Prolific Programmer on the Internets!

Here's how you win an election. Thank you, Joe Biden!

Watching the debate last night, I get the impression that Mrs Clinton's tactics are to accuse Mr. Obama of lacking the necessary experience to be president. Here's how he should answer that, in my opinion. Hillary, you voted for a war that killed over 4000 Americans. Why do we want more of that experience in the White House? I'd love to hear her answer to that.

My main man, Barack Obama just won in South Carolina! Werd up to my Yank neighbours!!! Good on you lot!

While I was in Dubai, Rania (before Ayesha pissed both of us off with an ill-timed comment) asked how the hell the Americans had Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and now George W. Bush as president when every American she's ever met is so decent (Rania is a Lebanese-born, German national living in Cologne). I thought I'd put up a brief explanation of how the US chooses a president. Corrections are much appreciated.

Each party in each state sets up their own procedures by which a candidate is chosen at the state level. Generally, Americans vote for delegates to cast a vote for president on their behalf at the party's nominating convention. There are two classes of nomination procedures: caucuses and primaries.

The caucuses are a nominating convention where voters gather in places around the state and convince each other to support their candidates. So, when Kucinich endorses Obama, his 2% supporters, who are probably concentrated in the urban areas of the state, it helps Obama to win the constituencies, especially if Obama gets a good number of second-choice votes. See

The primaries are like our constituency elections in Europe -- first past the post or (in 3~4 states) proportional representation. Since these are more familiar, I won't mention any more about the primaries.

Finally, as pointed out on this blog a number of times, I'm not American. Anyone who understands the process better, feel free to point out that I'm an idiot and correct me. Many thanks