Dean did concede that SDs were supposed to be use their own judgment in deciding how to support, but he dismissed Clinton's position that the popular votes from FLA and MI should count because "popular votes don't count, that's not how we choose the nominee, just like it's not how we vote for president, the Electoral College chooses the president."

I understood Dean to be saying that (1) SDs should commit to one of the candidates by the the end of June regardless of whether MI and FLA had been resolved, that is, without MI and FLA being resolved; (2) SDs shouldn't consider the popular vote totals at all, and espectially shouldn't consider the FLA and MI vote totals; (3)FLA and MI delegates would be seated in some way that was irrelevant to the determination of the nomination.

I was down at my local Hillary volunteer office and the woman managing the office and I were both discussing how ridiculous the situation is with these two states in light of what happened in 2000.

:(

I also want to let people know that I have updated my "Democrats should not vote for Obama if he is nominated" article with a list of references at the end of the piece. More references will be added, additionally, as time allows throughout the day:

http://www.villarrealsports.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=343

It's a useful list which also includes links to some of the more memorable "YouTube Obama `campaign ads'" videos (4 and counting).

Hope everyone's having a great day. Sunny and nice here in northeast PA.

I don't know how many times we've heard that type of argument over the years. Almost always, it's based on projections deriving from polls relatively early in the general election campaign season -- well before the "defining" process has taken place.

Before that process, Democrats (and to some extent Republicans, though they are never so well "defined" by Democrats) often seem to have broad appeal in states where Democrats in fact have rarely if ever won. Some of this is probably simply due to errors in polling, which have a great deal of difficulty getting representative samples in states, and prove often far wrong. A good portion of it is also surely due to voters being open to a new face and an apparently new, "non-partisan" alternative (always attractive to a large subset of voters -- witness the sizable popularity of Independent candidates like Perot).

But the problem is that these scenarios never pan out. The process of the general campaign, and the definition involved, always brings the vast majority of voters back home to their traditional allegiances. This is precisely what the ads and messages coming out of campaigns are designed to do: to play on the standard concerns of segments of voters that have proven out time and again to be the drivers for their actual decisions, when they have to make the firm choice to pull one or another lever. Whatever flexibility there may have seemed to have been present earlier in the process in voters just washes away, and voters return to their electoral "home".

This is what scares me most about an Obama nomination. Already, we have seen significant dropoff in Obama's appeal to conservative Democrats and to Republicans, and to Independents as well. He has already offered up way more than enough material to speed this decline in the general.

And it's when you think about where Obama's "base" of support -- what will be left when the Independents start to desert him, and other voters  return to their electoral home -- really lies that you see the enormous problem that his nomination represents. He's clearly weak in all the four major swing states: OH, PA, MI, and FL. It's simply inconceivable that he might win the Presidency while losing all those states. Even if he were to win, say, MI (obviously less likely if Republicans can point out how Obama has gladly disenfranchised MI voters), it's going to be an almost impossible task for him to win the general, especially because his leads elsewhere are so likely to disappear in the "return to home" movement of voters.

When the DNC set its rules most people, including those on the DNC, believed that it would have no impact on the election.  One of the candidates would emerge as the clear frontrunner without the need for the Michigan or Florida delegates.  The understanding was that just prior to the convention the Rules committee would then seat the entire Florida and Michigan delegation.  In other words, the DNC rule was seen as a slap on the hand to Michigan and Florida for holding the primaries too early.  This slap on the hand is starting to feel like a punch to the jaw.

Sticking to a principle when times and circumstances demand change is insanity.  Why is  Howard Dean acting like George Bush?