I’m not certain quite the purpose for showing the inner workings of the Democrats’ Rules Committee as they wrestle with the issue of delegates and super delegates in contested states Florida and Michigan.

On the one hand, I think it’s valuable to some to understand how all this gets worked out re: who will be the Democratic Party nominee. On the other, however, bringing out (so called, cough, cough) big guns like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to discuss things like the Austin petition and half votes and whether Howard Dean will say, “yeeehaaaaaw” again (he won’t, but CNN likes to make Dems seem dumb) makes the whole thing seem a little ditzy.

Me? I suspect it’s a ratings black hole.

I have such confidence in you that I’ll bet my best cup of coffee that you’ll score higher than a Dana Milbank or a David Sirota on this trivia challenge at The Week Behind.

I won’t say you’ll score better than a George Bush, because he’d have to be able to read to take the test and… well…. he’s cognitively challenged (to say the least).

Well, this is the weekend the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention meets to hammer out what’s happening with delegates and super delegates, Florida and Michigan primary votes and what to do with them, et al.

Both DNC chair Howard Dean and many other ranking Dems have said they expect the race to be over soon after June 3rd, the date of the last scheduled donkey primary; that a commitment from superDs on who they’ll cast ballots for is wanted soon thereafter.

Yet others are beginning to suggest this is a race that may continue all summer through to the Dem National Convention in Colorado, the first time the convention’s been a real political potboiler since at least 1972. And I’m not sure Dems would be hurt badly by a later decision either: as long as the DNC continues its smart ads that target John McCain rather than a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama, I doubt there’s a danger. We’ve seen an exodus AWAY from the Republican and even the uncommitted voters coming into this presidential election cycle; I strongly resist the notion that something will magically drive these candidates back to Mad Dog McCain. You?

Though I was nursing a miserable stomach flu that had me using my DVR to catch spots I missed in rushing to worship the porcelain goddess, I saw rapt through HBO’s “Recount”.

As honest as it was (and I thought it avoided some of the most fiery yet since proven true material), I realized there was probably no production that could completely tap my sick outrage at what happened in the Gore/Bush 2000 election.

Ironically, I was very ill on Election Day 2000 but I’d dragged myself out of bed, completely dazed, because I never felt like my vote was more important. And yet, at the same time, it never, ever permeated my consciousness that Bush could be named president. My partner voted Nader - and I let him have it for his decision - at least in part for how nasty the so-called left got toward Ralph for running, but though I never thought Bush could steal it, I felt the election was just too important to “waste” a vote.

Late in the day, I was very surprised at how well I heard Bush was doing. But it still did not dawn on me that what was about to happen ever could (and yet his stolen re-election in 2004 also surprised me because I could not fathom that we’d let him get away with it twice). After that, we made a concerted decision to turn off the media until 10 or 11 PM ET when at least some real count was in.

It was around 2 AM when Florida was turned from a Gore win, to a too-close-to-call one, and then around to a Bush victory. We were already hearing some stories about the Palm Beach and poorer Floridians having big problems either with nonsense design or broken voting equipment or being challenged as being on a felon list (and some 500-1,000 or more people were kept from voting for every “felon’s name” listed on the stuff that came from ChoicePoint, who has since been awarded much of the control for our terrorist watch lists, etc).

This is how feverish sick I was, both physically and from the news: around 2:30 am, I started telling God that he’d be welcome to “take me” if only he wouldn’t let Bush win (and I’ve been a little pissed at Him/Her ever since).

As outrageous as that night was, what followed was worse. The media kept telling us we were all tired of the fight to get the recount (I only recall the Bushies being tired) because we were eager to focus on the holidays (sheesh!). But the people I spoke with, while they wanted it over, certainly didn’t feel Gore or anyone else should just capitulate to suit the MSM. And some of these folks were Bush voters. Thus, long before 9/11, we’ve been letting the media, probably at the direction of the politicos it supports, tell us what should happen because of what appears to be an INACCURATE read of where the American public is.

So “Recount” could not quite recapture the terrible dawning horror of that first Tuesday in November of 2000. But could anything, especially knowing the great ruination of our country ever since?

And what was your reaction to “Recount”?

Just in time to make us (appropriately) very worried about November’s presidential vote comes the star-studded HBO docu-comedy-drama “Recount” about the Bush v. Gore 2000 Florida contest. HBO airs it tomorrow (Sunday) at 9 PM EDT.

Just the Laura Dern-as-Katherine-Harris bit looks deliciously worth the watch, IMHO. Might bring a few laughs along with a reminder of the great injustice and tragedy done when Bush was allowed to steal the White House.

While this has frequently been a much-referenced topic with Hillary Rodham Clinton, she’s been working overtime since Tuesday’s primaries in Oregon (where she lost) and Kentucky (where she won big) to renew her demands for the popular vote/delegate seating to happen in the states of Florida and Michigan, where because the states chose to hold primaries ahead of the official February 5th (1st Super Tuesday), Democratic primary voters there did not get counted.

Now, Clinton knew the rules that required the 2/5/08 start date for Dem Party primaries (and in Florida, was enacted by a mostly Republican state house), and agreed not to campaign in those states where, for example in Michigan, Hillary was the only Dem candidate on the ballot.

As I’ve written before and no doubt will write again, as much as I hate votes not being counted, and ahead of the decision from the DNC Rules Committee expected next week on whether these votes can count, I just don’t see how you can seat these two states’ votes when other Democratic candidates followed the rules and were not available on the ballot. This isn’t anti-Hillary; it’s about general fairness. If Barack Obama’s name was the only one to appear on the ballots in these two states and he was now making the same claims as HRC, my reaction would be identical.

What’s your take?

I keep being amazed - and not in a good way! - at the non-stop calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race. I don’t see the need, especially given how close we are to the point where Super Delegates will commit their ballots.

Here are just a few reasons WHY I think having Clinton and Obama both still in the race behooves us:

* The final platform for a Democratic president will not be set until the convention, meaning we potentially have more sway to bring a candidate “around” to what we think is a more realistic perspective
* We show our solidarity and excitement with the candidates (Democratic) as a whole and our commitment to defeat a GOP challenger
* Help our kids get re-excited at the possibilities: not just as a woman and a black man run, but one is biracial, a product of a mother left alone to support him, without big bucks while Hillary is our 60s/70s activists grown up to see some of what they gave us at the same time one has to reel from the similarities to the criminal police action we’re engaging in (Vietnam then, Iraq now)
* We’re learning as we’re fighting for our candidates - or for the party as a whole; we can use that education as we go forward

That’s exactly how the Times Argus of Vermont, hardly a liberal rag (believe me!), characterizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s rubberstamp of states who’ve decided to force voters to pay fees other than directly at the ballot to cast a vote. And I heartily agree with them.

… voter ID laws have proliferated not because of a surge of voter fraud. They have been adopted by Republican-dominated legislatures as a method of discouraging voting by groups likely to vote Democratic. Ethnic minorities, the poor, the elderly — these are the people not likely to have a driver’s license as a matter of course.

What will happen now is that elections will take place, and election officials will forbid some voters from voting. At that point, new plaintiffs will have been created, and new lawsuits will proceed. In the meantime, elections will have been corrupted by unnecessary voter suppression measures.

Voter suppression is a tactic employed by Republicans in recent history, as in Florida where police went to the homes of blacks to frighten them from voting and voter rolls were stripped of names by the overenthusiastic purging of the names of felons.

The remedy is for state legislatures to reject these Republican tactics. The court now has made the reinstitution of the poll tax into a political fight. It is a fight the American people thought they settled in 1964 when they adopted the 24th Amendment.

My grandmothers could not vote until they were well into their 20s because law did not consider them full citizens solely because of their gender. Now someone else’s grandmothers will be restricted from voting because they don’t hold a driver’s license (something neither of my grandmothers had; lots of poor rural women in the first half of the 20th century did not) or just feel it’s wrong to force this effective poll tax at the polls.

WOW! Just in the last seven primaries, no less than a million people have joined the Democratic Party, increasing a margin the bluies have had by a stranglehold since the real start of the 2008 nomination campaigns.

What is heartening, at least to me, is that many of the new Democrats are not new voters but from the Republican/GOP camp or former third party/independent status. And I think their decision to go blue can be accounted for in a number of ways:

* excitement with the Dem candidates
* Bush - GOP scandals backlash
* that up to 80% of Americans feel the Bushies killed the economy and feel the country in all respects is headed 110 MPH in the wrong direction
* a desire to belong to the only party where they can even dream someone will listen to them
* absolute terror (and not of rogue bombers)
* fear for their children in Bush’s economy and Bush’s wars, given how John McCain praises his efforts

God forbid the American people, rather than politically connected special people, decided an election. And before Dems started hating the concept of superdelegates, we hated the Electoral College more. That Douglas is a Bushie (yes, Vermont has (too) many rightwingers) makes his bid all the more transparent since Boy King George never won the popular vote in America, despite his two terms.

Gov. James Douglas is “not enthusiastic” about a proposal to have Vermont join a coalition of states calling for the election of the president by popular vote as opposed to the electoral college system now in place, his spokesperson said Monday.

A bill that would have Vermont join Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois in a compact to use the “one person, one vote” system instead of electoral votes to elect a person to the country’s highest political office has passed both the Vermont House and Senate.

The bill is expected to land on Douglas’ desk soon, but his spokesperson Jason Gibbs said the governor has serious philosophical and practical concerns over that proposal, opening up the possibility that he could veto the legislation.

“The governor is very concerned that this bill would put small states like Vermont at a disadvantage and decrease our influence in the election process,” Gibbs said Monday afternoon. “Fundamental changes such as altering the way we elect the process ought to be accomplished by amending the Constitution.”

This is not a post about some absurd race tie between Obama and OJ Simpson or a comparison between the two, although some absurd things have been up for discussion as of late on MSNBC as the thumbs twiddle and everyone awaits the Pennsylvania primary like a knock on the door from their meth dealer.

No, this is actually about orange juice.

MATTHEWS: What’s so hard about doing a diner? I don’t get it. Why doesn’t he go in there and say, “Did you see the papers today? What do you think about that team? How did we do last night?” Just some regular connection?

SHUSTER: Well, here’s the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, “I’ll have orange juice.”

MATTHEWS: No.

SHUSTER: He did.

And it’s just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, “Here, have some coffee,” you say, “Yes, thank you,” and, “Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?” You don’t just say, “No, I’ll take orange juice,” and then turn away and start shaking hands. That’s what happens [unintelligible] –

MATTHEWS: You don’t ask for a substitute on the menu.

SHUSTER: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: David, what a regular guy. You could do this. Anyway, thank you, David Shuster. I mean, go to the diners.

No real commentary needed. Media Matters has the video.

In 2006 the Democrats executed a remarkable turn-around that promised to pave the way to the White House. Two years later the Party has wandered from that path, with potentially disastrous consequences. (more…)

Given that I’ve discussed the whole debacle of the disqualified primary votes in both Michigan and Florida - along with a really strange effort to try to convince disenfranchised Michigan Democrats to vote for John McCain, of all possible insanity - I wanted to point you to a New York Times op/ed piece Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin co-authored with a fellow Congress critter (Debbie Stabenow) on why Michigan continues to fight for the primary delegate count inclusion.

When this poster offered a comment on my piece from yesterday about a decision made not to have a “do over” in either Michigan or Florida after both states insisted on running primaries ahead of “legally deadline”, his suggestion - one I’ve heard more and more lately - is for “Democrats to show Democrats they’re wrong by voting for McCain in November.”

Uh, what kind of sick puppy must you be to decide that the way to deal with a personal disappointment is to force 4-8 more years of self-righteous (while absent any kind of social consciousness) Christian crusades and empire building on not just the rest of the U.S. but on the entire world?

At best, this sounds like an extremely poorly conceived - and done by people who have even LESS respect for the people of Michigan than people outside the state - idea put forth by the closest thing Michigan has to Karl Rove.

Some body please explain what I’m not seeing. How in hell would voting for a dangerous two-faced political felon like McCain who would do even worse things to this nation and to the world will do anything but further EVERYONE’S suffering?

With all the stories now swirling that the two Democrats left in the presidential race, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are “about to take the gloves off”, I’d like to urge them to try a different route.

This country has been forcefed nastiness and negativity, death and destruction, bankruptcy and broken, abused promises for eight long years.

What we need to know is how Clinton and Obama will help us recover from this very dark time. How we can afford groceries and prescriptions at the same time we meet our mortgages/rents and fuel bills. What steps they will take to get America back on its (our) feet.

Let John McCain play nasty. It’s what Republicans do, spreading fear to scare voters while they pull nothing but dirty tricks to wrest ownership from citizens and ruin all we hold dear.