Prepare yourselves:  Washington state is having a Democratic primary this Tuesday.  The party has made it perfectly clear to the voters that no delegates will be elected through this primary -- it's purely a non-binding straw poll.  (The delegates were selected in their caucus on Super Tuesday.)  

But if Clinton does better in that primary than she did in the caucus (where she lost 68-31), expect to see Mark Penn and Harold Ickes calling for that primary to count.  How can all those primary voters be ignored?  Caucuses are so unfair!  Unless Obama does better than 68-31 in the primary, that is . . .

Is there any meaningful distinction between Washington and Florida on that issue?  (Especially if one entertains holding a caucus in Florida to apportion delegates?)

As for your defense of Ickes:  Great.  So not only is the press not exposing these stupid arguments, it's actually initiating them.  God help us all.

Who will ultimately make this decision?  Who decides whether the Jan votes count or not?  

I wonder if any reporter asked her something along the lines of:

Say Hillary pulls this coup off and goes on to win the Presidency.  Does she think she can just bully and tough guy and amoral her way through a Presidency? Does she think she can just push her agenda (the true contents of which are anyone's guess) through by any means necessary?

With 50% of the country hating her as it is and 50% of her own party if she wins by destroying her own party?  

Is she high on something I wish she was sharing?

"Is she high on something I wish she was sharing?"

Free-basing peppers, apparently.

Everyone is missing the point about the Clintons' effort to dismiss Obama's win in red states like Idaho and Nebraska.  Even the most fervent Obamophiles don't think he will carry those states, but there will be open Congressional and Senate seats in many red states, and Obama's strong showings there suggests he might be able to have coattails that extend to those states.  For Hillary, Ickes, and the other Clintonistas to denigrate these victories reinforces the idea that Bill and Hillary only cared about their power in the White House in the 90's and not about expanding the Democratic party.  The Dems of course hemorrhaged Congressional seats and state houses during the supposedly wonderful-for-Dems 1990s.

<i>But if Clinton does better in that primary than she did in the caucus (where she lost 68-31), expect to see Mark Penn and Harold Ickes calling for that primary to count. </i>

They won't have to call for the primary to count. The point will be brutally clear, and it won't bode well for Obama. It will also make people wonder about all those other caucus states that Obama won.

<i>Obama's strong showings there suggests he might be able to have coattails that extend to those states</i>

Quite the contrary. His strong showing there is quite possibly not representative of the rank and file. All he's shown in the caucuses is what everyone knew already--he carries white liberals.

You're being evasive as usual, jmkerr.  Do you think the Washington state primary should count to determine their delegates, or not?

Also, jmkerr, you've conveniently forgotten that Obama won BIG in a lot of primaries, too; not just caucuses. LDuncan's point about Obama being a much stronger presence at the head of the ticket is one that I've been arguing for weeks. It makes perfect sense when you see that he's generated more enthusiasm, brought more new voters into the process, draws much larger crowds and can attract more dollars. It's quite obvious that his coattails would dwarf hers.

Votes?  I don't need no stinking votes! Screw the voters, I'm taking the nomination regardless, and there's nothing you can do about it America!  (Hillary Clinton)

It would be patently unfair to count any primary vote that didn't count going in.  The only question is whether there is a significant chance that the outcome would have been different if the state had counted from the beginning.  The answer is obviously yes.  Obama's name wasn't on the ballot in Michigan.  Obama didn't campaign in Florida.  Odds are that if Obama had been *trying* to win those states, including by, among other things, making sure his name was on the ballot, he, you know, probably would have done better.

We have campaigns for a reason.  If Obama had not campaigned anywhere, Hillary would be the nominee already.  She's the better-known brand.  Obama needs targeted marketing to win, as would any challenger to Hillary.  The candidates agreed not to campaign in those states.  Obama relied on that agreement.  Any person arguing that these votes should count now has no credibility and is obviously blinded by their outcome preference.

'All he's shown in the caucuses is what everyone knew already--he carries white liberals.'

Uh, and in places like Virginia--a primary, not a caucus and another red state that Obama could conceivably crack in November where HRC has not a hope--all he carried was white liberals, blacks, a solid majority of white men, both liberal and less so (think Jim Webb), and a slight majority both of women and Latinos.

Clinton could still pull this one out, I fully acknowledge. But the thing I find most confounding about the pro-Hillary posters here--and to a lesser degree about the Clinton campaign itself--is their steadfast refusal to confront any reality that does not jibe with their projection of HRC as the nominee.  It's as if they've all joined George W Bush on Air Force One and taken off from the reality-based community known as the United States bound for points unknown.

About the whole blaming Florida's Republican legislature thing:  The decision to move the primaries up passed in their House 118-0 and in their Senate 37-2.  Democrats were just as guilty of moving it up as the Republicans were.  For a Clinton supporter to say that this is all the fault of a "Republican legislature" is intellectually dishonest and perfectly in line with right wing complaints about the "Democrat congress" being the cause of all our problems.

It would be best if Florida and Michigan voted again, this time with delegates at stake.  Any other scenario is a clear path to sour grapes.  Perhaps the buffoons running the DNC ought to provide matching funds to each candidate...

"Do you think the Washington state primary should count to determine their delegates, or not?"

I could care less one way or the other. The race will have little to do with actual delegate counts.

I don't know how many people will turn out tomorrow in Washington. If the turnout is high, then the things to look for will be:

1) Who won the white and Hispanic vote?

2) If Obama won, did he win on the strength of anything other than white elites, white independents, and black voters? If he did, his momentum is finally kicking in.

3) If Hillary wins by any margin at all, or if Hillary is much closer than the caucus results while winning Dems and all the other demographics, she won't need the delegates. She's got the generalzation of this results to all the caucuses, which is the weight of Obama's wins.

If it's low turnout, mostly white liberals, then it really doesn't matter one way or the other.

"Uh, and in places like Virginia--a primary, not a caucus and another red state that Obama could conceivably crack in November where HRC has not a hope--all he carried was white liberals, blacks, a solid majority of white men, both liberal and less so (think Jim Webb), and a slight majority both of women and Latinos."

He carried white men on the strength of the independent and Republican voters. He lost white democrats by 13 points. You have no idea what he did with Hispanics, as there weren't enough of them in the exit polls. Hispanics in Virginia are very likely an educated elite bunch, though, especially if there's few of them.

The demographics haven't changed at all.

" you've conveniently forgotten that Obama won BIG in a lot of primaries"

Not without the black vote, he hasn't. He won Illinois, his home state, Utah (entirely white liberals in the Dem primaries, check the exit polls) and Connecticut, where he lost the overall white vote.

Uh, gee.  Has Hillary won anything without the vote of white women over 50?  One thing is for sure, any victories by Hillary that depended on the white-women-over-50 vote don't count and don't mean anything.  Similarly, any primaries where Hillary got the votes of people with nut allergies, foreign cars, dentures, or 11.25 years of education.

I seem to recall reading, authoritatively, that, to date, more Democrats have pulled the lever for Obama than for Hillary.  It is true, however, that if you exclude from Obama's total all black voters, that she would have received the majority.  This is a very good point and one we should all keep in mind at all times.  A wealthy, upper middle class white woman via Wellesley and Yale, married to a former president, with the highest name recognition of anyone other than her husband and the current president, and a big headstart in organizing and raising money, has been unable to get more Democrats to pull the lever for her than for a black man 15 years her junior.

Bearing in mind that in the Democratic party a preponderance of voters are women and only a relatively small minority of voters are black, it is surely evidence of astonishing political competence that Hillary has been able to squander so many political advantages in such a short time.  This is BIG!