The Ickes factor

Re “A not-so-secret Clinton weapon,” March 31

There is something wrong with our democratic voting process when the outcome of an election could hinge on how many times Harold M. Ickes can pressure a superdelegate to return a favor. We listen to the candidates’ positions on the important issues for months and then choose one we feel is best qualified to be president. But in the backrooms, operatives such as Ickes work their magic, calling in chits and favors to close the deal on promises from the superdelegates to vote for his candidate, making our votes worthless. This is where change has to start.

Shirley McKernan

Los Angeles

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The article on Ickes, “whose enthusiasm for no-holds-barred politics” and who is “aggressive, profane and openly scornful of rivals,” highlights one reason I won’t be voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton. It is those qualities that portend a presidency mired in partisan bickering and more of the same divisive government that we have endured for eight years with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. I don’t want a superdelegate voting for Clinton because Ickes is calling in a chit.

Barack Obama is not tainted with the backbiting politics of the past and, I believe, can unite this country more than either Clinton or John McCain. And he’s brilliant and eloquent to boot.

Bryan Hays

Saugus

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How did we arrive at this superdelegate nonsense again? The idea that more powerful delegates can invalidate the so-called run-of-the-mill delegates by paying back favors smells like shifty Third World politics.

Elevating the individual superdelegate above the common citizen effectively cancels our freedom to choose a candidate for president. The electoral college after the popular vote is enough of a mess without the Democratic Party setting up this cockamamie bunch of regulations. Here we were, ready to put a new and fresh government up for election, and now it is beginning to look more and more like the candidates are a genuinely second-rate slate, selected and culled by behind-the-scenes, power-hungry veteran political operatives.

Patricia

McCann Cutkomp

Laguna Beach