Lost in the shuffle of what's fair for the voters of Florida and Michigan is the question of what's fair for the superdelegates hailing from these two states. You know them: the esteemed party leaders who, according to insiders such as Geraldine Ferraro, possess the requisite vision, leadership and judgment to do what is best for the party even if it means overturning the will of rank-and-file voters.
By all accounts, the two states' superdelegates would be seated along with the pledged delegates in the current proposals for dealing with the 'situations' in Michigan and Florida. But why?
Given the current fiasco facing the party as a result of these two states moving up their primaries, shouldn't all notions of superior vision, leadership and judgment by these states' superdelegates be discarded? And shouldn't their superdelegate status therefore be forfeit?
After all, the principle advanced most frequently in the discussion of what to do about these 'rogue states' is that the voters in these states should not be silenced. Indeed. It's outrageous to think that we would select a candidate for president with these two critical states (or any state, for that matter) excluded. But where were these party leaders when each state was on the road to exclusion? Why, in 2007, weren't these folks exercising their superior leadership and vision to put a stop to the early primaries and get their states to comply with the primary plan that had already been agreed to by the DNC and the state parties?
And why are these same party leaders now in an uproar over the consequences of their own decisions?
Most likely, the uproar has everything to do with their inability to foresee how close this primary would be. Not that anybody could foresee it. But by deciding to move the state primaries up, and therefore subjecting their results to irrelevance, officials in Florida and Michigan were seeking to shape the national perception of the candidates just as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina were able to do. Whether or not Michigan had such an effect is questionable. But in terms of Florida that influence is clear.
Remember that it was only three days after a stinging 2:1 defeat in South Carolina that Senator Clinton flew into Florida and claimed victory in what was nothing more than a political beauty contest. And while the practical value of the win was nil, the video feeds of Senator Clinton claiming victory in Florida no doubt improved her standing going into the biggest single day of the primary, Super Tuesday. (Note in the second video how she also claims victory in Michigan.)
We''ll never know how much media coverage of the faux win on the night of the Florida primary helped Senator Clinton the following week. But can it be reasonably argued that the victory speech and the press coverage didn't help Senator Clinton recover after being trounced in South Carolina?
So the leaders of Michigan and Florida put their markers down a long time ago. They figured that the best way for their states to influence the primary was to forfeit their delegates in exchange for shaping early perception of the candidates. And it's worth noting here that John Edwards suspended campaign operations the day after the Florida vote.
But the supers never envisioned a wire-to-wire primary nor considered how jilted their voters would feel if they had no actual voice in such a contest. They never foresaw even their own reactions to such an eventuality.
Among those who had a direct hand in the decision to move these two primaries to January and among the other 'leaders' who, if anyone, voiced concern last year that this could lead to disaster? Who, if anyone, voiced concern that the voters of these two states wouldn't have a voice in the primary?
This is one reason these 'wise' leaders should have their status stripped and should not be seated at the convention. If the premise behind the superdelegates is that they possess superior vision, leadership and judgment, the Florida and Michigan supers have collectively failed. This train wreck is a direct result of their lack of judgment and lack of vision and a lot of the subsequent sniping is a result of their refusal to acknowledge their dominant role in the entire ordeal. Blaming the DNC for their own decisions constitutes neither leadership nor vision.
Another reason to not seat the superdelegates is the simple need for some punitive measure. It is inescapable that these two states violated the agreed-upon rules. Without some associated penalty, the next competitive Democratic primary will tend toward chaos since the precedent of absolute forgiveness will have been set.
While the basic moral principle of democracy argues strongly for allowing rank-and-file Democrats from these states to have a voice, there is no moral compulsion to do the same for superdelegates. What's more, if the desire is to prevent this sort of line-jumping from happening in the future, expelling the supers of these two states will do just that. By penalizing those people who are most intimately involved with such a decision, the DNC would be immune to claims that it is upsetting the principles of democracy while still sending a message that will be heeded in the future.
Now that proposed revotes in both Florida and Michigan seem unlikely to occur, it is unclear what the path forward will be. But whatever that path is, it should not include seating the superdelegates from these two states. These supers have either had a direct hand in, or remained silent about, decisions that led to this crisis for the Democratic party. That alone is sufficient to disqualify them as superdelegates. We have already seen a large degree of public discomfort with the potential role of superdelegates in the nominating process -- so it's doubtful that there will be a public outcry in defense of the 'disenfranchised' elites who are responsible for so much hand-wringing and infighting.