Letters to the Editor
SueNJ97
Published Letters: 173 Editor's Choice: 4
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cejaxon - why FL wasn't 'good enough'
[Read the article: Should Florida and Michigan vote again? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am just trying to explain this from the point of view of the people who are absolutely enraged about this and don't want the FL delegates seated under the original vote. You'll get a variety of explainations:
Explaination 1 - "Clinton cheated and campaigned there when no-one else did": Except she didn't. But, they hate her so much they believe it. She showed up after the polls closed to thank the people who voted for her. She held a few private fundraisers, as did Obama, which is not considered campaigning. But, people simply won't listen.
Explaination 2 - "Even though neither one campaigned, the fact that they didn't campaign was an advantage to Hillary": Not quite as unbalanced as the first. There is evidence that Obama does better when he gets into a state and campaigns in person, because that's his strength. In this case, it was left up to people to watch the news, read the papers, or go to the internet (which provide "free" coverage to candidates and that's what you get, you can decide for yourselves whether it would have been a plus for either candidate). They could also have seen Obama commercials, which were deemed 'not campaigning' because they were part of a national media buy that he started 2 weeks before Clinton did. The DNC told him it wasn't campaigning, I have to believe their ruling would have been the same for Clinton if she had chosen to do this. His supporters say the ads didn't help him because he needed to be there to impact the outcome.
Explaination 3 - "Voter suppression":Because people didn't think their vote would count, they didn't vote in the numbers they would have, because they were actually only showing up because of some referrenda that were on the ballot, not because they were actually voting in the Democratic Presidential Primary. Therefore, there was voter suppression.
Explaination 4: "They voted when they weren't supposed to, so fuck 'em."
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Uncle Fester - Where was the outrage before all the voting started?
[Read the article: Should Florida and Michigan vote again? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are correct to be pissed at the DNC, Dean, other players in this, although I think the people who are acting as if it is OK to be pissed at the voters in these states are a bit much. It seems to me that they aren't responsible for the idiots at the top (although, I admit, they elected or appointed some of them so they do bear some responsibility).
Dean thought either Obama or Clinton would have it wrapped up well before the convention so this wouldn't matter. He thought he could come down hard on these states and it wouldn't matter. Even if, as some people suspect, he originally thought it would be Clinton who wrapped it up, he had to know later on that it might not be, but, he expected, when he told people things like what was and wasn't campaigning, that one or the other of them would have it wrapped up because one or the other of them would have imploded. Despite what people believe, they haven't. It has been, as you noted, essentially a struggle between big and small states with one candidate doing well in one set of states and one candidate doing well in another kind of state. The proportional delegate rules keep them both in play.
The Democratic Party's primary rules handed them this mess, every single bit of it, including the idiotic rules about what was and was not campaigning (you can go there and have private fundrasers and you can have the states in there as part of your national television buys and you can have get-out-the vote organizations on the day of the vote but hey, don't shake hands with a real live voter outside of a private fundraising event). Despite what people want to believe, it seems to me that telling people in two large states their votes are, well, not good enough for us NOW, because you are IMPURE, that's right, IMPURE, but hey, we'll take them later, is going to really, really backfire on the Dems. They can't accomodate the voters, at all? I'm not talking about the state and party officials. I'm talking about real, live actual voters with come kind of a re-vote.