http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0603943_pf.html

Democrats Living Dangerously
Early Voting Insanity And a GOP Gift

By George F. Will
Thursday, February 7, 2008; A21



LOS ANGELES -- Forewarned, Democrats now are forearmed -- not that they will necessarily make sensible use of the gift. Tuesday's voting armed Democratic voters with the name of the candidate that their nominee will face in the fall. Will their purblind party now nominate the most polarizing person in contemporary politics, knowing that Republicans will nominate the person who tries to compensate for his weakness among conservatives with his strength among independent voters who are crucial to winning the White House?

Perhaps. The Republican Party's not-so-secret weapon always is the Democratic Party, with its entertaining thirst for living dangerously.

John McCain has become the presumptive nominee of the conservative party without winning majority support of conservatives. According to exit polls, he lost them Tuesday to Mitt Romney in his home state of Arizona, 43 to 40. He lost them in that day's biggest battleground, California, 43 to 35.

The surest way to unify the Republican Party, however, is for Democrats to nominate Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama, the foundation of whose candidacy is his early opposition to the war in Iraq, would be a more interesting contrast to the candidate who is trying to become the oldest person ever elected to a first presidential term and who almost promises a war with Iran ("There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran").

Obama's achievements on Tuesday would have been considered astonishing just two weeks ago, but they have been partially discounted because the strength of his ascendancy became so apparent in advance. And he would have taken an even larger stride toward the nomination were it not for a novelty that advanced thinkers have inflicted on the political process.

Once upon a time, in an America consigned to the mists of memory, there was a quaint and, it is now said, oppressive custom called Election Day. This great national coming together of the public in public polling places, this rare communitarian moment in a nation of restless individualists, was an exhilarating episode in our civic liturgy. Then came, in the name of progress, the plague of early voting.

In many states, voting extends over weeks, beginning before campaigns reach their informative crescendos. This plague has been encouraged by people, often Democrats, who insist, without much supporting evidence, that it increases voter turnout, especially among minorities and workers for whom the challenge of getting to polling places on a particular day is supposedly too burdensome.

The plague made many Super Tuesday voters -- those who hurried to cast their ballots for John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani and other dear departeds -- feel like ninnies, which serves them right. On Tuesday, the Democratic Party paid a price for early voting, especially in California, where more than 2 million votes were cast in the 29 days before what is anachronistically called Election Day. The price was paid by the party's most potentially potent nominee, Obama, whose surge became apparent after many impatient voters had already rushed to judgment.

Although Obama lost California to Clinton by almost 390,000 votes, he surely ran much closer in the votes cast on Tuesday, after her double-digit lead in polls had evaporated. Had he won the third of the three C's -- he won Connecticut, where a large portion of voters are in her New York City media market, and in Colorado, a red Western state rapidly turning purple -- he might now be unstoppable.

Evangelical Christians, who in 2006 gave Republicans more votes than Democrats received from African Americans and union members combined, wanted to determine the GOP's nominee -- and perhaps they have done so. By giving so much support to an essentially regional candidate, Mike Huckabee, rather than to Mitt Romney, they have opened McCain's path to capturing the conservative party without capturing conservatives. McCain's Tuesday triumph was based in states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California) he will not carry in November.

Although Obama is, to say no more, parsimonious with his deviations from liberal orthodoxy, he is said to exemplify "post-partisan" politics. The same is sometimes said of McCain. Five days before Super Tuesday, McCain received an endorsement from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another supposed practitioner of post-partisanship, which often looks a lot like liberalism that would prefer not to speak its name. Three days before that endorsement, the emblem of Schwarzenegger's post-partisanship -- his extremely liberal (lots of mandates and taxes) and expensive ($14.9 billion, slightly more than the state's current budget deficit) plan for universal health care -- died in an 11-member state Senate committee, where it got just one vote.

Perhaps we are seeing the future. It looks familiar.

georgewill@washpost.com

This election process quite clearly shows one of the most basic differences in the two parties.


While the Republicans are fractured more than that have been in years, they much more quickly seem to have unified into a much more singular voice much more similer to what has come to be expected.

While the Democrats continue to display the usual collection of voices which to this day makes unification darn right difficult, even to their detrement.

Its good to see my anti-Democratic Party response to Suess's thread was appropriately removed and was replaced by the pro-Democratic Party response from Sky. Whoever said this board limited free expression of opinion and was biased toward the Democratic Party obviously didn't know what they were talking about.

Like a moth to a flame

BTW Mothra,


I wasn't talking about the party. I was talking about Democrats, as in the people.
Just like the people I sat with this weekend and we caucused!



Have you EVER been involved outside your comfort zone?

Take it up with the management?
I for one trust TJ's integrity. I'm sure, if he has to delete a post it's for very good reasons.

again, I was not talking about the party.
I was talking about all those stupid ignorant hillbilly idiots that regressed to the point of calling them selves "Democrats".


As to any supposed delition of postings, there must have been good cause.
In fact, I'm certain of that! In fact, i'd bet that you already know the answer to your own question.

Seriously? Are you sure you didn't preview it and forget to actually post it? I do that from time to time... Has this ever happened before?

It's happened to me before, the OOPS that you just mentioned.
However, it makes a very nice poor baby rant to cry about.

To accuse blindly when checking on the facts at the source is so easy to do, is unconscionable.

Nobody deleted any post of yours, you douche. And seriously, you are annoying beyond belief and contribute absolutely nothing to this message board, and most likely nothing to society as a whole other than blathering on about how everything sucks and how you aren't willing to do anything about it. You say there's a big problem yet you shit on the only tools you have to affect any change and refuse to make even the smallest effort to do anything about it. My guess is that you secretly cream all over yourself every time the democrats cave in to Bush since it affords you another opportunity go around whining about it while doing nothing to stop or change it. Is that it? Have I missed anything?

As far as this board limiting free expression of opinion and being biased toward the Democratic Party... The fact that you've been allowed to troll everyone here who support what's good about the Democratic party for more than three years without repercussion obviously debunks that charge. 2,150 posts of you wasting my bandwidth, offering nothing constructive, and yet still here you are... accusing me of limiting your free expression of opinion and being unfair to you. All because you aren't smart enough post correctly.

Seriously, suck my balls. Your local political parties offer you every chance in the world to get involved and make changes from the inside. But you'd rather sit and cry about how terrible they are. This forum offers you every opportunity to post something helpful and constructive, but you'd rather troll everyone else who tries. How are you not simply the most basic of trolls?


PS: Had you addressed the missing post to me in a PM instead of smearing me and my forum management, my response would have been much different. Welcome to my early morning charm.

Wow, that was rather forceful relative to your usual temperament.

Not really. It's clear in the rules that criticizing the board administration in the fora is grounds for banning. Compared to that, the slapping around AFW got is a gentle warning.

Which doesn't mention the fact that it's a well deserved gentle warning.





Anybody wanna take bets as to the effects and reactions of said gentle warning on the member in question?

I got five that says it'll end in a bannination.

And yes, Boot is correct. If I hadn't been awake for only 10 minutes after a night's sleep that lasted only 3 hours and my workload wasn't monumental and my fund drive a miserable failure, I'd probably be in more passive spirits. But you know what? I bust my ass way too much and spend way too much of my own time and money providing a free service to the general public to a have a jerk like that insult me and my work.

as I said, he could so easy have simply sent a PM and asked,
instead of making it into a baseless rant.

Seriously, and yes I am sure it wasn't my mistake. It matters not. I'll stick around and keep posting unless I get banned. And I'd rather be a douche than a Democrat anyday.

That's obvious.

Why settle? You know you want to be both.

seems your wish has been granted!

Don't blame you in the slightest.




What an absolutely shitty apology!!!

Anyone who can piss a Buddhist off is certainly a world-class pisser-offer.

Next he'll be offering Moqtada al Sadr a BLT.

And a beer.

And Mookie'll take them.

Jubal:




I can't really think of anything clever to respond with. But I got a good chuckle out of those.