The Democratic Party honchos took time out of begging for more money to continue Bully Boy Bush policies last week in order to announce "The Democratic Change Commission." Party hack Jonah swung-it-to-sell-it on the official Democratic Party website. He opens by declaring, "Following the Democratic Presidential primaries and caucuses of the 2008 presidential nominating campaign the Democratic National Convention Rules Committee, at the request of then Senator Obama, drafted a resolution calling for a commission to review and recommend changes to the 2012 nominating process."
Though no one with the scars and wounds from the 2008 Democratic Party primaries could deny that something needs to be done, the notion that anything will be done to improve the process fades quickly as you grasp that not only is it called "Democratic Change Commission" (Barack's giving "change" such a bad name that you have to wonder if it's one of the words that will be banished at the end of 2008?) but it's also led by Claire McCaskill and James Clyburn. Both co-chairs are Bama Boosters and Claire's famous for the very public snub of Hillary Clinton before the cameras while James is famous for telling one lie after another and non-stop attacks on the Clintons. The idea that either wants to reform the process is laughable.
What reform is needed?
Since 2005, we've argued that Iowa (a) doesn't need to be the start of the season, (b) needs to be open and accountable (the official tally is never released -- by the Democrats, the GOP releases their own official tally) and (c) needs to change to a primary.
Iowa is rife with fraud every year. Dan Savage revealed how easy (in 2004) it was to participate in the caucuses despite not being a resident of Iowa. The process is rigged and the winner of the 'caucus' is always whomever gets the most volunteers shipped into that state.
Real reform would mean Iowa switching to a primary.
On the subject of caucuses, the "Texas two-step" should be dropped as well. Hillary won the Texas primary but Barack got more delegates due to caucus fraud. Caucuses are rife with fraud and no one votes in a general election for president by caucusing. Caucuses need to be ended and everyone needs to switch to the secret ballot. Each state's determining of a party nominee needs to match the process for the general election.
A long needed fix is rotating the primary schedule. We've advocated that since 2005 and were proven correct in 2008 when some states were allowed to move up their primaries (New Hampshire) without penalty and other states weren't (Florida and Michigan). Like the presidential elections, the Olympics come around every four years. The Democrats letting Iowa kick off each cycle would be like the Olympics allowing one country to forever host the games.
Fair is fair and it is past time that the primary process was put on a rotating schedule.
The party maintains:
The Democratic Change Commission will address three issues: 1) changing the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held 2) reducing the number of superdelegates and 3) improving the caucus system.
Considering that Bama stacked commission, the three 'issues' don't appear to be about helping the party members are the process. Number two, the superdelegates, is the best example.
The superdelegates, if they'd done the role they were created for, could have stopped the theft at the convention or before. But they refused to. Having pushed them around throughout 2008, Team Bama now wants to reduce them. No surprise there. And not a lot of sympathy from us because they refused to do their duty in 2008.