~

Will wonders ever cease.

Talk about your day late and a dollar short.

Here's the question: Is he going to actually answer any questions posed?

-OGD~

Suddenly, a mere days before the caucus, we now see a lawsuit to shut down those at-large sites and deny the casino workers their right to vote.

Did you actually read the complaint or are you just going by news reports?

According to Talk Left, "The suit alleges that the newly created voting places inside hotels violates the "one person, one vote rule" and equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment by creating at-large precincts based solely on employment."

Three of the plaintiffs voted for the very plan they’re now trying to block

The suit alleges that the plan was changed after it was approved.

Here's a question for you: In a state like Nevada, whose primary industry is hospitality, why are they having a caucus and not a primary?

1. The complained of change was made no later than November.

2. The relief requested is to shut down the at large sites, not to expand the sites to other locations to accommodate more workers.

Bottome line: timing of suit was clearly motivated by endorsement, and motive is further highlighted because the relief requested is to "equalize" the process (if you can call it equalizing) through disenfranchisement.

The truth is, it is the Hillary supporters (i.e., teachers) who have a built in advantage by holding caucuses on weekend when they are off. The suit tries to institutionalize that advantage.

It would be as if, in Ohio, districts that were unfairly deprived of voting machines sued to remove voting machines from other places so that everyone had to wait two hours in line to vote. The answer is MORE ACCESS. The answer should NEVER BE LESS ACCESS

Sen. Kerry,

Welcome to the Cafe.

Here’s the bottom line. I understand people gut it out to win on Election Day. But certain tactics make victory pyrrhic – empty – hollow – and it’s not worth winning if you lose what really counts in the process

Maybe you should have stopped by the "Table for One" and had a chat with Mr. Raymond, a Republican rat-fucker in the grand tradition of Segretti and Rove. He thinks he's really, down deep, a good and decent person. One that would actually understand the meaning of the word pyrrhic.

He really thinks that the Democrats are way down on the skillset list when, you know, people and their staffs are "gutting it out" to win and think they need the extra edge that a good old rat-fuckin' move would give them.

A few days ago I wondered aloud in another thread how the Clinton campaign could employ tactics using the likes of Shaheen and consider that a benefit. If the "hired guns" of the two campaigns are the amoral hit men that Mr. Raymond claims is the fait accompli of political events in the US, then sir, you and Sen. Obama had better get ahead of South Carolina. I'm sure there's a Rovian figure working feverishly over the flyer that will be tucked under windshields in the church parking lots on Sunday, insinuating the presence of a half-white crack baby in Obama's past.

I can almost imagine what pride Segretti and Rove feel now at the spawn they helped unleash on our constitution and our way of life.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

J. McCutchen

If it walks like a duck

AP: Bill Clinton on Monday defended the suit, saying the caucus rules unfairly favored one group over another.

"I think the rules ought to be the same for everybody," the former president told more than 550 senior students at Green Valley High School near Las Vegas. "I would question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and say only the people that work there, i.e., the people that we know are going to vote in a certain way or we think they will, (are) able to caucus."

The plaintiffs are the Nevada State Education Association, its president, Lynn Warne, and five others. Debbie Cahill, the deputy executive director of the teachers' union, is a Clinton supporter and a member of the campaign's Nevada Women's Leadership Council.

Two senior partners of the law firm handling the suit, Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw and Ferrario, have donated to Clinton in the past. Also, Clinton ally and former Rep. Jim Bilbray is an attorney at the firm

The state Democratic Party unanimously approved the caucus rules last March, and the Democratic National Committee signed on in August. Four of the six plaintiffs are members of the committee that approved the rules.

J. McCutchen

Time and time again - almost weekly, sometimes more - the supposedly invincible, inevitable, and irresistable Clinton campaign pulls a boner like this.

Their swift boats leak and their lawsuits remind us of the GOP in Florida

Craig Crawford of the National Journal recently observed that the Clintons are forever screwing up but they don't care. Just so the story is about them, they don't care

They don't care.

You'd think that Democrats would wise up and decide not to spend 2008 cleaning up more Clinton messes

Everyone is missing a very important point in this discussion - union intimidation.

I have worked many caucuses and at every one where a large union endorsement occurred, a union steward was stationed at the registration table taking note of members and which candidate they checked.

You DO NOT go against your steward.

They control your union life.

No one objected to the placement of the caucus stations before the endorsement because no one would be using intimidation tactics. After the endorsement these caucus stations became union voting stations, period.

That is undemocratic and truly voter disenfranchisement of the right to vote (caucus) for the candidate of YOUR choice.

As I testified in 1985 to the DNC rules committee, caucuses should be eliminated.

Clinton suppoters can play all the games they want about this - it's simply despicable. It's a tactic all Democrats would condemn if done by the Republicans. And pretending the Clinton campaign isn't involved is beyond disingenuous, it's flat out lying.

In the last 2 months I have repeatedly written on TPM boards that even though I support Obama I would vote for Hillary in Nov if she gets the nomination. Since 1976 I have ALWAYS voted for the Dem for president. But after this past week I can no longer say that for certain, and this issue is especially inexcusable. The Clintons are toxic - and if they are pushing a lifelong Democrat like me away from voting Democratic they are surely pushing others away.

And all the cute, clever, rude, snotty or dismissive comments by Clinton supporters won't change that fact. Face it - this is lower than any Democratic candidate has sunk since the days of refusing to seat black delegates to the Democratic Convention.

I believe the real question which must be addressed is why have the caucuses of the workers of any particular casino inside that same casino. I can understand why the vagaries of entertainment workers in Las Vegas would prompt a desire to have special caucus locations established for them to which they might be able to go. I see no reason to have the caucus location be specific for the workers within that same casino. That really does discriminate against the problems which other workers will encounter in trying to make it to caucuses on that date and at that time. At the very least, workers of one particular casino should be required to leave their place of employment and go down the street to another building where they can caucus. Even at this late date they could arrange that, since the locations have already been reserved. Only the attendees would change. It would also provide some protection against their own employers seeing who is attending the caucus, which is something I have seen no one address.

This is so important and I am extremely grateful that John Kerry is speaking out against these tactics. And I know he would be doing the same if it were Obama's people trying to make it harder for anyone to vote. We don't have anything if we can't stay true to these principles, and if we don't stand with integrity we might as well just hand the keys to the country over to Karl Rove.

It's an honor to have you posting here, Senator Kerry.

The smoking gun is this: the Democratic party in Nevada made the decision to open up the caucus sites at the casinos months ago and there was no mention of any problem by the Clinton campaign until Obama got the endorsement of the culinary union. It's hard to imagine how the Clinton campaign can demonstrate such incredible hubris and still be expected to be taken seriously.

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." --Robert F. Kennedy

Here is something good from Sunday's Observer, in case you missed it:

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it's because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere. It declares that together we can do anything, but doesn't mention any of the things we can do. It's a perpetual tickle in the nose that never turns into a sneeze. Trying to make sense of what he's saying is like trying to wrap mist.

But, rhythmically, it's quite alluring. It can make anything, even, for example, a simple chair, seem magnificent. Why vote for someone who says: 'See that chair. You can sit on it' when you can have someone like Obama say: 'This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl's behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America's huddled arse.'

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I assume there is a law in Nevada providing every worker a specific period of time they are allowed to miss work in order to cast a ballot in an election. Typically such laws protect workers from any retribution by employers for excercising their right to vote and gives them a couple of hours in which to do so.

A caucus is an election, but it isn't simply a matter of going in and casting a ballot. Caucuses take time and can often take several hours. The idea that those working on the Vegas strip are being given an unfair or unequal opportunity is debateable certainly, but from a legal vantage point the teachers may have a case froma technical point of view. That doesn't mean they should have brought the suit of course.

Caucuses are weird things and each has a different set of rules specific to the state in which it is held. I don't know how allowing the workers on the strip to attend caucuses near their workplaces might or might not impact the outcome of the caucus overall. It would be interesting to know. Either way, I thgink the issue is a bit more complicated than Senator Kerry seems to indicate. I'm not in the Obama or Clinton camps so don't have a dog in the immediate fight. I think everyone is for making participation as easy and convenient as possible for all voters. It will be interesting to see how the action by the teachers turns out and whether it has any measurable impact on the outcome of the caucus.

The judge ought to throw this suit out. The teachers union honchos acting as surrogates for the Clintons were fine with the Strip caucuses until Obama got the Culinary Union endorsement over Hillary and Edwards. Suppressing votes is a Republican tactic yet Hillary tried to suppress college student votes in IA and she's trying it again in NV.

That's not how we win elections. We need every voter and caucus goer we can get to decide our nominee because we'll need every vote we can get in November to build the kind of mandate required for the change this country needs.

In yesterday's MI primary with no other major candidate on the Dem ballot Hillary got a lackluster 55% of the vote. "Uncommitted" got 40%. Facing that kind of opposition Bill got over 90% of the Dem MI primary vote in 1996 and Bush 90% of the 2004 Republican vote.

Hillary's showing was so poor, even with the support of top Michigan Democrats such as Governor Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow in a state with high unemployment that should be solidly Democratic she drew 10,000 less votes than Romney, the Republican winner.

According to the exit polls a lot of Democratic and independent voters apparently stayed home or voted for McCain.

If Hillary wants to be our nominee she ought to be fighting for as many votes as she can get instead of trying to rig the system by disenfranchising her opponents' voters.

Kerry's comments are disingenuous. As are most of those here.

One question I'd like more information on is Clinton's claim that votes at the special caucus sites will be weighted 5 times that of other votes.

The caucus system is a far cry from one person one vote.

Obama's camp is against the suit and for the caucus sites because the special sites give them an advantage. All the high sounding words not withstanding. Those words are just attempts to score more points.

The teacher's union may have similar motives. If each side is fighting for itself, good. That is why we have courts (alas often not objective).

As several have pointed out, the caucus system provides many opportunities for coercion, fixing, corruption. It is certainly not one person, one vote. The leadership of the culinary workers union is doing its best to play this system. I say leadership because they did not poll their workers before endorsing Obama. Which makes the concern about intimidation even more serious.

Without a doubt the special caucus sites give one group of voters a special advantage, which is disenfranchisement of other voters. As a poster asked on another blog, why don't we have special caucus sites in brothels, so the women trapped there can vote?