Desidero:

I admire your adamant commitment to ensuring that our electoral process is as inclusive and representative as possible. I hope you'll note that I credit Hillary with the same commitment.

My question is this: if the caucus system is as terrible as you make it out to be, why allow it to be used at all? A simple change forced through the Rules Committee last year could have banned caucuses. If they're so badly flawed that they ought not count toward this year's nomination, then why not boycott them entirely, and make the case to the superdelegates and the public that only the primary results should be given credence?

I'm not (in this post, at least) attempting to adjudicate the competing claims of legitimacy. I'm making a far more fundamental point (although I realize that the final paragraph in which this point is made was infelicitously worded).

If Hillary Clinton had simply adopted a consistent approach to dealing with caucuses, she would now be the clear frontrunner in the race for the nomination. Instead, she declined to change the rules in advance of the cycle, then decided to compete in Iowa and Nevada, then pulled her resources from other caucus states, then returned to fight in Wyoming even as she disparaged its procedures. Others have described that as symptomatic of a fractious campaign; I'm contending that the dissarray within the campaign reflects the candidate's own inability to adopt a consistent approach to a vexing problem. How would you respond to that?

Dsidero: Very fair and sobering point for Obama supporters. This is why some of the 'only big states count' meme has penetrated the MSM. However, the bottom line (for me at least) is that Hillary is very unlikely to overturn Obama's lead in the popular vote that includes both primary and caucus results. If Senator Clinton were to overturn Senator Obama's fair lead somehow through shady tactics it will devastate the Democratic Party this year and for a generation to come.

If you don't like the rules, get out of the game.

Here's my dim understanding of the reasoning for the Texas primary/caucus blend. (And if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone around here will tear me a new *sshole.)

The primary is intended to be a measure of the "will of the people" in the current year's primary elections, and the caucus is intended to be a measure of the intensity of support available for the different candidates in the race.

I'm new to this, so I'm probably just stating the obvious. I think the reasoning is that folks who plan for and commit to going and sitting at a caucus (in my Texas precinct, we sat for three hours) will be the ones who are most motivated to do extra work to support the candidates. (And we are--we're the ones who canvass and phone bank for our preferred candidate, and we're the ones who will be willing to go to the county convention later this month.)

Also, for some reason, the Texas Democratic Party thought it was useful to weight each precinct's impact on the caucus by rewarding the precinct's level of participation in prior caucuses. I suppose the intent here is to encourage and reward participation???

The Texas Democratic party may have quite a different perspective from other states' parties. This is a red, red state. It's also why our primaries are open--we REALLY don't want to discourage anyone from entertaining the notion of "switching sides." (That's why I try to discourage some of the party purists' you're-not-a-loyal-enough-Democrat talk around here. When you live in a red state, you know that persuading new members to join can be an uphill battle.)

I think this anti-caucus stuff is bunk.

1) All processes will favor some and disfavor soem others. Pramries favor people who can get up and vote on that day.

2) Mail is very democratic, but perhaps favors the lazy and uninformed. It also is open to abuse since we don't have ID checks.

3) Caucuses favor the committed and enthusiastic. You might expect these hardcore party activists to also be well-informed. Not a trivial aspect. Why should someone who is not paying attention and is swayed by, say, Swiftboat Veterans callings someon e a "liar" determine the outcome.

All processes have some flaw. I think this mix is fine, and is in fact a good thing.

I would also include Iowa's unique flavor of caucus and the unusual commitment of the voters there to meeting the candidates face to face as a good part of this system. TV ads and soundbites should not have undue weight.

We have 50 states and diverse processes, all are fair in some way, and as a whole, they provide a good snapshot of both the general public as well as activists.

We have Iowa and NH, Texas two step, debates, TV ads, townhalls meeting and big rallies. This mix is good.

Hillary is cherrypicking and cheating by trying to change the rules midgame because they don't stack the deck exactly as she wishes.

your argument might be more convincing if your number weren't totally made up.

Your assertions would carry more credence if your numbers were even close to correct. From the Dallas Morning News, March 6: "A projected 1.1 million Texans attended precinct conventions, shattering turnout records."

I agree. The caucuses are limited, non-inclusive in that many must be at their jobs during the caucuses and cannot be counted, and many more simply choose to keep their vote private. They can't be outlawed, because they are not actually public elections, so to speak.

Both the primaries and the caucuses are actually just a sampling of US citizens' preferences, for the benefit of the DNC (or RNC as well), but their results, legally, are not the right of the people to decide. Both of those organizations are private entities with members, and they can nominate Dumbo the Elephant if they think he could beat out the opposition party in the general election (which is a right of the people to decide). This is why delegates can change their minds at any time for any reason.

If there is less than a 200 delegate difference between the candidates, as is the case now, the DNC is going to have to consider all possible scenarios. It's not as simple as "majority wins." They have to look at the polls, but also have to be very savvy about the nature of polls and how they can change overnight. Obama has won more states, but the number of voters in his states combined are close to equal the number of voters Hillary has in the major states she's won. Not only that, but caucuses being quite voter incomplete (as we saw in Texas) means that they cannot be taken quite as seriously as primaries. Hillary knows what she's talking about.

The numbers from caucuses are NOT total caucus-goers! In most cases, those are delegates to the states convention later in the spring that will apportion the National Delegates to the National Convention.

I agree with your suspicions.

I would take the balance she struck one step further. I think she was considering her vote as a Senator in light of the possibility that she could soon be sitting at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue waiting for the results from a Congress on something for which she had sought authorization.

I agree

The price she's paying is not as high as the price that thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have paid.

She was blindsided. She probably only understood the process through Super Tuesday ca. 1992. Unless this turns out to be apocryphal, she only discovered the Texas "primacaucus" two or three weeks out.

Very astute observation. The bottom line is that neither side made the rules, but both sides agreed to abide by them, and now one of them wants to overlook the rules she agreed to abide by in two states where it benefits her (FL and MI), and to act as if a long standing and entirely legitimate selection mechnism which was fully known to all parties ahead of time is undemocratic, because she either failed to contest those caucuses adequately, or simply lost them (and it gives her some ability within the media to downplay the effect and significance of those defeats to criticize the methodology used). But selective disregard for the rule of law -- the rules she previously agreed to abide by -- in order to gain an upper hand in a very close political battle is just another manifestation of the "win at all costs" mentality that pervades the Clinton campaign and that sits side by side with the shocking lack of preparedness of her campaign.

WalkTwentyYards, you've really nailed it. She doesn't give a crap about democratic processes, if they get in her way. The super delegate piece is the linchpin in her distain for democracy. You can't have it both ways-- either you like the party insiders (caucus and superdelegates) having more say, or you don't.

Or you shut up and stop trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Obama has the high ground here because he has agreed to follow the rules, is following the rules, and is winning by the rules. Clinton only wins by whining about the rules, complaining about the rules, bending the rules, and reinterpreting the rules.

As you note, Urbinato shares your misgivings. It's fair to say that sitting out a contest is always risky; that's why Hillary ultimately opted to contend in Iowa. When she made the decision, the principal risk was John Edwards, who had essentially moved to the state to campaign full time. That made it a somewhat lower-risk move; the presumption was that if she lost to Edwards, she could always cite his extraordinary effort in the state and follow with a win in New Hampshire, and that if she won, she'd seal the nomination then and there.

I'm suggesting that it's one thing to sit out a contest and to claim, like Rudy, that it's unfavorable territory. It's quite another to make a principled, process-related stand. If Hillary had decided to focus on the primary states out of clear and consistent principle, it would have mitigated the damage from Iowa - but more importantly, it would have innoculated her against Obama's later successes. Each time she won large primary states and Obama triumphed in another caucus, it would have underscored her argument. Instead, by turning on the caucuses only after Iowa and Nevada, she came to seem petty and resentful of Obama's successes, and her objections appeared purely instrumental.

Obviously, there are limits to counterfactuals. We can't know how things would have worked out had decisions branched differently. But in a race this close, I think there's a fairly compelling argument to be made that a consistent approach either way would have been more succesful than this constant vacillation, which has not only led to squandered resources and endless recriminations, but has served to undermine Hillary's central claim of competence and preparation.

As to your second question, I'd note the difference between roiling voter and alienating them. Hillary had no inclination to pick a needless fight, given that some were bound to be offended, so she agreed to rules that (I believe) she found to be undemocratic. For the most part, she would have annoyed party insiders in caucus states - most voters don't follow this stuff closely enough to care, and it might have been done at arm's length, anyway. Instead, she swallowed her objections, and had her surrogates (like Ickes) write the rules. There's almost always a price to be paid for such compromises; if principles are only worth fighting for when the struggle is expedient, then they're hardly worth having at all. Whatever support fighting for primaries might have cost her, I suspect it would have been more than outweighed by the credibility she gained. Instead, her credibility is one more casualty of the process, and that's a shame.