My predicted 2008 primaries post-mortem

[Recursion]

First off, happy Easter to all DU'ers following the Western calendar.

Now, my predicted post-mortem:

1. Obama will be our nominee, because our superdelegates, having been given their first chance at relevancy, will punt.

2. Given that, our party will seriously question that system and probably move to one more like what the GOP has with more winner-take-all states and a much smaller unpledged delegate caucus.

3. It will be generally and accurately accepted that Clinton could have won if she had contested the "flyover" states.

4. The Michigan/Florida fiasco will not go away and will cause acrimony for the next 4 years: Dean will win the resulting rather bloody fight, and party discipline will be the watchword in 2010 and 2012.

5. Most importantly, the DNC will start recruiting people to run in races much ealier and with a much broader net than they had before.

All in all, it's a tough and difficult season, but this is a conversation our party has been needing to have since we ceded the south 40 years ago.

[FrenchieCat]

1. Then Obama will pick just the right Veep, and we will go on to Victory!

and this will be the Beginning of the America we have wanted to be all along! a more perfect Union!

[David Dunham]

2. Dean will be out in 2009 because of his terrible handling of MI and FL

[FrenchieCat]

3. That's ok.....he will be getting sworn in as FCC Chairman......

and we'll have the last laugh. Bye to Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as they are! Hello Fairness Doctrine! We missed ya! :hi:

[Recursion]

4. I believe that will be decided in the next month or so

The dice have been cast, and the party will essentially vote on Dean vs. McAuliffe at the convention. That's another reason this nomination is about a lot more than just Obama vs. Clinton, more's the pity.

Essentially (please tell me if you disagree), if Clinton becomes the nominee, Dean simply cannot remain as head of DNC. Similarly, if Obama is the nominee, Dean must remain.

[Blondiegrrl]

5. I wish I could have him as Obama's VP: Two men of integrity.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. I disagree. on section 2 and 3. We will remain proportional. and Hill would have done better but

still would have lost the heartland. She didn't have any money to contest the flyover states. Because she ran a flawed campaign when it came to money management.

Punting isn't always a bad strategy. Especially when their may be coat tails. I agree they may adjust numbers of supers to numbers of pledged delegates and diminish the proportional power of the supers.

If Obama is smart he will do two things. He will encourage his supporters to get involved with party politics especially in places like FL and MI, and he will appoint popular figures from those states to visible federal positions.

[Recursion]

7. Obama didn't have money until January

Basically, Obama gave the lie to the claim that you absolutely must have money at the beginning to win anymore. Now, as a former Deaniac I can tell you this was the same insurgency Dean ran but he just did every part of it better, and the technology was better-placed (YouTube has done more for our party in the past 3 years than any 10 political consultants combined).

Frankly I don't want excuses from Clinton: I believed in her for a long time. I believed she was Bill's better angels: she would run the campaign and the administration Bill should have run 16 years ago. Frankly, all appearances point to the opposite. I don't care about excuses: she should have fought. She should have fought somewhere, anywhere between Super Tuesday and Ohio. Wisconsin would have been a good choice. She could have won, even with little money. Just get her out there, break her free from the campaign consultants, and let her be herself. Christ, the times that she's done that she's made me want to vote for her, and I'm as dyed-in-the-wool an Obamite as they come, these days. She should have fought, and she didn't. Same problem Kerry had.

Obama won my vote the same way Dean did: he asked me for it, and he asked me to work for him. Why did I volunteer to canvass for Obama? Because someone asked me to. I didn't really know much about him. I was an Edwards guy (well, at first I was a Richardson guy). Someone said, "do you want to come to South Boston and canvass for Senator Obama?" That one person convinced me to do it, and ever since then I've been more and more convinced that this is my candidate. He's not afraid to ask me to do stuff for him. That's crucial.

I was a US Marine. I carried a very large, heavy machine gun from point A to point B and made sure that nobody who had the intent of killing our guys and girls could get past the line between point A and point B. One of the lifelong advantages of having been a US Marine is the knowledge that you could prevent someone from crossing that line between A and B. That may seem meaningless to non-veterans, but it's a very powerful point. But how does this relate? It relates because I'm a fairly average American. I enlisted in 1997. My country had no compelling crisis, but I enlisted because I believed in service. I was sickened that after 9/11 Bush didn't ask us, just go on TV and ask us, to serve like that.

We're hungry, a lot of us. We're hungry not for gain or fame or benefits but for the chance to do something for this country. Nobody on any side of the aisle is asking us to do anything except Obama. Not even McCain. And here I'll admit something: in 2000 I voted in the GOP primary for McCain not to screw with the GOP election but because of the extent to which I admired that man and his service to our country. And I still consider him a great American. But even he, who gave so much, has not managed to realize that we are ready for a leader who will ask us to do great things. We can work. We can struggle. We can sacrifice. We can do what Columbia will ask if only our leaders will have the courage to ask it of us.

Anyways, this rant has gone on long enough. I hope you all are well.

Dmesg approves this message.