And only the voters can change that ... the candidates can only work with the electoral terrain that we offer them.


Utsukushii kereba sore de ii

How I long to vote for a Democrat I actually like--for anyone I actually want to vote for--in a California primary!

Sadly true- my feelings also- and a perfect illustration of how broken the candidate selection and nominating process really is.

Equally sadly, the process of selecting a candidate lineup in Europe --at least in France- seems equally broken. Look who hands his hands on the wheel.


Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

Was he third in delegates for Iowa?  I know he ran second among state convention delegates (the tally shown on television that night), but I wasn't aware of him coming in third on actual DNC delegates.

Some Edwards supporters do, indeed, have a need to blame something, and some are quite nasty, but I think they make a valid point on the media.  The press coverage of this race has been complete shit.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

Up here in Ohio, the counties where the Kerry campaign sent Edwards to campaign in, those were the ones where they outperformed Gore/Lieberman. Where Kerry campaigned, they did no better.

I put the result down to the top of the ticket and voter suppression, but still and all, Edwards helped the ticket in Ohio, and the Republicans have never taken the White House without Ohio.


Utsukushii kereba sore de ii

But you may be right.  I'm honestly, uncomfortable with all the polls that have popped out in the last two or three days, because they're all from just a couple firms, and I'd like to see a wider view before judging it.  (I'd like to see it anyway, just because I'm a complete junkie at this time of year every four years, but that's another issue.)

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

... there seems to be little room for doubt that if the Clinton camp sees that their remaining path to the nomination running through a bruised and battered party with less than an even chance of winning in the fall, that's the path they will take.

Given that, its better that it be a two way race, where the uncommitted super-delegates will move in a rush when a perception emerges of a presumptive nominee, and that rush will ensure that the rest of the primary season is a coronation parade.


Utsukushii kereba sore de ii

Option 1. Single payer. None of these problems are a problem, the only problem is that a majority of Americans report that they are happy with their own health care coverage (though obviously for many of them, its because they have not got badly ill enough to get hit by murder by spreadsheet) ... and until that changes, it is a political club that the well-oiled insurance lobby and doctor's union can use to beat down single payer.

Option 2. Government subsidies for individual health insurance, with a free choice between public and private plans.

Which then rolls directly down a "this solution leads to this problem" hill to mandates.

First problem. With individual rating and the right to exclude based on pre-existing conditions, all the expensive cases end up in the public health care plan, and most of the cases where the government subsidy exceeds the cost of coverage end up in the private plans.

So, community rating and no exclusions for pre-existing conditions.

Except with community rating and no exclusions for pre-existing condition, its like allowing people to buy car insurance after they get in an accident. Or allowing people to start paying into social retirement insurance the year before they retire.

Without a mandate, there are three options:

(1) There is a truly effective system of preventing exclusions for pre-existing conditions and there is no adverse consequence to not holding insurance. In that case, insurance companies can simply withdraw from the market, and the public system inherits a permanent financial crisis.

(2) There is a pro-forma prohibition of exclusions for pre-existing conditions, but in order to keep insurance companies in the market, they are allowed to get away with de facto "discouragements" of enrolment by people with pre-existing conditions. This keeps private companies in the market at the cost of sending all the expensive cases to the public plan.

(3) There is a penalty for signing up after medical care becomes necessary that is sufficiently effective to get a large proportion of the community in the system, so that community rating and no exclusions is financially workable for private firms and they compete against the public plan in that context. And in that case, the penalty must be more draconion than a mandate, because a down the track threat always must be more severe in action than an up front system of institutionalized nagging to sign up for a plan.

Number (3) is, it should be noted, rank hypocrisy.

It is not clear that Obama, in fact, worked it through, rather than, say, noting that the idea of shared responsibility was a big turn-off in the college age demo, and therefore decided to come out against mandates as a pure political expediency.


Utsukushii kereba sore de ii

Until I get a clear signal that either Clinton has substantially improved in some important respect, or that Obama is, in fact, somewhere in the ball park of the most hopeful projections of many of his online supporters, I'm not handing my primary vote over.


Utsukushii kereba sore de ii