Wednesday, January 28, 2004

This is rich:

    News Flash!
    John Kerry now has 94 delegates in the Democratic primary, while Dean has 113. See the scorecard on CNN for more info. The news flash is that the media are not reporting that - try to find a single story about it. Instead, they say that Kerry is clearly the frontrunner, and that Dean's campaign is effectively finished. Let's show the media that we prefer to make our own democracy, rather than let them pick the winner for us. Send email to your local paper, radio, and TV stations, and demand to know why they aren't reporting the facts. Send this note to 5 of your friends. I don't mind if Kerry wins - but I want him to win fairly. Let's tell the media what we think of their crapulent bloviation!


First of all, I think the CNN scorecard referenced in the note is a media story about the delegate count. Second, if you actually look at the scorecard on CNN that the media, including, presumably, CNN, is suppressing, you'll see that Dean's delegate edge consists entirely of delegates who have not been elected by primary voters but are instead "party leader and elected official" (PLEO) delegates.

In other words, they're members of the political establishment, not the voice of the people. So how, exactly, is that "making our own democracy"?

And if you look just at the two states where elections for delegates have taken place and do some quick-and-dirty back-of-the-envelope number-crunching, Kerry has 33, over twice as many as have been elected for Dean, who has 16. John Edwards actually leads Dean in the elected delegate count with 18 from Iowa alone. In the world of this message's writer, does winning elections equal media bloviations, while the endorsements of party hacks counts as making democracy?

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