The system isn't wrong; one candidate's approach to the system was wrong. The only thing that needs to be fixed in 2012 is the penalty appropriation toward candidates who attempt to change rules midstream and states that attempt to jump fences to hold their primaries early.

The caucus/primary system is fine.

Interesting that I didn't hear all this screaming about how undemocratic the caucuses were in 2004. I didn't see graphs going up trying to make the nominee appear illegitimate at all. I didn't hear about popular vote totals either.

Why all the fuss now? Is it because your candidate ran a poor campaign and is losing or is it something else which I won't mention.

There is no system that will perfectly balance all of the competing needs of the nomination system. The chart you provide here shows mostly that Obama paid attention to the caucus states, while Clinton ignored them. If she had paid attention to the caucuses, she could have greatly decreased his margin there, and would probably be the nominee. It is not a problem with the system that she had a lousy campaign plan.

Do you understand that Wisconsin voters had 15,000 voters per delegate, while New York voters had 8,000 voters per delegate, and if Michigan is seated in full it will have 5,000 voters per delegate? Do you understand why?

Do you think a party that can't force Michigan and Florida to respect the the calendar will be able to force the caucus states to abandon their long standing tradition? What punishment are they supposed to use to enforce this?

Yes, it is.  You're claiming he won't lead in the popular vote using extremely spurious standards.

Clinton supporters would have NO trouble with this process if their candidate was ahead.  NONE.  This is whining thinly disguised as bitching about the rules after losing fair and square.

The process is fine, your candidate just had a mediocre plan that was poorly executed.

And as for "how low the discourse has gotten", would  that include the diaries with entire paragraphs cut and pasted from HRC.com that dominated this site for months or the tremendously misleading graph you posted earlier today that even an Intro to Statistics student would tell you was spurious?

Keep up that "high" level of discourse though, we can only hope to aspire to your level.

Were they not both running in the same states to the same set of rules? If one candidate is better at the current method of deciding the winner is that unfair?

Grapes seem pretty sour this year!

If your point of continuously posting arguments like this is to address the issue for 2012, then the timing is curious. You could just as easily push for the caucus system to be re-evaluated after the primary race or general election are over.

The way we Obama supporters see it, it looks like it's being posted to bolster Clinton's case to the SDs (she'll end up with more popular votes!) and to undermine Obama as the illegitimate product of undemocratic elections.

If you're going to push Clinton like this, then it's not exactly fair to snap at us to get over our candidate.

Moreover, any popular vote argument that involves counting Michigan as-is undermines that person's credibility. If one wanted to make a strong case that would get us to actually consider it, you'd at least consider Michigan was FUBAR and shouldn't be counted (except as further proof that the system is messed up).

It's an effective tool in a discussion--concede something to get something back. But insisting that Michigan was a legit and should count just makes us tune out immediately.

Get over your candidate. This isn't about Obama, but fixing it for 2012.

About the level of discourse...what do you know, if you write crap, you'll attract flies.

"I'm amazed at how low the discourse has gotten"

Really?  Look in the mirror.

The only way to "fix" this "problem" is to impose uniform rules on all the states - banning caucuses, mandating that all contests have the same openness rules (open, semi-open, or closed). So, good luck getting Iowa to give up their caucuses, imposing open primaries on Maryland, or forcing Virginia and Michigan to close their caucuses in violation if state law.

Or get off the idea that combining vote totals from 60 different contests with different rules, and from 2 contests in which citizens were told their votes wouldn't count, is any kind of decent measure. Combined vote totals ("popular vote" is a misnomer when the numbers arrive under such drastically different circumstances) and pledged delegates are both fundamentally flawed measures - but at least pledged delegates give us to have a common currency and allow each state party to hold elections as they see fit.

Jerome, you are absolutely right that the system has to be fixed. Evidence enough is the schism between Clinton and Obama supporters so late in the game. Evidence is that Obama has an insurmountable lead and Clinton is still there scrapping it out because she is not mathematically eliminated.

However Jerome, you have lost all credibility. Every post you write is pro Clinton and anti-Obama. They don't even make sense anymore. The last chart you foisted on us was so blatantly deceptive and meaningless, that can you blame people for not taking you seriously? Votes/delegates? That is meaningless. Joe Biden wins! He has a vote, he has 0 delegates. 1 divided by 0 is infinity. Plot that!

It is like watching Karl Rove on Meet the Press. You don't know whether he is speaking the truth as a talking head or trying to twist the truth for the Republican party.  No one trusts what you say Jerome until you write the post that says Hillary lost and should get out for the sake of the party.  People consider you a sore loser.

This links for you Jerome and all your Hillary supporting friends.

http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/giveup.jpg

Regarding the popular vote totals and whether holding primaries instead of caucuses would have benefited Senator Clinton:

Howard Fineman said that if the Caucus states had held primaries instead, Barack Obama would have added to his popular vote advantage.

I already mentioned a while back how I think our Texas Two-Step is preferred.  The primary measures the breadth of a candidate's support and the caucus measures the depth of a candidate's support.  I think both are important measurements with slight safeguards from crossparty shenanigans.

I've read that Super Tuesday (in February) was designed to get the strongest candidate the lead ASAP.  I've also read that several of Senator Clinton's team engaged in the process to set this up for her win.  I've seen video of her saying that she intended to "go all the way" through Super Tuesday (assuming she would be the winner at that time).  I guess my point is that modifying the existing method may for a reason not now obvious come back to bite your preferred candidate.  

...they've been endorsing him in droves since it became obvious this race was over and one of the two candidates was simply interested in dragging out the process and dividing the base.

If Obama had received 60% of the pledged delegates, he'd still need help from SD's.  They have 20% of all delegates.

If you disregard the superdelegates, then Obama already has a majority of the pledged delegates from the primaries or caucuses...you will have to find another excuse why Hillary ran such a bad campaign with only 1/4 of a billion dollars at her disposal.

Give it a few more days, he is only 52 short at this point.

for one of the silliest pieces of political spin to persist throughout the process. "Can't win without the superdelegates" is predicated entirely upon the superdelegates' existence. If this were solely a pledged delegate race, Obama has already attained the majority that is the standard of victory.

Yes. We should hold meta-primaries to determine how to hold the primaries. But how will we decide the rules for those primaries? Meta-meta-primaries! But then what about those rules...

In Indiana the primaries are established by law not the parties.  To change, even the date of the primary election, requires an act of the state legislature.

The Clintons had much more influence over the structure of the process than Obama ever did.

Remember the Clintons told us it would all be over after super Tuesday?

The question isn't whether Obama can run a better campaign than McGovern did; it's whether he can run a better campaign than Clinton.  (actually, the question is, did Obama win according to the rules laid out by the party, and the answer is a resounding yes).

Despite Clinton's huge lead going into the race, and a 100-superdelegate lead, she blew it.  Not because people are sexist (it's not like Obama doesn't have discrimination to worry about), and not because the system is somehow rigged against her.  Everyone knew going in how caucuses work and how to win them - building a ground game.  Obama's campaign did, Clinton didn't think it was important, so she was caught unprepared in the caucus states, and now her supporters are crying foul.  There was no foul, she just didn't get the job done.

She lost not because of the system, but because she ran a lousy campaign.  She exaggerated her record; she insulted people whose support she needed; she couldn't defend her Iraq War vote; and she presented herself as an establishment candidate in a year when people are desperate for new blood.  Some of that is her own fault, some's just bad timing.

You can tell what kind of administration a candidate is going to have based on what kind of campaign they run.  George W. Bush lied, cheated, had no respect for the rule of law, overspent like crazy, and used every nefarious means available against his opponent.  Hence, we have 8 years of the same coming from the White House.

McCain's campaign is based on old, unworkable ideas, loves George Bush's policies, especially the Iraq War, and is run entirely by lobbyists.  If, God help us, he steals the election in November, that's what we can look forward to from his administration.

Obama's run a competent, professional, effective, inspiring campaign that outperformed everyone's expectations.  I'm excited about 8 years of the same coming from Washington.  

Clinton ran a decent campaign that was marred by misspeaking, overspending, attacking fellow Democrats (I'm talking about Bill Richardson and the like, not just her opponent), staffers leaving under a dark cloud, borrowing Republican talking points, allies like Ferraro (and Bill Clinton) going off the reservation and making inappropriate comments... if Clinton had won the nomination, and did beat McCain, we'd have four more years of Clinton scandals to look forward to, distracting us from fixing the country.

At the beginning of this campaign, I thought Clinton would make a fine president, and seeing how she's run her campaign has convinced me otherwise.  Obama won because he's the better candidate, and because he'll make a better President.