In Defense of American Democracy

My view of American democracy tends to be a little more favorable than Lisa's. Instead of going out on a full-throated rant on why our democracy kicks ass (checks and balances, baby!), I'd like to point to a few things in her post on which we part ways.

DC Representation
Contrary to popular belief, DC does have represenation in congress: her name is Eleanor Holmes-Norton, and she's a delegate. It's the same representation that Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam have. Is it full represenation? No. Norton cannot vote on the House floor.
I contend, however, that that does not matter. Why? Well, the House of Representatives has three power concentrations: the leadership, the committees, and the caucuses (Black, Hispanic, Republican Study Committee, Progressive, etc). Unlike the Senate, individual members can really only exert power over the legislative process through one of these institutions. And these are institutions to which she has full access. She can vote in committee, she is an influential member of the Black Caucus, and she has some good committee assignments: Homeland, Gov Reform, and Transportation and Infrastruction (the only committee which actually has more spending power as an authorizing committee than its coordinated appropriations subcommittee)
Furthermore, lets keep in mind that oftentimes what looks like full House consideration is really Committee on the Whole... where, of course, Norton has full voting rights.
In the House, the power to vote on the floor really isn't any power at all. Power is centralized in the House, and if you're just a lonely representative on the floor, you ain't got it.
Does that mean that Norton shouldn't get full voting rights? No, of course she should. It won't do much, if anything, for DC, but it's symbolic, and that really does mean something.
Nevertheless, DC does Congressional representation, and nearly at the level of every other state in the nation... at least in the House. The Senate is another matter.

"Broken" Delegate System?
Is the delegate system broken? Well, it depends on whether we define "broken" based on processes or outcomes. The process, certainly, isn't broken: the rules were set by the DNC and voted on by the states, and then Michigan and Florida's elected representatives decided to move their elections, thus breaking the rules, and knowing that their delegates would be stripped. Why would they do this? Well, keep in mind that there are two factors that determine who the nominee will be: delegates and momentum. Historically, the latter is more important - Kerry, for example, cleaned up the nomination well before he had reached the magic delegate number because he had the momentum. In fact, delegates haven't really played a major role in a primary since '72. See those "delegate counters" on all those news shows? Yeah, they're new. Networks didn't even really know how the delegate selection process worked until about three months ago.
MI and FL bet on the fact that this election would be no different from past elections: that the early states determined who got the momentum, and that by the time the later states voted, a candidate (hopefully propelled by MI and/or FL victories) would have broken away from the pack. Keep in mind that momentum is a media creation, so as long as the media pays attention to the MI and FL elections, it really didn't matter that their delegates wouldn't be seated. Once the candidate broke away from the pack, they'd seat the delegates anyway.
The bottom line is that the rules were fair. In fact, FL and MI must have thought that the rules were fair - why else would they have voted for them? Unfortunately, once the rules were in place, both states decided to break the rules in order to maximize your momentum-giving power at the cost of your delegate-giving power. This was a rational decision made by elected representatives of the voters. Doesn't sound like a broken system to me.
So what would be a broken process? Well, if the rules weren't enforced halfway through the primary election, or if the rules were changed to coddle two rouge states that decided to risk it all to have a bigger seat at the table. That'd certainly qualify it as a broken system.
Now, what if, by "broken", we are referring to the outcome rather than the process? Sure, it makes sense that if the outcome is that the voters are disenfranchised, then the system could be called broken. But were they? Is it true that the voters of MI and FL have had "no say" over who the nominee is? No. True, this race has been more about delegates than momentum, but that doesn't mean that momentum hasn't mattered. Ultimately, the media did pay attention to FL and MI, and Clinton's victories there undoubtedly gave her a momentum boost. Florida, in particular, mattered. For one, all the names were on the ballot, which at least made it appear to be a real election. Furthermore, it came between Obama's overwhelming (and demographic-shattering) victory in South Carolina and Super Duper Tuesday. It is entirely plausible that Florida's election blunted Obama's momentum coming out of SC and allowed Hillary to win the big states on Super Duper Tuesday, thus keeping her in the game.

Ok, I'm done. Sorry for picking on you Lisa, it's just that your post was at the top of the page, and, well, I'm too lazy to scroll down and see what others have written.