Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Addendum

Here is comments from Rachel Cohen in Austin. She is my sister's step daughter. She retired from Texas State Government a few years ago.

I'm so depressed this morning I can barely make myself listen to the news. I agree with your blog this morning -- if it goes really negative -- and ESPECIALLY if she insists on trying to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated without a real primary in those states -- then I'm not sure I'll be able to be there for her in November. One of the only things that could allow republicans to win in November would be that troika of events -- (1) turning away dyed-in-the-wool democrats like me (2) allowing yet another generation of kids to think that it really DOESN'T matter if they vote and (3) the revitalizing effect that a Hillary nomination would have on the Republican party.
We went to the Texas caucuses last night -- a really interesting civics lesson. And the Hillary people were more "in-yer-face" than the Obama people were, but our caucus had SEVEN HUNDRED TWENTY EIGHT PEOPLE sign in (the presiding chair said that she'd never had more than 30 there before). Obama won 62% of the delegates from our precinct -- they will go to the county convention on March 29, where they will sign in for Obama.
How it works: When our precinct is combined with the other precincts in Travis County, they will determine how many of the 8 delegates allocated to Travis County will go the state convention, and from there to the national convention. (Travis County gets a big proportion of the 67 or 69 or whatever it is delegates allocated by caucus because we tend to have more democratic voters than the rest of the state -- it's determined by how many people voted for the democratic candidates in the last governor's election and the previous presidential election.)
So I guess that people could figure out how it's GOING to go, give or take a couple of delegates, but I'm not really sure what the news people are talking about when they talk about how many delegates WERE awarded yesterday through the caucus process.
How will Democrats survive this?

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