The latest from HRH, Her Royal Hillaryness:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/24/cl...

This piece doesn't go into details, but there simply aren't lots of options.

Caucuses are as close to democracy as one can get, with each community in a state bringing people into a room to choose representatives to the state party convention to allocate delegates to the national convention. Grass roots politics at its most democratic. And every candidate who can inspire members of a community to attend the caucus has an equal opportunity to end up with delegates from the state conventions.

Proportional primaries are statewide popularity contests that put a premium on state or regional media buys more than on grass roots organizing, although voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote drives can influence the number of supporters for a given candidate who actually vote. By allocating delegates on a proportional basis, these primaries ensure all voices within the state are heard, largely in proportion to the number of people who favored a particular candidate. The wrinkle here is that in most states, 1 million votes focused in an urban area will yield more delegates than 1 million votes scattered over thousands of acres of rural farmland because of voting district-based delegate selection.

Winner take all primaries focus on one measure; the total number of votes cast for a given candidate. All delegates for that state go into that candidate's column. So a candidate who wins 45% of the vote in a three-candidate race likely will take all the state's delegates, even though favored by less than a majority of the voters in that state.

At the beginning of the campaign, Senator Clinton had nothing negative to say about the Democrat's primary rules. Even the banishment of Florida and Michigan raised not concerns from her camp. The assumption within the campaign was that they would win Iowa, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, and have the nomination sewn up by the Ides of March. But it didn't work out that way.

She was outhustled and out organized in Iowa, by a candidate who appealed to people who hadn't bothered to attend caucuses before. The pattern repeated in virutally every caucus state. So now Senator Clinton doesn't like caucuses. Seems her approach to politics doesn't fare well in caucus states. So the problem must be the caucus process.

Move on to New Hampshire. Senator Clinton received 7,479 more votes than anyone else, but only 39% of total votes cast. When the delegates actually were tallied up based on voting in specific districts, she actually earned 3 FEWER delegates than did Senator Obama. So now Senator Clinton doesn't like proportional primaries because they deprived her of a real victory where it matters, in delegate count.

Though she continues to pretend she is wining the popular vote, she has to count her votes in the banished Florida and Michigan primaries, ignore Senator Obama's voters in the caucuses, and pretend the Uncommitted voters in Michigan don't count because everyone but her followed the agreement to remove their names form the Michigan ballot to get the numbers to add up to that "victory".

So now she doesn't want delegates allocated in accordance with party rules; she wants the right to rewrite the rules after the fact so they best fit her objective; winning.

So I guess now she wants winner-take-all primaries. the Republican way. But she doesn't want to be a Republican to earn that victory.

What do you want, Hillary? Is there any system possible that you would find acceptable EVEN IF YOU LOST under that system? Or is the problem with the system the outcome, not the process?

Care for a little Billsamic vinegar with that salad?

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