I thought Dems were behind the popular vote to win elections now. Now this concensus is changed??

Need discipline, or this election is going to tank like Gore and Kerrys'. Have to stick to a concensus and not break it over a duel between two popular candidates. As those dissed will be fighting against each other than their opponent in the GE.

Have to get the votes and keep them. Intra-party squabbles is also how independents and moderates can shoo, too.

Whatever count gives the nomination to Clinton = stolen election and the thwarting of the will of the people.

And so now we see the true commitment to democracy and the voters of people who claim to lead the party and the netroots.  They are no better than the vote suppressors and cagers in the GOP.  In fact, it's exactly the same thing that drives it - a fear that those lowly masses, the "people" will not make the right choice and by right choice, I mean whoever the elites back.  And so it has always been in this country.  

I've said it before and I'll say it again - let the voters vote and the winner with the most votes, to the extent it's significant enough difference to be reliable given some of the counting issues, be the winnner.  

I'm a Clinton person, I will get over it if she loses the nomination to Barack Obama.  I will not get over it if he gets the nomination by Bush v. Gore-ing her.

This may need to be addressed...after this primary election and before the next one in four years. In the meantime, more can be fixed, like not allowing caucuses which keep the majority of voters disenfranchised because they don't have time to spend  standing in lines and being shuffled from  one place to another.

And as long as we're at it...where's the outrage about the electoral votes in the national election? I hear the same complaints about that every four years, but there is never a movement to change it.

The issue should be about translating the huge advantage in Dem turnout during the primary season into a GE reality, not in creating teapot tempests over vote counts that weren't what the primary system was designed (using the word loosely) to produce. The system was designed to produce delegate counts.

There is, however, no agreed to metric for who is the popular vote winner in a national presidential primary. Further, even if there were an agreed to measurement, it would not count. That's not how we decide the nominee of the party.

The pre agreed rule is that the winner of the party's nomination is the person with the most votes from delegates at the national convention.

That's how it works.

If you want to persuade Super Delegates that YOUR measurement of the popular vote is persuasive and clear, BTD, you should do so.

Absent that, talking vaguely about the "Popular Vote" as if it's something we can all agree on is deceptive.

Let me put it this way. If we determined the Presidential nomination by popular vote there would be no reason to campaign outside of the largest states with largest numbers of Democrats.

Hmmm, sound familiar?

BTD, you are misleading your readers into thinking that the delegate selection system is actually based on the popular vote.  It's not even close. It's not just "like" the electoral college, it's even more broken down and complex.

When it comes to the nomination process, there are not simply different weights for the numbers of delegates received by different states (Early states get proportinoally fewer, later states get proportionally more. Blue states in the last Presidential Elections get more, Red states in the last Presidential Elections get less) but there are different numbers of delegates awarded to Congressional Districts within states based on incredibly varied and complex rules. (Remember Bill Clinton claiming the Las Vegas strip caucus goers would have a four to one advantage? They didn't, of course, he was stretching the truth to make a point, but they could have been weighted four to one in one highly unlikely scenario that supported the point he was making.)

The rules are incredibly complex. There is much to disagree with about the entire process. HOWEVER.

The rules governing delegate allocation were all known ahead of time by all parties involved. They were agreed to. That is crucial.

Changing the rules at this point in time would be unfair, idiotic, and guarantee a party divided.

The nominee should be chosen by the leader in pledged delegates after the states and territories have voted per the rules. AT THAT POINT, Supers can take account of their discretion in this matter, the Credentials Committee can start a process of seating Florida and Michigan and we can move forward, per the rules and processes laid out ahead of time, to unify as a party.