attn: wingnuts

I just read the link. The author makes several good points.

Problem is, those points could be made about any caucus, at any time.

And, since caucuses are technically party functions and not "voting" I don't see how they win in court.

 

Josh Marshall's take, for what it's worth... (emphasis mine)

Deserves Attention
Maybe there's a reason this isn't as beyond the pale as it looks. But I'm not seeing it.

The Nevada State Democratic party has set up nine at-large caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip for casino workers who might not otherwise be able to caucus on January 19th. Remember, because of the recent Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Barack Obama, casino workers are expected to vote heavily for him.

Now, the Nevada State Education Association (the state teachers' union), which is seen as supportive of Clinton though it has not formally endorsed her, is suing the Democratic party to prevent block those at-large caucuses from meeting on the grounds that similar arrangements have not been made for other Nevadans.

I don't know the particulars of how the Nevada caucuses are arranged. But the 'tell' is the fact that the teachers' union apparently didn't think this was a problem until Sen. Obama bagged the key union endorsement. When asked why the union had never approached the state party about this issue until Friday, union president Lynne Warne, tellingly replied, "We're approaching them now."

If there's one thing that's core to the modern Democratic party is that voter suppression tactics are always wrong. Much of the US Attorney purge scandal was at root about Republican voter suppression tactics. I suspect this is doubly wrong -- both in the sense that the suit is meritless on its face but certainly also in the sense that you don't decide how easy to make it for people to vote depending on who you think they're likely to vote for.
Please leave these shameful tactics to Republicans.

Late Update: Jeralyn at TalkLeft thinks there is some substantive merit to the suit. And in the abstract, she has a point. But following on the distinction I drew above, I think the timing tells the story.

--Josh Marshall

 

well, if it actually hasn't come into question (which it has)...

perhaps because he isn't running on the issue? a la, say, huckabee?
perhaps because his supporters don't give a rat's patoot about holy war nonsense? like, say, a frightening percentage of republicans?

just a guess.

 

My half-sister is convinced that Obama's a Musilm. The fact that it's not in the newspapers but is in email forwards is, for her, just more proof that it's true.

 

yep. that's the problem.

what really cheeses me off is that aforementioned wingnuts could make a valid enough argument without this, just as i can make a valid enough argument against mitt without OMG TEH MORMUNS!. for pete's sake, focus on the damn POLICIES, not whatever rush manages to pick out of his butt, or whatever hatecore they're spewing on littlegreenfootballs.

 

I read the link. Snopes shoots down the Muslim garbage that has run rampant and the racist aspect of the church.

What I am asking is why is his faith not as frightening as the whacko right wing nut jobs?

 

Show me a Democrat who went to war because God told him to, and I'll start to acknowledge the need to keep Dems' religion in check.

 

This last week alone, I've heard Bill Cunningham talk about Obama's church being a black separatist church, one caller to Cunningham's show call Obama a "sleeper cell," and Michael Savage interview one expert who still insists that the school Obama attended in Malaysia was an Islamic school that trained kids to be terrorists (or something like that).
They all wondered why the mainstream media was not talking about these things.
Now let me get this straight, Bill Cunningham is really a lawyer and Michael Savage is really a PhD? How the hell could they possibily be better educated than I am?
I'm getting a sense that half the audience for these shows can't read and the other half's favorite book is The Turner Diaries.

 

Unfortunately, people actually believe what those douchebags say.

 

Check out this wingnut:

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/fsalvato/2008/01112008.htm

 

Jeebus, what a moron. And the guy quotes Daniel Pipes, a Guilani advisor who literally has stated that American Muslims should be racially profiled, and has also said that the interment of Japanese Americans during the war was not the moral offense it has been made out to be. So make of that what you will. He has also advocated for the complete razing of Palestinian villages from which Israel has been attacked. Yeah, some "Islamic scholar."

 

Hear, hear.
zeke -- I know and respect Josh a great deal. I think he's overreacting on this issue just as you are. Exactly what's inbounds in running against this guy? Please let us agnostics know because there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do that isn't a) racist, or b) dirty politics, in the eyes of the lookouts on the Good Ship Lollipop. Is it OK for other campaigns to hold signs? To have pollwatchers? To exist? This is a tough, hard play, done completely out in the open -- which is where the parallels to the GOP voter-suppression all fail, IMO -- and in a public court of law. If, as I suspect, the suit fails, then it becomes a factor in whether or not people vote for HRC. And, I predict, it will hurt her campaign severely.
Caucuses truly do suck, and should be done away with.