I haven’t been watching this thing in full – even I am not that boring – but I’ve now seen Harold Ickes have his butt handed to him twice. First was up against Rep. Robert Wexler, and later against Sen. Carl Levin (who seriously has issues with the Iowa-New Hampshire monopoly – and I agree with him). Ickes is the chief representative of Clinton logic in this fight, claiming that Sen. Clinton should be awarded all these delegates even though both contests were FUBAR from the get go.
It’s kind of like a track athelete demanding the gold medal after someone whacked everyone else’s knee with a baseball bat right after the starter’s pistol has been blown.
Nice touch by the Clinton campaign bussing in partisans to make noise in the room, but my gut feeling is that it won’t really work.
Like everything else that campaign has tried for the last year.
Harold used to have the reputation of being a nasty piece of work.
In one session he has managed to change that image from nasty to incompetent. Poor sod.
Step 1: Divide the nation into 6 geographical locations…
Pacific: All states touching the Pacific
Southwest: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah
Western: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
Mid-West: Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan
Northeast: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and everything north and east of there.
South: Everything else, including Florida.
Step 2: Take a small state from each region…
Pacific: Oregon
Southwest: New Mexico
Western: Wyoming
Mid-West: Iowa
Northeast: New Hampshire
South: South Carolina
Step 3: Sort these states in alphabetical order. Each state has their primary / caucus on consecutive Tuesdays starting the third Tuesday of January. (Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, South Carolina, Wyoming.)
Step 4: Take the remaining 51 states and territories and rank them alphabetically into groups of 15. (Washington, D.C. and other territories are groups together as one ’state’.)
Step 5: The first group of 15 states has their primary two weeks after the last individual state had. The first Super Tuesday. Two weeks later, the second group as theres, two weeks after that the final group has theres.
Step 6: Four years later do the same thing, only take the first individual state state alphabetically and move it to the end of the individual list. (New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, South Carolina, Wyoming, Iowa.)
Step 7: Do the same with the Super Tuesdays groups. (Group 2, Group 3, Group 1).
Step 8: Every four years repeat steps 6 and 7.
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This way you have the benefit of having smaller starts start things off to allow second tier candidates compete in cheaper media markets first. While also testing the candidates ability to campaign nationally. Finally, no one state has the advantage of going first every single time, while every state has a shot at being part of the day that will decide the election.
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And Oliver, if you run into Howard Dean, pass on my idea. You can even claim credit.
I heard this guy talking about the Michigan delegates. I know he would prefer the former Eastern Europe one person to vote for. He cried for the 600,000 Michigan voters, but forgot the other voters that had no one to vote for. The same happened in the 80s in Soviet Union. You could vote, yet only for one person, in his case Hillary Clinton.
after someone whacked everyone else’s knee with a baseball bat right after the starter’s pistol has been blown
OK, I think I see the problem here.
My preferred sports analogy is baseball-oriented (as all sports analogies in politics are). The Clintons are basically doing something that is so evil that not even Steinbrenner has tried it. They just missed making the playoffs, so they are trying to get pre-season exhibition games to count by attempting to extort the commissioner.
Nice touch by the Clinton campaign bussing in partisans to make noise in the room, but my gut feeling is that it won’t really work.
I have to agree, my impression was this boisterous group did nothing but antagonize the RBC members. Of course, this is expected, their apparent method of negotiating is to make a lot of noise and think they’ll scare people in to agreeing with them.
….their apparent method of negotiating is to make a lot of noise and think they’ll scare people in to agreeing with them.
Hmm, what other group acts this way?