DU "I Told You So"-ers check in

[Atman]

How many of you have been saying, for probably a year now, that the media will anoint McCain and Clinton as our candidates? Clinton didn't win anything in NV, it was a tie delegate-wise, but you'd never guess it from the media coverage. McCain wins one crummy state at basically the same time Romney wins one crummy state and suddenly McCain is back from the dead and all but certain to win the GOP nomination. After just two primaries and two caucuses. Who cares what the other 46 states have to say.

No mention of John Edwards even existing, of course. And DK? Who is that? It's just "Hillary-McCain!" all the time. Just like I, and I know many other DUers said so, all along. The American people play virtually no role in this process except at willing dupes lapping up every pos lie the Corporate Media throws at us.



.

[Mythsaje]

1. I regret and resent our past

and I fear for our future.

[Blarch]

2. Obama takes SC...then what ?

[HughMoran]

4. Good question...

...a little early to throw in the towel IMHO.

[Le Taz Hot]

35. Two words:

Super delegates. The Machine knows they don't need our pesky little votes.

[Yael]

7. Dont' forget that 37% of our delegates are career Washington politicians

(some state level) and not beholden to any state's voting count. They are free as a barnswallow to vote however damn well they please.

[jgraz]

13. And they're going to select ... who?

Most of them have already gone with Hillary. :banghead:

[Yael]

14. They are going to do whatever is expedient to protect their phony baloney jobs

If I can channel Mel Brooks for a moment here.

[JackRiddler]

46. Honestly? Obama is the insurance policy.

He may not want to realize it himself, but why did the media and financers anoint a first-term no-name Senator without a distinct base as the only possible alternative to Clinton more than a year ago?

He is there to provide a safe opposition to Clinton, so that the all important two-frontrunner race focuses only on Clinton and Obama, and does not turn into Clinton vs. Someone Who Might Challenge the PTB. (Whether Edwards really fits that bill, do go ahead and doubt - he talks the talk, anyway.)

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. It is pretty interesting that they aren't mentioning the fact that Obama has more delegates. But

the media is doing their utmost to ignore what's really happening.

MKJ

[Breeze54]

18. WBZ-Boston, WHDH-Boston & Fuax Suxs-Boston all mentioned that today on the news!

;)

[goodgd_yall]

21. My local newspaper made the point

of Obama's delegate win being one more than Hillary's in Nevada. But then my paper just endorsed Obama.

[mirrera]

5. Its Heads I win Tail you lose...all the way to the finish. n/t

[Yael]

6. If this is what has been predetermined, this is what will happen

Gotta love superdelegates. No gaming of the system there, is there?

My prediction -- on this very day next year, we will be saluting President McCain as he is sworn in.

I can still hope that some day the party will wake up and stop voting against our own interests.

[Mist]

25. I said so back in Jan. 07, but my scenario was different. However, I did

get that Hillary was a safe Dem candidate, as even back then, the corporate media was pushing her hard.

[question everything]

8. "Clinton did not win anything in NV?"

Just because you hope so does not make it true. Great way to keep voters from future polls, telling them that they votes did not amount to anything.

[in_cog_ni_to]

10. Delegates = Clinton 12....Obama 13. She won the most votes, but Barack won the most delegates, but

the Clinton campaign is challenging that...as per Russert on MTP this morning.:)

[Atman]

12. These challenges are starting to sound like being a spoil-sport.

Accept the results and move on. After all, that's what WE'RE required to do, and no one will allow us to challenge a goddamn thing.

.

[Elspeth]

15. There is actually some debate about the delegate numbers.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2721128&mesg_id=2724599

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2721128&mesg_id=2724580

[Atman]

17. So again, why is the Coporate Media calling it a lock for Clinton

When it is obviously anything but. Why wasn't THIS discussed on the talking head shows this morning instead of wasting another hour or three debating what Bill's role will be, or what color drapes Hillary will choose for the White House?

:shrug:

.

[Elspeth]

20. Are they looking at the popular vote, which indeed went to Clinton?

That may be more of a barometer than the difference of a single delegate.

On the other hand, there should be some discussion about the delegate system in Nevada so that we know what is really happening.

I don't know if the M$M has ordained Clinton, but I do think they tend to spend time on whoever they perceive as the frontrunner at any given time. They are kind of slavish that way.

[goodgd_yall]

22. I thnk what you say is truer

---giving attention to whoever the frontrunner is at the moment. With the way the primaries have been going, they been jumping from one candidate to another.

[Little Star]

31. Maybe Jill Derby, the dem state party chairwoman explained

how the Nevada delegate thing works. Obama’s camp was flat wrong.


snip>
Using arcane caucus math and a formula that figured in Obama’s results in rural Nevada, his camp insisted that Obama actually won Nevada by taking 13 of the Silver State’s 25 national delegates. However, party leaders put out a statement saying Obama’s camp was flat wrong.

“The calculations of national convention delegates being circulated are based upon an assumption that delegate preferences will remain the same between now and April 2008,” said Jill Derby, state party chairwoman. “We look forward to our county and state conventions (April 19) where we will choose the delegates for the nominee that Nevadans support.” snip<

http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/early-line/2008/jan/19/clinton/

[Yael]

23. I am amused by people squabbling over 1 delegate when there are 760

some-odd loose cannons in play.

[BlackVelvet04]

16. Not necessarily........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2727564

[Little Star]

37. See post # 31 for the real answer I think.

[question everything]

45. Oh yes, popular votes vs. delegates (or electoral votes)

haven't we been there before?

Yes, Obama won more delegates thanks to a very convoluted calculations that I doubt many understand, I don't.

But she won the votes.

[Atman]

11. Perhaps you didn't understand what I said.

This is about delegates. OUR votes don't count until November (theoretically, though I doubt they'll count then, either). Delegate-wise, Clinton did no better than Obama, so she really didn't "win" anything. Kinda like buying a $5 lottery ticket and "winning" $5.

.

[Maat]

9. What you say is what I've feared for over a year now;

however, I will admit to periodic hope.

Now, I'm smacking myself around now for ever having any (I knew what the media would do in my heart).

[goodgd_yall]

19. I heard plenty mention of Edwards

How poorly he did in Nevada. Also, as I remember, Giuliani was all the buzz in the beginning---I wouldn't say the MSM was promoting a McCain win early on. I do accept the idea that the MSM has too big an influence in the election process. I can easily imagine the media reporting on Edwards, Biden, Dodd and Kucinich in a way that could possibly have piqued the interest of more Americans. Whether it would have affected their results in the primaries and caucuses so much as to make any of them a viable contender, I don't know, but we didn't even have the chance to find out.

[warren pease]

24. All those choices, so little time...

I don't think we actually have an electoral process any more, with or without the Diebold factor. I think we have a ratification process in which we're summoned to the polls every election cycle and given a choice between two status quo candidates, neither of whom a sane, self-interested person would normally vote for, but much nose-holding goes on and eventually one of them takes the prize. And it's same ol' same ol' for another term in office.

In the case of high office holders -- presidents and senators, possibly House members -- candidates have been thoroughly vetted by corporate America and the ones who passed the test were found willing and able to sustain the time-honored policies that reward the rich for being rich and force everybody else to make them ever richer via the tax code, war spending, interest on the national debt and so forth. And then corporate America seals the deal by bribing the chosen ones with countless millions of dollars in campaign "donations" -- all in the interests of promoting good government, of course.

Smart, serious people are constantly agonizing about why voter turnout in the US is so low. It's not all that tough a question. It's called alienation. Every election cycle, more and more people understand that, despite the mythology, the system is intentionally set up to thwart any positive change by eliminating any possibility that progressive policies might find their way out of the dungeon of American political ideology. As we've just seen, this is achieved by keeping the people who offer those possibilities off the ballot, muzzled and out of sight.

In short, through the connivance of corrupt right wing politicians of both parties, their allies in mass media and their employers in the top 1 percent of the American food chain, they've managed to set up a self-perpetuating system that locks in reactionary policies while actively working to screw normal people in every way imaginable. And some very creative ways have been imagined.

So after having been robbed of their political voices because mass media has eliminated anyone not in hock to the status quo, they understand that once again they've been manipulated and conned.

They're not going to get universal health care. Wall Street will continue to steal what's left of their pensions and retirement accounts. The country's infrastructure will continue to rot as all the money flows to support the war machine. The "approved" candidates will recite some rosy pablum to disguise the fact that life in the US these days is rapidly becoming life in hell. It's become even more obvious that there's no such thing as a functioning two party system in this country and that only "fringe" candidates (read: "unelectable loons") present an alternate vision to the work-till-you-drop unregulated capitalism we're supposed to venerate as our national religion. Perhaps worst of all, they know that their kids are going to grow up undereducated, ill-informed, burger-flipping debt-slaves whose lives will probably be far worse that those of their parents and grandparents.

And after all that, they're supposed to give this sick simulation of democracy their tacit approval by voting for one of these corporate tools? Would you?

How screwed do you need to be before it becomes simply intolerable and you will not take it for one second more? And what then? What are you going to do about it? The options are few and they're all potentially dangerous one way or another.

These are the big questions and I know we'd better come up with some big answers pretty damn soon while there's still a window left to crawl through. BushCo seems to spend every waking minute coming up with new and better ways to shut that window, so it's a matter of some urgency.


wp

[Atman]

27. I wish I could find this week's "Get Your War On"

Doesn't seem to be on the web site, but I saw it in the local Alt Weekly...the woman saying how she looked forward to having the Clintons back in the White House, putting the furniture back where they wanted it. The guy says "You actually WANT Hillary Clinton as President?" She says "It beats getting my hopes up!" Ain't that the truth.

.

[warren pease]

28. That's about right..

Hell, I got my hopes up with Kucinich. I naively thought the US was finally ready to join the advanced countries of the world and elect a guy who would actually do things for the benefit of normal people. Particularly after seven years of BushCo, I figured people had possibly had enough of watching their dreams and modest savings and sense of humanity get surgically removed one at a time, or anesthetized into oblivion. I actually thought they might rally around a guy with a vision that didn't include terror, death, war, plundering the treasury, high crimes and misdemeanors, torture, special rendition (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) and the rot that's destroyed the core of the American dream. But no... It's fucking Hillary and McCain and woe to us all.

We've been pacified by the political-media-corporate power triumvirate, trained to be docile consumers of politics rather than active participants. Our politicians are mostly unprincipled gasbags and pathological liars loyal only to their corporate paymasters. Our mass media is a national disgrace and an international joke. And corporate culture has all but replaced true culture with some hideous mall-and ipod-and-xbox-based version of bland homogeneity.

Even in such unsavory company, mass media stands out as a particularly effective pacification tool. These days, despite mounting scorn and criticism, these official bullshitters seem completely OK with getting virtually every single detail of every single story wrong. No problems with missing all the big stories, except those involving some drunken D-Class celebrity fool, and getting scooped by the entire rest of the planet on the important stuff every single day.

They're OK with the fact that they're starting to be seen by many brighter Americans as the frauds and charlatans that they are. They're even becoming the objects of scorn and derision they so richly deserve to be, and that seems to be OK as well. But their self-esteem isn't based on professional pride; if anything, it's based on how round their heels are and on how well they can whore for their corporate masters.

So their big guns are drawing seven figure salaries because they're doing exactly what giant companies like GE and Disney and Time Warner had in mind when they acquired them. They didn't buy up media outlets and entire networks because they wanted to spread the truth and shine a light into the dark corners of political intrigue; they acquired the components of the greatest propaganda delivery tool in history so that their "on-air talent" could pollute the airwaves as shills and cheerleaders for the corporations that own them, for the status quo in general, and for the righteousness and cosmic correctness of forcing the American corporate model down the throats of the entire planet.

And the principals involved couldn't be happier with the way things have turned out. They can afford to leave reality based information to the Internet and the international press. Still plenty of gullible idiots around here to make their ratings and share numbers as the content sinks to new uncharted depths every season.

Our corporations operate in a bottom line frenzy that has them cutting costs, dumping employees, offshoring well-paying jobs, getting rid of the high-priced veterans who actually know a few things, merging, acquiring and being acquired in the mad rush to create the inevitable: a single gigantic global holding company -- Glutco International, Inc.; "Be nice to us because we own your life."

And for every merger or acquisition, there's a big layoff, which Wall Street loves because, at heart, anything that's bad for normal people is usually great for the investor class, and vice versa. As long as we keep rewarding corporations by boosting their stock prices for screwing their employees, affiliates and customers, we'll continue to live a pathological existence based on stealing as much as possible from each other without regard to consequences, then calling the whole thing a dynamic economy and holding it out to the world as our special gift to global enterprise.

Ach... this shit makes my head ache.


wp

[NikolaC]

30. Well Said

I've become so jaded and disillusioned with the process that it is pathetic. How Kucinich and others go out there and try to fight against "the system" time and again and stand up for what is right is amazing to me since it seems like a lost battle most days. Then there are days when I have more faith in my fellow citizens where I think that they can wake up and do their civic duty. Those days are fewer lately though, too much brainwashing, dumbing down, waiting, pushing and watching for the next celeb who is on a downward spiral to commit suicide:banghead:. That is what we have come to as a society. So, we let them tell us who is viable and who our leaders will be and some just sit there, drink the Koolaid and swallow the lies hook line and sinker. Pathetic.

[librechik]

26. We are broken

nobody in a position to help fix our democracy will admit it needs fixing.


I don't see anything changing anytime soon. The Media get more and more power--and more and more stupid, unreliable and corporate. Congress gets more and more compromised and weak.

I am really discouraged.

[L0oniX]

29. I am totally going to turn off to politics when Shillary wins the primary and loses the general.

[madokie]

32. My prediction is that due to the fact people are waking up to what's going on

that the turnout will be so great in this next election that the politicians will have no choice but to start doing our bidding. Yes there is a good day coming for you, myself, America and the rest of the whole wide world.

[robbedvoter]

33. "Clinton didn't win anything in NV"??? 51% of the vote is chopped liver?

Silly me, I thought this was a democracy!

I predicted Hillary will win. I was happy to see Obama win Iowa - and that there was an open race. I predict again that Hillary will win (and celebrated her win in new hampshire because of the facialexpressionsgate and celebrates reagan;s LOSS in Nevada)

[Le Taz Hot]

34. That would be me.

I also had grave doubts about Pelosi's efficacy when she was anointed Speaker of the House but I kept silent, at least for awhile. I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade after the 2006 election but, yes, I knew she was a tool and I knew what WOULDN'T happen -- and it hasn't.

I truly do wish I had been wrong about both of them.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

44. Nancy's Done A Great Job. I'm Proud Of Her.

Course, then, I really don't expect that you'd be able to be objective as to the job she's done, what it entails, what is and isn't realistically possible or strategical, and what one truly has to go through being in that position.

[Zorra]

36. Here. But that doesn't make me a rocket scientist. My dog told me

that is was going to be Clinton-McCain 2 years ago.

[redqueen]

38. I'm not one of those...

I want so desperately to believe we still have a choice... that we still have a voice.

[conspirator]

39. I told you Hillary was going to win. The elite will now elect a democrat president,

by manipulating the sheep's minds. It will give the impression that democracy exists. Obama is also picked by the elite, it's their backup horse. He could win if he was white.

[roody]

40. I am so glad we do not live in a one-party state

like Cuba. And they all got to vote yesterday.

[Jamastiene]

41. I don't agree with you very often AT ALL, but

we were right. We told them so. :thumbsup:

[Vinca]

42. Actually, I was betting on Clinton/Ghouliani.

So far the only bright side of the campaign has been watching Rudy crash and burn.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

43. Well, John Edwards Is Basically Sinking, And DK Is A Nobody In This Arena. Let's Be Real.

Obama is very much still in the media but John Edwards, as much as I like him, is just not really a serious contender at this point so it's not the biggest surprise that he wouldn't be talked about much. As far as Kucinich goes, well, he may need to do a bit better than 2% if he wants some airtime LOL. Don't blame the media for not yappin him up; blame the 98-99% of Democrats who recognize his candidacy is a joke and not one with any real legitimacy (i.e. hope in hell of having ever been a contender).

[Atman]

47. No wonder CU loves you.

Just sayin.

BTW...does that shithole even exist anymore? It's like they've all moved off to some sort of conservative cave or something. The place is deadsville.

.

[Jed Dilligan]

48. Well I guess it's time to start ripping up McCain

since we won't get far trying to find good things about "our" candidate.