Letters to the Editor
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All may not be as it seems....
I consider myself an Obama supporter, but Common Dreams has a troubling article claiming that the primary dates were set by Republican legislatures, certainly in Florida, and evidently in Michigan as well. In Florida, the legislatively outnumbered Dems signed onto the vote because the Republican governor tied it as a rider to legislation mandating a paper trail for voting.
Given this set of circumstances (if true), what becomes hard to understand is the DNC's draconian response. Had they simply let the candidates campaign, it's possible Obama might have garnered more votes. As it is, Hillary's effort to seat the delegates isn't entirely unsympathetic. Of course, she benefited from better name recognition from the beginning, an advantage Obama has consistently narrowed if given the chance--a chance he didn't have in either state.
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lilybean
you have any proof of this? Anything even remotely credible? Or is that just a hunch of yours?
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Hillary Clinton's petition
This has been a fine display of how Hillary operates. I shudder to think of what she'd do in the White House, particularly with the expanded definition of presidential powers that Bush seems to have established.
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Be honest, indeed.
As is typical, lilybean extrapolates only the tiniest bits of fact to make a case. No, Obama's lawyers did not block a revote in MI and FL, they only questioned certain aspects of a revote plan, namely, a provision that blocked those who voted in the original primary from voting in the re-do. Those with half an ability to reason can see why that might be a problem for both candidates.
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Hillary Death Watch
http://www.slate.com/id/2188151/
Just in a coupla days she has dropped from 12% to 9%. Maybe she read Slate and pulled out all the straws to clutch at.
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Have All Primary's On Same Day
Howard Dean and the DNC are the ones who screwed up. Who are they to tell states what they can and cannot do. States have the right to set their primary's when they please. The only fair way is for all states to have a primary on the same day-;get the nomination over and start the campaign. I resent the little state's like Iowa setting the pace for who is nominated before I have a chance to vote for the candidate of my choice.For pete sake democrat's get into the 21 century you are acting like you are still in the 19th
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@jebldmm: I don't know why Obama or his supporter's are fighting this.
What do you say to this:
County clerk says primary do-over likely`impossible'
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-28/1205851812198890.xml&coll=7
How does this Obama memo illustrate 'fighting':
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/in_new_memo_obama_camp_effecti.php#more
I'd like to see a contest in both states, but I know we can't just wave a magic wand. There's too many players involved, for one and lots of legal crap. A couple of FL lawsuits have already been thrown out.If you want to blame somebody, how about Dean, the DNC and the state dems? Obama is pretty far down the list of idiots on this one.
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Re-votes
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing a story on NPR a few months ago, and the reporter said that in one of the states, it might actually be illegal to allow a revote.
What would you do about democrats who voted republican in the primary? In an open primary, you either vote republican or democrat. But if you allow democrats to vote again, probably some of those democrats who crossed the aisle to vote republican (because they knew their votes wouldn't count if they voted for their own party) would want to have another chance to vote, and that is against the rules as well. And if you choose to "disenfranchise" those voters, how much money and time would it take to track down those voters and make sure they don't vote in the democratic party.
I'm pretty sure it is Florida. I don't know if Michigan has an open primary. To be honest, I feel sorry for Michigan. Unlike Florida, I think their party leadership chose the earlier date to bring attention to all of their economic woes.
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@ Adamificus on page 2
Right on.
I'll just add that Michigan (and Florida for that matter, but I live in Michigan) voters were effectively disenfranchised the moment the Michigan party moved the primary up and the national party said our votes wouldn't be counted. That can only be undone with a time machine, or maybe a re-vote, but not by counting the results of the farce of a primary we did have.
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Killjoy
Who are they to tell states what they can and cannot do. States have the right to set their primary's when they please.
No, they do not. Read the DNC charter.
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The whole damn DNC primary season...
It's too long, MI and FL is fukked up, add the bizarre mixing of bizarre caucus and popular voting rules and you have a cornucopia of different flavors of disgrace.
Dis-enfranchising MI and FL voters should never have been an option, it is and was not a solution to anything. Whatever positions either Clinton or Obama take, they are both going to come out looking like a-holes.
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@Hexabolic: It's not as it seems
You're right:
primary dates were set by Republican legislatures, certainly in Florida, and evidently in Michigan as well.
But most dems were not dragged into this vote kicking and screaming.
They believed the conventional wisdom at the time that the contest would all be over by Feb 5th. Something they rarely mention now. Google some of the articles on the topic around mid-late 2007.
Dean should have just given those states a 50% delegate cut and moved on.
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beauty contests don't count!!
The "will" of the voters in Fl and MI has not been thwarted because it was never accurately measured in the first place.
They would have voted differently if the candidates had been campaigning and the votes actualy counted. The turnout would have differed. The demographic data would have differed. It may have been better for Hillary, or Edwards, or Barack ....we will never know. The rules matter because they set the campaign structure. The rules turned the FL and MI results into meaningless beauty contests.
A primary election is a snapshot in time of the voters at a moment in a race. That moment has passed. There are many reasons why a do over would not be affordable, accurate or fair.
How do you proportionatly seat delegates when you don't have an actual view of what people wanted at that moment? Should the Clinton or Obama camp accept a guesstimated proportion to help resolve this? Maybe. Would that help the party have control over renegade states in the future? It wouldn't help.
The delegates in both states could be seated at a neutral 50-50 proportion. Then they could be ready to vote unpledged per the rules if there is a second vote.
That's a suggestion the Clinton camp has so far rejected. But So far that is the only answer I have heard that does not fundamentaly change the rules mid race.
By the way,
If Mitt and John were still in their race and close, Mitt would be pounding the pavement with the same issue regarding the beauty contests he "won" in Wyoming and Mich. (remember those "gold" medals he touted!?)