A follow up on the Democrat's Dilemma

Doc Opp corrected my assertion about Clinton's number of voters - - please see the original post and the comment. Clinton's claim of voter superiority is based on inclusion of the two disputed states,in one of those Obama chose not to compete. What brings me back to this issue so clearly is the underlying purpose of the nominations process. One could argue that the primaries and caucuses have two purposes - to nominate the best candidate in the eyes of the activists of the party (which the caucus system seems to do) or to nominate the candidate with beliefs closest to the party but who is also the strongest candidate in the November election. The first purpose satisfies the activists but may not win elections - which is after all why parties are organized.

As I noted in the original post, in this election, because of the disarray of the GOP, that may not be a distinction with a difference. But it is pretty clear that the GOP system for selecting their candidate avoided the extremes.

I have not made a final choice in the November elections. As I have noted in a number of previous posts, my vote will depend on four issues - the candidate's positions on Trade (where Obama has, IMHO, pandered and McCain seems more committed to continuing our regime of advancing free trade), Taxes (where Obama seems to have ignored the data on the need to keep tax rates low and systems simple but where McCain has pandered a bit on issues like the gas tax), Immigration (where McCain's position and Obama's are almost exactly the same, although McCain has shown genuine leadership in advancing a sensible approach, even to the peril of some in his party), and finally their selection of Vice President. Quite conceivably, the selection of Vice President becomes the most important of the four.