How Effed Up Is The Democratic Primary?
OBAMA’S WINNING, RIGHT?
FITSNews - February 21, 2008 - First of all, we didn’t choose this picture to make any sort of political statement. Yes, that’s soon-to-be-former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the background (editor’s note: or not), but Castro has endorsed a Clinton-Obama ticket, or was that an Obama-Clinton ticket?
Anyway, that’s precisely the word order problem American Democrats are trying to settle right now, but we continue to be amazed at how screwed up their decision-making process is. Like this latest abacus-inducing clusterf*ck:
Barack Obama won the Democrats Abroad global primary in results announced Thursday … More than 20,000 U.S. citizens living abroad voted in the primary, which ran from Feb. 5 to Feb. 12. Obama won about 65 percent of the vote, according to the results released Thursday. Voters living in 164 countries cast votes online, while expatriates voted in person in more than 30 countries, at hotels in Australia and Costa Rica, at a pub in Ireland and at a Starbucks in Thailand. The results took about a week to tabulate as local committees around the globe gathered ballots … The party will send 14 pledged delegates to the convention, each with a half vote. The primary was used to determine nine people, or the equivalent of 4.5 delegates. Obama won 2.5 and Clinton won two … Democrats Abroad will hold a global convention in Vancouver, Canada, in April to select the other five people who will attend the convention. They will represent the remaining 2.5 votes.
Aside from the fact that this whole thing sounds like it’s one step removed from stuffing American ballot boxes with Chinese sweatshop votes - the confusion over this as well as the superdelegates in the Democratic nominating process is making our heads hurt. Seriously, it’s like trying to figure out one of those ridiculous SAT questions they said would be so useful later in life. You know, “Truck A leaves Factory B on a full tank of gas with 100 widgets weighing 2 pounds each, while Truck B leaves factory A with a half tank of gas and 150 widgets weighing one pound each” and your job is to figure out which truck gets to Albequerque first using only the scratch paper provided. Geez … we left our calculator in El Segundo, people.
UPDATE - Oops. Turns out that isn’t Castro in the background. It’s this guy. Of course it is a Latin Marxist Revolutionary, so two outta three ain’t bad.
Comments
By Yo on February 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Will,
That’s Che Guevara in the background, not Castro.
By Rusty on February 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
That’s not Castro in the background. That’s Che.
Viva la Revolucion.
By fitsnews on February 21st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Well damn. It also looks a lot like Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine now that we look at it.
Oh well, at least the rumor that we’re infallible can finally be put to rest … outside of the bedroom, anyway.
-FITSNews
By T. Williams on February 21st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
it is Che, but is no less disturbing.
By Harden Gervais on February 21st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Democracy can be messy sometimes, Himmler.
By Oh grow up on February 21st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Here’s how you can tell the difference in the future: Che was hot, Fidel is not.
By piepton on February 21st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
While you’re doing calculus I’d like to see the equation of dollars wasted per vote conducting two primaries in several foreign countries to determine 14 half votes.
I think de la Rocha was intentionally trying to look like Guevara so it’s not surprising.