa being the first caucus and New Hampshire being the first primary. Florida and Michigan violated the Dem's rule, and being an utter Genius, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean (yes, that Howard Dean from 2004) decided to strip them of all of their delegates. That meant their primaries didn't count. All the campaigns signed pledges to that effect, promised not to campaign in either state, and they even agreed to remove their names from the ballot in Michigan (they couldn't do so under Florida election law once they were on there).

Of course Hillary Clinton broke both of those rules, and now wants her "win" in Florida to count, and to get the delegates out of Michigan because it was Obama's choice to withdrawn from Michigan, even though she also promised to do so and claimed a "beaurocratic snafu" had kept her from doing it. There now seems to be a real movement towards some sort of do-over, and if so there will be a real problem waiting when Hillary does something else crooked, probably involving doing what she did in New Hampshire and busing fake voters into Michigan while compromising ballot integrity in Florida's mail-in private primary.

But that's all an aside to why one race is over and they other isn't.

The proportional representation system meant that the big states had even less of a say in the nomination, and was originally a firewall against California/New York radicals and gave the more conservative smaller states in the midwest and south even more control than under the winner-take-all delegate system.

This system was designed by conservative Dems to keep the 1960s types from winning the nomination, but things have changed. Now the conservative Democrats in those small states have long-since either switched over to being Republicans or have taken a dirt nap (some would argue that's the same thing).

Those Democrats in the small states with the hugely disproportionate representation are now much more liberal, fairly affluent, and highly educated. The working class tend to be Republican in those areas. Clinton's major support base is amongst poor whites, poorly educated whites, and women over 40. Clinton is seen as an old-school politician and Obama as the new liberal. The Clinton crowd are now the conservatives, but due to those huge demographics shifts the more conservative 1960s generation have been fucked again, this time via the system that was supposed to fuck up the liberals!

Republicans followed suit with proportional representation in some jurisdictions, in others they did not. As I said above with the Texas example, some states have staggeringly complicated methods seemingly designed specifically to give state legislators and mathematicians a bit more employment.

The Republican nomination is sewn up because of not having proportional representation in most states. If the Democrats worked on a winner-take-all system, Hillary would have become their nominee on Super Tuesday back 6 weeks ago and America would be damned to another decade of utter hell. Proportional Representation has meant that even if Hillary wins a state 60-40 she might only take an advantage of 2 or 3 delegates out of 4000-something because of the methods of splitting them up. He's won so many more states than her that he has amassed a 5% or so lead in elected delegates.

But there's a nasty and dirty little secret in the Democratic nomination process.

In 1982 the Democrats were faced with an all-mighty conundrum. They are the party who fights for minorities (largely by doing fuck all and then lying about it), but they don't sit at the same table as them. Along comes a hugely popular long-term civil rights activist (and Grade A twat, but that's irrelevant here) named Jesse Jackson.

He's (whisper it) black.

That didn't sit too well with many Democrats (and doesn't sit well with a lot of the current crop of party leaders today who have a painfully pathetic form of condescending bigotry towards minorities). To give you a bit of an idea as to why Jackson was so unpalatable back then, the then Democratic leader in the Senate was a former Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan. He's still in the Senate and is venerated by Democrats.

Of course they're the party of non-bigotry (in spite of opposing the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s) because they say they are. But a N****r as their nominee? As if.

So they designed a new firewall, this time (they say) designed let party elders make sure that the party nominates someone who will have a better chance to win, or as a safety against buyer's remorse from voters, or in order to decide a race in which there are more than 2 candidates, so no one has a pure majority. Now they even claim that it was because not enough party regulars were let in the hall at the 1980 Democratic Convention.

These new delegates vote just like an elected delegate, and represent nearly half of all the Democratic delegates who choose the nominee. They're called Super Delegates. The key here is that they don't at all have to vote for the candidate of their state. They can vote for whoever they want and have total freedom in their decision.

These wise sages of the party who should be trusted over the will of the people include former president Bill Clinton (an admitted perjurer), Governor Elliot Spitzer (who resigned today because he has been involved in a prostitution ring), Congressman Barney Frank (whose boyfriend ran a brothel out of his basement for a couple of years before getting caught) and a slew more of those whose judgement is clearly superior to the actual democratic will of the people of the Democratic Party.

There hasn't been a close race since 1984, so they haven't been a big deal. Over time it has become a bit of a joke, and they've been handed out like candy. But that doesn't change the fact that they were designed by the party of the people to keep the (black) people down.

Whether the party bosses (now just as corrupt as the ones they fought against in 1968 and 1972) will play 'slap the negro' this time remains to be seen. But Clinton, their campaign aide with his "could have sold cocaine" comment, the "Hussein" thing they started, Governor Rendell of Philadelphia, the "turban" photo, and forner VP candidate Ferrarro are certainly making it pretty clear that the candidate of choice for the ignorant poor old cross-burning crowd is Hillary Clinton.

Robert Byrd is smiling from his hospital bed at the idea of getting a chance to thwart his party's nomination of some uppity n****r for President. He didn't do all of that sheet wearing just to see them take control of the place.