Calendar Commission Continued

Calendar Commission Continued

A few blogs with lots of detail from Saturday's DNC "Change Commission" meeting. No Iowa bashing detected, with superdelegates emerging as the hot topic.

Here's the highlights:

Demrulz liveblogged. The discussion ended with a look at caucuses from Mitch Stewart of Team Obama. Bullet points:

Some states have a good process, or at least Iowa does ; unclear how many other states share that commitment. (Deeth notes: that may have been a shot at the total meltdown in Nevada)

States should be allowed flexibility.

Caucuses can be an excellent voter registration and party building tool.

Problem of difficulty of participation, e.g., by those in military will be hard to address in an unassembled caucus. (Deeth acknowledges: Hillary had a good point here)

Serious organizational problems at some caucuses in 2008 – largely due to record attendance. (Deeth says: DEFINITELY talking about Nevada... your caucus may not have been perfect, I know I didn't do a perfect job running mine. But Iowa's problems were 99.99% either simple misunderstandings or limits on physical space.)

DNC should develop some optional, standardized rules and procedures for caucuses.

DemConWatch (an excellent source last year for the delegate count) has multiple posts and notes the underlying contradiction: "If a state knows its delegates will be eventually restored in the name of party unity no matter what rules are broken, why should the states worry about breaking the rules in the first place?"

Commission member Suzi LeVine of Washington State discusses one incentive for late states: "It’ll be very difficult without incentives to get the states to voluntarily change their dates, spread the map or move to a same day primary. Two ideas raised were: bonus delegates for later states and allow later states to do a winner take all strategy."

The Republicans still allow winner take all, but Dems banned it after 1972. I'd say chances are slim that the process and diversity obsessed Dems will go along.

The Frontloading HQ blog has some interesting graphs of how delegate allocation has moved earlier from 1976 to 2008.