Traditional Democrat Party values believe in equality for all.

Since everything seems to be ‘above Obamarama’s pay grade’, it is incumbent on women to find Solutions for problems. A THIRD PARTY, the PUMA Party is overdue!

Obambi is down 8 points with women this month! Pumas are roaring…

Um, no. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the proportional system except for the fact that the current system requires too high a threshold for a candidate to receive any delegates. When you have a primary season start off with 8 potentially strong candidates but 2 dropped out after the Iowa caucus on January 3, another dropped out after the New Hampshire primary and a fourth dropped out before the South Carolina primary. By Super Tuesday (February 5), only 3 candidates remained active out of 8. In less than 5 weeks of the primary season, with only 6 states having participated (either with or without the DNC’s approval), 63% of the starting field was gone, without any input from the vast majority of potential Democratic voters (including the powerhouse states of California, New York and Texas). Of the 3 who remained, the race had basically dropped to just 2 real contenders (the 3rd, Gravel, garnered less than 1% of the vote in New Hampshire and barely gathered any votes in any of the other primary states in which his name remained on the ballot). And all of this happened WITH a proportional system. The problem is that most of the states required a minimum of 15% of the vote to be eligible for delegate allotment. That meant that a candidate running with a steady 10-12% in delegate-rich states would be shut out while a 20-25% second-place finisher and a 30-40% first-place finisher would receive more delegates than they actually earned.
One problem with a “winner-take-all” system is that the big prizes get far more attention, just as they do in the general election (the only “small” states that get any significant attention are purported “battleground” states). The other big problem is “winner-take-all” contests seem to violate the heart of a democratic system (I personally believe the Electoral College should be abolished as well, but that’s another matter).
Additionally, I don’t recall that the Democrats ever had a winner-take-all system (the Republicans, on the other hand, did, and still do, which has caused many candidates who might routinely come within 5 percentage points of the primary winner/s to have to drop out earlier than they should).

2. Get rid of caucuses.

Well, that would likely infringe on the right of the individual states and their political parties to determine the manner of holding elections. As long as the PARTIES are permitted to determine who may and may not participate, the parties can also determine how the contests should be decided. (In point of fact, a party may opt to disallow the people a say. THAT is the system which most frequently ruled the day before the current primary/caucus system, an era in which bigwig politicos made deals in smoke-filled backrooms.) States should be URGED to do away with the caucuses by whatever means (e.g., a caucus state might only be allowed half the delegates of a primary state of the same general population) but each state should be allowed to determine whether it uses a primary or caucus. (I would suggest that NO delegates be announced as “awarded” until the state’s absolute final caucus convention. A candidate can be regarded as the state’s caucus’s presumed winner but until that final convention is held, no delegates are counted by the media or the campaigns.)

3. Get rid of super-delegates.

Well, I can’t really fault this argument, especially given the way the supers have failed to do their job the way they were intended. However, a more practical suggestion would be to minimize their power. There are some states with more superdelegates than pledged delegates while some don’t show proper parity.
According to the 2000 Census, Iowa fits between Connecticut and Mississippi (with some 6 million people separating CT and MS). CT has 60 delegates (48 PDs/12 SDs), IA has 57 (45/12) and MS has 41 (33/8). IA’s population is much closer to MS’s than CT’s. Virginia has nearly 700K more people than Massacusetts, yet MA has more delegates (MA-121, 93/28; VA-101, 83/18). More than 1/3 of Rhode Island’s 33 total delegates are supers; almost 2/3 of DC’s 39 delegates are supers; 28% of MD’s 98 delegates are supers while just 16% of California’s 441 delegates are supers. The disputed Michigan and Florida delegates? Their original counts were 157 for MI (128 PDs/29 SDs) and 211 for FL (185 PDs/26 SDs). Why did Michigan get more SDs than Florida given Florida’s much larger population? To a degree, the supers, when they’re doing their job correctly, would help bring more consensus to the convention by helping to nominate a candidate who (if he/she hadn’t won a “knockout” in the primaries) would be more likely to draw in the undecided vote in November by being more centrist than the usual “extreme” primary candidates. Of course, since the supers were introduced, they’ve never really been as vital to the nomination process as this year.

Indeed, he is showing how smart and organized he is with the planning of campaign monies, etc.

I’ve seen diaries that go completely against the progressive grain.
They were beating up on Dan Abrams after he briefly became GM at MSNBC. (When Abrams came in, everyone down to Tucker Carlson was leaning liberal. Even Scarborough. It was amazing.) I don’t like Abrams because he was in the Clinton camp, but turned and followed Matthews and Olbermann. But before the primaries, he did a fine job which is a reason he was ousted.
Our sleazy blog operations really do need to be exposed.

Tubbs Jones was “for all intents and purposes dead when they brought her into the hospital” Tuesday night, the station reported in a breaking news update that interrupted regular morning programming.

The station, reporting from outside Huron Hospital in East Cleveland, where Tubbs Jones was brought Tuesday night, said her condition was “grave.” The report also indicated that life support could be “withdrawn sometime [Wednesday] afternoon.”

Tubbs Jones’s office released a statement earlier Wednesday saying the congresswoman had suffered an aneurysm and described her condition as stable.Her office could not be reached to confirm WOIO reports that her life is in immediate jeopardy

Joyce Persaud, a spokeswoman for Huron Hospital, said she could not comment on Tubbs Jones’ condition or confirm reports about her condition, but said that she expected the hospital to release a statement sometime this afternoon.