Reply #12: Obviously some will

[PATRICK]

but what is meant by stealing? Kerry out maneuvered the Dean people without being on the radar both in the popular shift and the machinery used to get the caucus votes. That was not theft although adding up the "unfair" factors and the greenness of the sincere Dean boosters was great cause for bitterness. Edwards slipped in as second choice the same way to Dean's final disadvantage.

Now in Iowa, just comparing it to last time, what are the grounds for saying it is stolen? Hillary is granted openly a national front runner status that is not stealthily effecting the polls. her organization is given more scrutiny- now- and any cause for complaints are there now if you think they violate the peculiar rules of the caucus contest. If anyone is stealing anything it is media interference
in voters' choice and lack of media coverage of what exactly is going on in the machinery strategy overall. Despite the isolation from fair knowledge there is nothing sneaky or surprising about what is currently happening. Doubtless, in the aftermath, the intrepid media gets to decide how to postmortem the losers' campaigns and begin diminishing the winner as a simply more clever tactician and continue pimping a public wave of opinion according to media spin.

Money and organization will likely never be more equal than here, where Hillary does not want to be caught overspending toward a poor showing and where the "competitors" will have to dare to spend and work hard. The only question is how immune the native Iowan is from all the intense influences and then, how it comes to its popular decisions, and then, how it was molded into the caucus process by each campaign.

Maybe someone, for the benefit of the many puzzled by the fairness of the caucus process itself in the most significant first test for ANY semblance of democracy leading up to a contest, not an election, against tyranny and fraud in 2008, someone, anyone, can tell us what unfairness a candidate COULD be guilty of and what form it would take?

I imagine it would be fair to exclude stump speeches and ad blips and traditional maneuvers from the serious complaints? The single most blunder/unfairness to me is that the DNC has taken no hint that they should even try to immunize the people against a biased and hostile media interference. In the long run it hurts every candidate severely.