In three ways:

Tranparent proceedures. The delegate allocation is a mad house in the Dem primary system. You have texas with a primary and a caucus.  The Superdels decide it anyway.  The PR system is niether Proportional nor easy to understand.  

Then you have the willingness of the rules committee to meter out arbitrary punishments for infractions.  The rules people are using power in unpredictable and OTT ways.

Feb 19th I sent this email to a friend:

"obama's camp has been pushing any state (such as wisconsin) with open election (dems and reps can vote) party affiliation, to turn democrat and vote for him for the day.  the republican white males have come out in strong numbers for barack because they do not want to oppose hillary in the general election (and obama encourages it!)  they will of course not vote for him in the general. this is being reported all over the net, i'm not making this up!  the republican numbers are lower than normal due to them voting for obama for democratic candidate.  they know hillary is stronger and vetted and they will have a cake walk against obama the new teflon man. he will be an easy target."

After the counts that night I sent him this:

"This is a poll of party affiliation, they were evenly split in the dems, however 27% of the whole vote was surpringly "independents or something else"  and obama got 63% of those crossover republican etc votes.

Party Pct. of total  Clinton Obama
64 Democrat            49     50
27 other party         34     63

Washington state and Nebraska showed the same patterns. Obama won the caucus in WA by 33 points, with a turn out of around 30,000. Two weeks later, Obama only won the WA primary by 3 points, with a 200,000 turnout. Obama also won the Nebraska caucus by over 30 points, and it had around 35,000 people participate in it. Last night, around 100,000 people voted and the presumptive Democratic nominee with deep fundraising pockets and broad-based media support only won the primary by 2 points.

But if CA used the caucus system, the last time I would have been able to vote would have been in 1986 when I registered at age 18.  For the next 22 years, both school and job commitments forced me to vote by absentee ballot.  

But because Hillary Clinton lost the caucuses, they are not supposed to count. They should if only because the Obama campaign's having more competent people working for it makes you think that he would likely make better appointments, especially to those mid - level appointments below the level of Supreme Court judge and Cabinet post that no one pays attention to ... appointments like FEMA director for instance.

This is just like their claiming that the black vote doesn't count. Never mind that it was black voters that saved Bill's candidacy in South Carolina and Georgia in 1992, and saved him again in the 1998 midterm elections. When it worked for Bill, it counted. When it doesn't work for Hillary, it doesn't count!

Look, I expect Hillary to say and do whatever it takes to advance her case, that is her job as a candidate. I don't expect her supporters to be so unprincipled as to parrot it as if it won't come back and bite you later.  Now Clinton fans are talking about banning caucuses, knowing full well that the reason why they are held is states cannot afford to stage a full election. here's betting that no matter who is the nominee, it will be quickly forgotten.

Let's examine the facts; Hilary did very well in a state where the demographics play to her core constituency, an older, less educated, largely white blue collar electorate.

Given the make-up of the voters in the state, and the fact that Obama largely bypassed the state, only stopping there a couple of times to campaign (three visits, I believe), it is not surprising that Hillary won by a very large margin.

In an election the voters have to decide who they prefer; clearly the voters in W VA prefer Clinton, but does that preference mean they would not, could not vote for the other Democratic candidate, if their first choice is not the party's nominee in November?

The unsubstantiated claim that her supporters will not vote for Obama, as repeated ad nauseam by Terry McCauliff and others, needs to be challenged.

For that to be true, it would require at least one of the following:

1. There is a significant difference in the policies being put forward between Clinton and Obama; there clearly is little difference on any of the substantive issues, and Hillary and Obama are much closer politically than Clinton and McCain. The notion that Clinton supporters would not be willing to vote for Obama based on differences in policy just doesn't stand up.

2. As a person, Clinton is much more likable compare to Obama; actually for this to be a believable reason for 64% of Clinton supporters to say that they would not be willing to vote for Obama, Obama needs to be downright unlikable compared to Hilary. Again, the facts don't support this reason. Obama's favorable rating in almost all (all?) polls is higher than Clinton's, and more importantly, his unfavourable rating is significantly lower than Hilary's.

3. The vast majority of voters in W VA are racist; certainly this could be a valid explanation, and while I don't doubt that racism is still a real problem in the US, I find it difficult to believe that nearly two-thirds of Clinton supporters are racist (remember, these a Democratic voters, not Republicans)

4. All the talk by Clinton and her spokespersons over the the past couple of months suggesting that her supporters would not support Obama in the November election has become a self fulfilling prophecy and is being echoed by her supported. If that is the case, and I tend to believe that it is, then Clinton in her arrogant belief that she should be the Democratic nominee, irrespective of what the voters or pledged delegate count suggests; has potentially sabotaged the Democratic campaign in November.