Starting on Jan. 1, John Edwards is going to campaign for 36 hour straight. “Marathon for the Middle Class”. He’s going to outline 36 ideas to strengthen the middle class. Edwards will stop in 15 counties and wind up his epic all nighter with a rally in Des Moines with singer and supporter John Mellencamp.

So, people are going to come out at 2:00 am to see him give a speech? He’s really into stunts…

Florida and Michigan haven’t lost electoral votes; they have had allowed delegate numbers lowered for the conventions. The political wisdom is though that the presumptive candidate will weigh in, especially if most of the delegates, or a good number of them, are pledged to him or her. The weigh in will consist of a change of heart and the delegates will be seated. That whole situation is the result of the state breaking party rules, and the cascade of move-ups is what has created the mess. In 2 cases I know of the national party put enough pressure on the state party who put enough pressure on the stateofficials to at least slow down the tsuami.

i agree the process needs to be worked on, and I bet after this year’s fiasco, it will.

There are just so many political scientists who can’t figure out a good way to go about it. Personally I think we need to start w/ the allowable capaigning period..but then the argument is that the country is too big, geographicly and population to make that feasible. I went to a bi-partisan 3-day conference about this years ago. The parties know they need to restyle. Someday I’ll bring up the proposals and things we barnstormed and the arguments against them. Some we know, the Huckabee-Carter-Biden-Dodd problem…setting a $$ limit (freedom of speech problems there, believe it or not) and on and on and on. I’d love to have a French, or German system. But like the British system those can’t work here because of the parlimentary form of gov’t , etc etc,etc. We are really unique, where a candidate can come out of almost anywhere to be elected POTUS, and because of our size, we need to make room for that possibility somehow. That’s why we have wards, precincts, counties, districts and state meetings or conventions before going to the national. Other nationals shake their head in frustration as we do, but at the same time, envy our “everyman/anyman” potential.

Enough.