CoolTrick said:
My problem with this argument is it turns the tables on Hillary when she's not the only preventing a revote.
If you genuinely don't think revotes in Michigan and Florida are democratic in any way, and that the correct way to handle it is via what they're doing now, then I can't argue with you on that. That's an ideological difference.
I am inclined to think re-votes are not Democratic. In the Gore/Bush election, I was aghast that we are still unable to correctly count votes with all our technology. If a bank can keep my account balance correctly in their electronic devices, why are we unable to count votes correctly? But even in the Gore/Bush election, a re-vote would have been a giant mess (leaving aside the facts that some very sketchy things might have gone down during that election). And I don't think the re-vote would be Democratic. It would almost be Dictator like, except the Dictator was the millions of people with the interest of changing the outcome of the election.
I remember being indifferent during that election, and actually not minding that Bush won from an issues perspective. Now, knowing what I know about him and being more educated, I would shoot myself before having him as President again, which is why I was very sad in 2004. But that's the process. Sometimes we have to be educated to the bad things, in bad ways, to get to the good. That's better than everything always being bad. The process works these things out.
CoolTrick said:
The fact is, 2.3 million people voted. In an election this close, that's huge. If you want the Democratic party to win in November -- and maybe you don't since you're an Independant, but the people who made these awful "rules" WANT them to win -- it needs to be resolved in a fair, Democratic way. Based on some kind of vote total.
Personally, I think an Obama fan has a lot of nerve arguing what makes a Democracy when half of his entire lead has been built on caucuses that are probably one of the most undemocratic, disenfranchising ways to vote this country has ever publically supported, and I really, truly would say that no matter who they'd benefit. But that's just me.
And my above statement (about the process) brings me to my next point about what you are saying: Yes, 2.3 million people voted. I believe their votes to be very important. But when they voted, if they were educated, they knew their vote wasn't going to matter. The DNC had said it wouldn't matter. The constitution doesn't really apply to inter-party politics does it? In whichever way that a party wants to determine its nominee, that process is kind of out the hands of the constitution. Its like a game within a much larger constitutional game which has much harsher and more stringent rules (for good reason). But the game within the game is not regulated. In fact, technically it doesn't even have to be Democratic.
I personally think that if any of these parties want to get elected they will make their process Democratic. But these are the rules for electing the nominee, and the DNC was stupid in that it didn't think about what would happen if there were a close race within its party and it punished a part of the process. But it did so, and neither candidate really objected. Since neither candidate objected, it would be 100% unfair to say "Let's count these votes" if it were to favor one candidate over the other. If Hillary had objected to those states not counting when the decision was announced, she would have a case. But to my knowledge, she did nothing of the sort.
Thus I tend to agree that there's no way to look at the votes cast and state that it is an accurate reflection of what would have happened if the delegates actually counted. The votes might have changed, the candidates may have campaigned more, etc. And I tend to think that having a re-vote, as explained above, is un-democratic. So why not leave the states the way they were decided for this election, and change the rules so this never happens again in the next?
As far as caucuses are concerned, I'm not educated enough to discuss those. They certainly seem shitty (if the Texas mess is any indication). But again, this is how the DNC does things, no? Process changes should occur after learning about problems, not in response to a close race.
