First of all Obama publicly supported the idea of a redo in both states. He raised concerns about certain aspects of the Clinton's proposed Michigain plan, which would have essentially allowed those who voted on a Clinton-only ballot to be the only ones who could vote. Bear in mind Clinton could have just as well supported a more wide-open revote,. In addition in no way was Obama's approval required for the process, Funny thing, there. The absolutely best thing to happen for Clinton would be to increase pressure for the Clinton-Only primary to stand while blaming it on her opponent. And that is what happened.
The bottom line is that the Democratic Party getting serious about any states jumping into January was the only thing that kept the 2008 nomination calendar from leapfrogging into absurdity. If they roll over when it really matters the 2012 primaries will possibly become the 2009 primaries.
I predict that what will happen is that when things settle out a group of Florida and Michigain Superdelegates will come to Obama and say "If we vote for you will you allow our delegations to be seated?" If the numbers work out that he still wins he will make a big show of saying how he wants to bring the whole country together and allow the delegations to be seated in full. The pundits will all talk about how Obama was generous even to these two states that voted against him.
Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee? -- The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan
Buzz this article up.
Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean came out of hiding last week to announce that there is no reason to rush to resolve the fate of Florida and Michigan. He said he was confident that these delegations, disqualified in 2007 by Dean's own Rules Committee, would be seated at the August convention -- but, apparently, only after a nominee is chosen, which he predicted would occur by July 1. This modern-day Metternich, whose two-fisted handling of this two-state controversy has already had more impact on the 2008 race than his candidacy did on the race in 2004, is promising to mediate the dispute once it's already settled.
The Dean plan is that these two swing states -- big enough to decide the nomination or general election -- will eventually be granted "virtual" seats at the convention because, as Dean imaginatively put it in an AP interview, "the campaigns believe that kind of deal is premature right now." Since one campaign (Hillary Clinton's) was amenable to redoes, even financing Michigan's, and the other campaign (Barack Obama's) opposed every feasible proposition, it is, in a strange way, true that the two sides weren't collectively ready for a deal.
In all the buzz about the media's pro-Obama tilt, its indifference to his resistance to including these states in the "actual" nominating process is its most disturbing favor, especially since this brand of "conventional politics," as Obama would put it, flies in the face of his contention that "the people" should pick the nominee. Obama's only proposal so far has been to split the delegates evenly, just like he and Michelle parcel out Christmas presents to their two daughters.
Of course, the column inches and moments of air time spent on how and why these two states and their 366 delegates have been banished adds up to less than the attention devoted to, say, the Wyoming caucus, where a 2,066-vote Obama margin gave him a big enough delegate boost to virtually cancel out Hillary Clinton's 329,000-vote margin in the five March races.
The body count that the mainstream media has regurgitated out of Florida and Michigan is that 2.3 million Democrats voted in primaries that broke the rules, leaving the DNC with no choice but to level both villages, even if the collateral damage might include the party's prospects of carrying those disenfranchised states in November. The DNC and the MSM appear to have simultaneously concluded that even Clinton's 300,000-vote win in Florida, where both candidates competed on a level playing field, shouldn't be counted in the popular vote tally, a calculation that appears nowhere in DNC rules and turns 1.7 million Democratic voters into ghosts.
The irony is that the drumbeat for Clinton's withdrawal -- coming on the heels of her recent wins and right before what may be her biggest in Pennsylvania -- is rooted in the collapse of the effort to redo Michigan and Florida. The theory is that she should quit because there is no way she can win, and that there is no way she can win because two states she could win, at least one of which she actually did win, will not be counted until she gets out. Barack Obama would thus become the nominee -- not because of an honestly earned if precariously narrow lead in the final national vote, but because of two elections he would not let happen.
If that sounds like a curious way to end a nominating contest that 30 million to 33 million voters will participate in before it's done, even stranger is that the DNC is following only some of its rules -- and that the real culprits who caused this debacle are Republicans, who are now relishing the catfight they provoked.
Dems Take the Hit for the GOP
The Republican role is not some irrelevant anecdote. The DNC is charged, under its rules, to determine whether the Democrats in a noncompliant state made a "good faith" effort to abide by the party's electoral calendar, and to impose the full weight of its available penalties, namely a 100 percent takedown of a state's delegation, only if Democratic leaders in that state misbehaved. So the fact that it was Republicans who fomented the move-up of primaries in both these states to dates out-of-line with the DNC calendar is at the heart of the matter.
The rules also demand that the DNC's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee conduct "an investigation, including hearings if necessary" into these matters. The purpose of such a probe is to figure out if Democratic leaders in a state that did move up "took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith" to either "achieve legislative changes" to bring a state into compliance or to "prevent legislative changes" that took a state out of compliance. A DNC spokesman could not point to any real "investigation" the party conducted of the actions of "relevant Democratic party leaders or elected officials," as the rules put it. All that happened with Florida, for example, was that two representatives of the state party made a pitch for leniency immediately before the Rules Committee voted for sanctions.
What a probe might have discovered was a rationale for doing, at worst, what the RNC did to its own overeager primary schedulers in the same two states -- cutting the delegations by half. That's precisely the penalty specified in DNC rules, but the committee, exercising powers it certainly had the legal discretion to exercise, upped the ante as far as it could. In a bizarre reversal of public policy, the RNC, surely aware that the principal miscreants in both states were Republicans, applied a sane yet severe sanction. The Democrats opted for decapitation.
The presumption of much of the national coverage about Michigan, to start with, has been that the Dems did this one to themselves -- a presumption based, in large part, on Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm's endorsement of a January 15 vote, a date far ahead of the anticipated February 9 primary. All Clinton-backer Granholm did, however, was a sign a bill. The bill originated in a Republican-controlled Senate and passed by a 21-to-17 straight party-line vote -- with every Democrat casting a no vote.
Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist, is, like Granholm, seen as a prime player behind the state's acceleration of the primary calendar. But Crist isn't half the Florida story; Marco Rubio, a Jeb Bush protégé who runs the nearly 2-to-1 Republican Florida House, drove that bill through the legislature like it was a tax cut limited by law to top GOP donors.
Indeed, the tracks under this train wreck trace back, in each case, to Republican maneuvers in state legislatures, political no- man's-lands for all who've blithely dismissed the disenfranchisement of the millions of registered Florida and Michigan Democrats.
Michigan: Republicans on the Bench and in the Statehouse
Let's start with Michigan, whose Democratic chair Mark Brewer is a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the national party and in that capacity voted to sanction Florida -- a pretty good indication that he wasn't a great champion of challenging the DNC calendar in his own state. Brewer in fact declared the Republican-sponsored move-up bill unacceptable from the start.
When it weaved its way through the divided Michigan legislature last August, only 29 of the state's 75 Democratic legislators (in the House and Senate) supported it. A week after the bill cleared the Senate over unified Democratic objections, these 29 Democrats in the House voted for it, precisely the same number that voted against it or abstained (22 and seven). It was 38 Republican yes votes in the House that made it law. While Democrats like the governor, U.S. Senator Carl Levin, and DNC committeewoman Debbie Dingell favored moving the primary date up, it was a Republican state senator, Cameron Brown, who proposed the January 15 date. Levin and Dingell only supported that date when they concluded that the DNC was allowing other states, like New Hampshire, to defy the party's prescribed schedule while threatening Michigan with sanctions if it shifted its date.
And Levin and Dingell certainly weren't calling the shots for the Democrats in the legislature. Andy Dillon, the Democratic House speaker who'd voted for the move-up initially, walked away from the early primary in November, almost a month before the DNC voted to strip the state of its delegation. When two court rulings found the move-up bill unconstitutional for technical reasons, giving Democratic state legislators who initially voted for it a chance to reconsider, they took it. Dillon and his House Democrats refused to support a bill that would've protected the January 15 date from threatened judicial cancellation by correcting the technical deficiency. The Senate, again voting along party lines, quickly adjusted the bill to the court decisions, but Dillon refused to allow a vote in the House. All of this suggests a "good faith" effort to block an early primary -- as required by DNC rules.
Had not the state's highest court overturned the earlier decisions by a 4-to-3 vote just days before absentee ballots had to be mailed out, the early primary would not have been held. Significantly, all four of the judges who voted to allow the election were Republicans, and two of the judges who voted against it were Democrats.
In fact, it was a Democratic political consultant who brought the lawsuit that almost killed the primary. While the Republican state party filed an amicus brief in support of the bill, the Democrats took a barrage of editorial potshots in the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the Flint Journal, and other papers for refusing to stand up for the state's interest. Salivating over all the attention and revenue that would come with an early primary, the papers accused Democrats of "withering," "carrying water for presidential candidates," and "blocking a bill to rescue the election." State GOP chair Saul Anuzis declared: "The Michigan Democrats and the House Democrats in particular appear willing to blow up the primary for petty, political, selfish, self-preservationist motives, to protect their hides."
Even before the court rulings, 19 Democrats in the House co-sponsored an October bill to repeal the one that authorized the election, including eight members who'd initially voted for the January 15 date. That bill was doomed from the outset since the Senate would never agree, but it was a measure of how fiercely Democrats had come to oppose the early primary. The ultimate result in Michigan, with a triumphant Clinton the only major candidate on the ballot, is, without a doubt, a Republican result.
In Florida, Crushed by a Republican Supermajority
The Republicans don't just control both houses of the Florida legislature. Their combined 103-to-57 majority allowed them to dictate the terms of the bill that moved the primary to January 29. It is true that all but one of the state's Democratic legislators supported the bill. But a closer look reveals that vote to be more an indication of a realistic and productive compromise with the ruling Republicans than any intent to breach Democratic rules.
Florida's leading news outlets, just like Michigan's, converted an early primary into a matter of state patriotism, and that point of view, coupled with the mathematical inability to even slow the Republican push, forced Democrats to roll over.
Another factor attracting Democratic votes in the legislature for the bill was one the DNC should certainly appreciate. Governor Crist threw a reform long sought by Florida Democrats into the bill: a mandatory paper trail for all votes cast in future elections. "The Democrats have been fighting for a paper trail bill since 2000," said State Senator Nan Rich, "and Governor Bush never would support it. So finally we got a governor who was willing to support it and it ended up connected to the early primary bill. That was unfortunate. If the paper trail hadn't been there, I believe we Democrats would've all voted no. Still, if all the Republicans had voted one way and all the Democrats had voted another way, the bill would've passed." (This Christmas tree bill -- whose title alone was 154 lines long -- had something special for everyone. It would even enable Crist to run as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, revoking a ban against state officials running for federal office.)
But "the driving force behind the move," as the Tampa Tribune put it, was 36-year-old House speaker Marco Rubio, who announced that pushing the primary up was a top goal before he took over the House at the start of 2006. Branded a "Jeb acolyte" by the Florida press, Rubio, a Cuban from West Miami married to a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, was given a gold samurai sword by Bush in a passing-of-the-conservative-mantle gesture in 2005. Rubio is a member of a wired Florida law firm whose chairman is so close to Bush that he rushed down to the county jail when the governor's daughter Noelle was arrested on a drug-related charge. When Rubio's term as speaker ends later this year, he is slated to go to work for a think tank headed by a Jeb Bush business associate. The primary bill originated with Rubio and ultimately passed the House unanimously -- but only after Democrats made what they knew would be a losing effort to alter it.
Martin Kiar and Mary Brandenburg, House Democrats who were cosponsors of the bill, tried to amend it. "We offered an amendment on the floor shifting the date to one within the Democratic party rules," said Brandenburg. "The Democrats all voted for it, and Republicans all voted against it." Actually, the Kiar/Brandenburg proposal did not completely comply with DNC directives, but it was a signal of the concerns Florida Dems had about the move-up legislation. Said Kiar: "No matter what, whether we supported it or cosponsored it, the Republican majority was going to push it through."
When the DNC sanctioned Florida, it critiqued the efforts of the Democratic leaders in both houses, suggesting that they'd merely gone through the motions of feigned opposition. But the House cosponsor of the bill, David Rivera, literally laughed on the floor at the Democratic amendment, according to the House Democrats. Going through the motions was all the outgunned Democrats could do. A DNC critic of Florida Democrats was reduced in a recent New York Times op-ed to citing remarks supporting the early primary made by state leaders after it was a fait accompli, likely because she couldn't make a case about their conduct before the Republican legislature set the date.
Some Democrats Are More Equal Than Others
The Democratic national committeeman who introduced the motion on the party's Rules Committee to deprive Florida of all its delegates -- a precursor to the Michigan decision a few months later -- was Ralph Dawson, a New York lawyer who was Howard Dean's Yale roommate and an advisor to Dean's 2004 campaign. Dawson's role was seen as a signal of Dean's appetite for a kick-ass rebuke.
As much as the DNC tries to pretend otherwise, it had choices. In fact, it later showed understandable leniency to three other states who changed their primary dates--New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina -- seating all their delegates. The tough love treatment was reserved for Michigan and Florida.
The national party had tried -- before New Hampshire's case wound up on its docket -- to leave the impression that zero tolerance was automatic once violations of the schedule occur. Back in June, a DNC spokeswoman, for example, told the Associated Press that neither Dean nor the Rules Committee "has the power to waive the rules for any state," explaining that "these rules can be changed only by the full DNC." Yet a few months later, on the same day that the Rules Committee stripped Michigan of its delegates, it waived the rules for New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina, each of which had also moved up their primaries.
Though Dawson and others on Rules now say, as they did in recent interviews, that states whose contests were always scheduled before February 5 were free to shift dates without sanction, that's not what the delegate selection rules adopted in 2006 say. Those rules provided an automatic 50 percent loss of delegates for any state party that moved its contest to any day "prior to or after the dates" spelled out by the DNC.
That's why Rules powerhouse Donna Brazile said she would "grudgingly support the waiver," warning New Hampshire shortly before the December committee vote that "the days of 'privilege' may end soon."
Not only did "first-primary-or-die" New Hampshire switch from January 22 to January 8, it moved ahead of Nevada, whose January 19 caucus had been deliberately scheduled by the DNC to precede New Hampshire's. But New Hampshire's Democrats got a DNC waiver because their back was up against the wall, due to a decision by the South Carolina Republican Party to move its primary up to January 19. That unilateral decision -- which the Carolina Democrats declined to join in -- forced New Hampshire's hand. The waiver was, in other words, a reasonable response to a Republican provocation. What's unclear is why one Republican provocation is more equal than another. (Once New Hampshire moved, Iowa had to adjust as well. South Carolina Democrats ultimately made a minor switch for other reasons.)
While the DNC implicitly challenged the "good faith" of the Democratic opposition to the Republican moves in Florida and Michigan, it seemed far less interested in gauging what New Hampshire Democrats were doing. The head of the South Carolina GOP actually traveled to Concord, New Hampshire, to announce the decision to move his state's primary up. He stood in the Executive Council chambers of the statehouse with Secretary of State William Gardner and Representative James Splaine, a Democrat who led the legislative efforts to protect the state's first-primary tradition.
Democratic governor John Lynch was at a funeral when the press conference occurred, but his spokesman said Lynch "has faith in Bill Gardner" and "supports whatever Bill decides." And Lynch, who had already derided the DNC decision to put Nevada ahead of New Hampshire, was clearly pleased that the acceleration of the South Carolina Republican primary date was giving Gardner all the justification he needed to squeeze back ahead of Nevada. New Hampshire officials even called the maneuver an "alliance" with South Carolina Republicans. Gardner promptly chose a new date 11 days before Nevada, defying the schedule that the DNC had issued.
The RNC, a veritable model of consistency in these matters, stripped New Hampshire of half its delegates over the date change, even though it was unmistakably prompted by the Republican maneuver in South Carolina. But Howard Dean and company held their fire this time, examining extenuating circumstances with an understanding they refused to extend to Michigan and Florida. In the end, they changed the rules in the middle of the game, throwing the book at some states and discarding it altogether for others.
The inconsistency on New Hampshire aside, DNC officials have come up with one other argument for why they were so tough on Michigan and Florida. Dean's spokesman Damien LaVera said in an email to Huffington Post that, despite the unmistakable references in the rules to testing the "good faith" of a state's "elected officials" and examining a state's "legislative" efforts, the DNC's rules "apply to a state party plan, not state legislatures or elected officials." LaVera insisted that the only standard their Rules Committee judges compliance by is what state parties do, and that the parties in Michigan and Florida had options other than the state-designated primaries. A DNC official claimed that the Michigan party had sponsored so-called "firehouse caucuses" in the past and could have set their own date and done them again, ignoring the state-run January 15 primary. The Florida party, the DNC source added, was "offered $880,000" by the DNC to host their own caucus on a date in compliance with the DNC schedule and chose to participate, instead, in the state-financed primary, a "bad faith" decision.
But Florida party officials said the $880,000 would've only covered the cost of 150 caucus sites, with the capacity to draw a maximum of 150,000 voters out of the state's 4 million Democrats. "It wasn't a real offer," a spokesman said. Michigan's party would have had to self-finance caucuses, which, even with added Internet and mail voting, drew only 165,000 voters in 2004, a fraction of the 600,000 who voted in 2008. Stripping both states of their full delegations because the state parties in each refused to run these limited-participation caucuses--which would have occurred a couple of weeks after an official, state-financed primary -- is a bit like punishing Democrats because they like democracy.
Obama's Backers--and the Road to the Nomination
The DNC critique of Florida's noncompliance included a reference to the fact that a Democratic state senator was the initial sponsor of the move-up bill in that house, which was seen as a sign of eagerness on the part of some Democratic leaders to break the rules. That senator was Jeremy Ring, an Obama supporter. Obama even named Ring's 2006 campaign manager to run his statewide Florida effort. Ring was such a champion of the early primary that when Obama, like all the other candidates, supported the sanctions and agreed not to campaign in the state, Ring withdrew his endorsement.
When Governor Crist signed the bill at a ceremony in West Palm Beach, the man at his side was Bob Wexler, the chair of Obama's Florida campaign. Wexler wasn't there because he wanted to defy Howard Dean. He was there for the same reason that almost all the Democrats in the legislature voted for the bill. He is the state's leading foe of paperless voting systems and filed two suits against them. He saw the bill as the governor's fulfillment of a campaign pledge "to make Florida a model state for the nation in terms of our election system."
Similarly, all three of the House Democrats who endorsed Obama -- Coleman Young II, Bert Johnson, and Aldo Vagnozzi -- voted in favor of the bill to push the Michigan date forward. When Obama later took his name off the Michigan ballot, Young and Johnson became sponsors of the bill to cancel the election they had just voted to authorize.
The support of Obama's principal backers in both states for the move-up bills was hardly consequential, but it does raise questions about his current opposition to any counting or recounting of these states. If bad faith is the DNC's standard, Obama doesn't have to look too far to find alleged examples of it, and to recognize that the national party might be unfairly characterizing what the leaders in these states did.
Imagining a convention without delegations from these large and politically volatile states has become the nightmare of every thinking Democrat. Polls indicate that a nominee who refuses to count the 1.7 million Floridians who voted in a level-playing field primary, or to find a way for them to vote again, will wind up wasting whatever time and money he or she spends there in the general election campaign. As close as the general election vote in Michigan has been in recent years, even a small margin of voters disgruntled by the state's Democratic lockout could push it into the GOP column. Obama's stonewalling about both states may offer short-term advantages, but two delegations denied seating because of his maneuvers may well be seen as contrary to his populist rationale now -- and crippling to his candidacy in November.
Ed Pozzuoli, the Republican chair of Broward County, recalls the Florida showdown of 2000, when he says Democrats taunted Republicans, insisting that they should "let every vote count." He gloats now: "I guess that's changed in eight years." He's hardly the only one chortling over the likely consequence of what he calls the "draconian" Democratic spiking of his state's delegation.
What started out years ago as Howard Dean's 50-state organizing strategy for the national party now looks like a 48-state electoral one. Michigan and Florida could become the Ralph Nader of 2000, the great regret that delivers the country once again to four years of darkness.
Research assistance by: Kimberly Chin, Shaunna Murphy, Shea O'Rourke, Marguerite A. Suozzi, Adam Weinstein and John Wilwol.
Research support for this article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.
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so the 'certain aspects' obama would require to allow FL and MI votes to be counted would be for their delegations to agree in advance to vote for him? while the pundits constantly dwell on hillary's failings, most ignore the fact obama has failed to win the number of delegates required to be the nominee; failed to take and hold a real lead in the polls over clinton among democrats nationally even as the presumptive nominee; failed to win virtually all key big electoral states; and is afraid he will fail to win a popular vote majority if FL and MI are counted. how is that supposed to inspire confidence in the half of democrats who aren't supporting him? most recent polls show hillary stronger than obama against mccain in key states of OH, PA, and yes florida. shutting florida out of the convention out of fear of losing to hillary wont help that.
It's a sad commentary on the incompetence of the Dems party that they can't figure out how to fix Florida and Michigan. this is the party that professes to be able to fix our foreign and domestic problems and they have to blame the Republicans for their inability to run a nominating process?
The sad commentary is that Obama or anyone would believe it is okay to try to prevent a democrat from being represented in the democratic primaries. Obama, you should be ashamed if you allow this travesty. It is a matter of principle that democratic supporters have equal voices in picking a candidate. Shame, shame, shame, Obama. If you do not quickly start to cooperate with a revote then I have no respect for you. A lifelong democrat, I am embarassed that someone who professes to want justice , equality etc. throughout the nation, would ensure that democrats in Florida have their voting rights stolen by republicans again. It is said, spitefully, Hillary will do anything to become President. Yet what are you willing to do? Are you willing to hide behind rules applied at the wishes of republican legislatures? It is time to stand up for Florida and Michigan democrats? Where are you Obama? Is being President more important than giving loyal democrats a voice? How can you continue to look in the mirror if you cannot stand up for right? Are you going to hope no one that your supporters will drown out the cry for justice ? Are you going to involve them in this treachery towardsthe democratic voters in Florida and Michigan? Stand up Obama, do the right thing. Let the voices of the democrats of Florida and Michigan be heard.
The role of Republican-controlled state governments has been consistently ignored from the beginning.
This general election was one for the Democrats to lose. Only a totally incompetent party would blow it.
Can the Democratic Party disenfranchise voters and collapse? "Yes we can!"
And Obama's role shows just how clearly he is a politician with rhetoric. Yet again (time after time), he's talk without walk.
Finally, someone calls out Obama on his position not to allow people to vote. There was absolutely no reason for Obama to be against re-votes in those states. Except one- that is. He was going to lose big time and fall behind in the popular vote. The author points out other ironies too... like 2,000 Obama votes having the same strength as 300,000 HRC votes. This system is broken as broken can be.
Barrett's analysis is a very detailed chronology of the events leading up to the current dilemma regarding Florida and Michigan Democratic primary elections. I believe Obama erred by allowing the appearance that he opposes the delegations be seated. If the DNC rules proscribe that the delegations be seated at 50% then led it be done. Not at the convention but now.
I would like to point out that the Republicans attempted to sabotage the Democratic primaries in other ways. Clinton won the state of Texas popular vote by about 100,000 votes. For days prior to the primary Rush Limbaugh was hawking Republicans to vote for Hillary; and there is evidence that they did in fact did so perhaps enough to swing the popular vote in her favor. The 30 year Democratic Party tradition of holding precinct caucuses followed by county conventions is now complete. In Travis County (Austin) there were 10,000 delegates who showed up -- and that is just one county. There are 254 counties in Texas. Once the state convention is complete it will certainly result in a victory for Obama, so the Clinton campaign will not be in a position to claim victory in Texas after all.
Darn those Repubs and their voting majority.
Thank you sir for giving us the truth in details. Not that it will matter. The Kool Aid cultists of the Obama campaign will not acknowledge the truth. They have not yet. Their spin, their misogyny and their sexism is all overlooked and ignored by a MSM who continues to throw temper tantrums because the Clintons aren't sufficiently accessible, don't bow to them. Of course what rational human being, having been treated like scum by a media who despised that "trailer trash who had not right the WH" would trust these people?
After the way the likes of Russert, Matthews et al went after the Clintons, sneering and tittering like adolescents, name calling in the most unprofessional way, and then gave George W the biggest ezee pass of all, down deep they KNOW they have blood on their hands.
This election too will be decided by a bunch of misogynistic millionaires. When the Obama folks are the targets of their unfair practices they might get it. But it will be too late.
Put aside the trickery, wrangling and other accusations. Both Florida and Michigan are major states, and MI is going to be essential to stop McCain. The DNC and candidates set the rules, and jeopardized alienating their constituents, as well as viability for the general election. All Democratic candidates' names were on the ballot in Florida. All but Clinton removed their names from the ballot in Michigan, trying to abide by DNC regulations. Negotiations, compromises or some solution to this problems must be found to be fair to the voters and candidates. the DNC better get on this immediately and settle the issue before the convention.
Please "Willfully Blind" put aside your trickery.
There were FOUR names on the Michigan ballot, plus a concerted effort by the Obama and Edwards campaigns to get people to vote 'uncommitted'.
Why do Obama supporters feel the need to consistently mislead on this obviously researchable fact? Is it a campaign talking point?
Part 2 BEGIN
In 2004, Kerry refused to call Bush the deserter he is and failed to call Cheney on his 5 cowardly deferments. When attacked by Swift Boaters, he failed to counter their lies, and in the debates he failed to challenge Bush on his 'I don't know where Bin Laden is and I don't give it much thought or concern' That was an amazing gaff of missed opportunity. Where was the Democratic Party on DieBold's "electro-thief" voting machines when the CEO of the corporation (a Bush Ranger/Pioneer) said he would deliver Ohio to Bush.
If the Democrats scarcely bothered to fight back in 2000 and 2004 or challenge the vote rigging/stealing tricks of Republicans, why should we believe that they will be any different in 2008?
http://VoteNader.org/index.html
"Michigan and Florida could become the Ralph Nader of 2000, the great regret that delivers the country once again to four years of darkness."
Wrong analysis Wayne.
Intellectual laziness on your part not only to acknowlege Ralph Nader's unparalled achievements in public service for our nation and all her citizens, but also political bigotry to scapegoat Ralph Nader when 350,000 registered Democratic Loyalists from Florida chose Bush over Gore compared to Nader's 96,000 votes. These were your own people going over to the other side. Do the math. You should know better. According to our Constitution, neither Democrats or Republicans have any special privelege or entitlement to own voters souls categorically nor to limit American democracy through scapegoating and willfull exclusion of other candidates and parties to protect seat warmers of incuments.
Al Gore WON in 2000. Nader has said that repeatedly. It was the Supreme Court who overruled public sentiment and awarded Bush the presidency to overrule the public will. Your argument would be more constructive to ask: Since the Supreme Court illegally trumped voters wishes, why then did the Democratic Congress give the green light to Bush's ultra conservative supreme court nominees: Alito and Roberts? Didn't they learn their lesson from 2000? Of course it didn't help that Gore scarcely fought back and allowed the Bush campaign to effectively muscle its way into office and then go on to audaciously claim an unearned mandate to restore honor and integrity to the White House.
Part 1 END
Let's add Al Gore's home state to the mix. Maybe if Al Gore could have talked about raising the minimum wage, he might have won TN and the White House.
this is a well researched article. if i could have my preferences at this point, i would say that none of the states should be punished, because it was so arbitrary who was punished and who wasn't. and anyway, i'm from michigan, and i want my vote to count.
Obama has said officially that he would abide by whatever decision the DNC renders regarding revoting and/or seating delegates. But it is simply unfair and undemocratic to act as if those were fair and legitimate contests. Obama's name was not even on the ballot in MI and he did not campaign in FL. Who knows how many people may have not even gone to polls knowing full well that they were voting in an illegitimate primary. The rules of a revote are unclear at best and unconstitutional at worst, bringing all sort of due process issues up. It is undoable. And the idea of elections being personally funded by the fat cat supporters of one of the candidates is highly improper, prejudicial, and undemocratic.
the DNC and the Clinton campaign approved the attempt to have a new primary in Michigan, only Obama said no, after he said he would support a DNC approved plan. Obama had tv ads on the air in Florida, unlike any of the other candidates. Obama claims Hillary has more name recognition and therefore his inability to campaign in Florida had him at a disadvantage. Time and time again when people meet Hillary or hear her speak without the intermediation of the media, they change their minds in a positive way towards Clinton, so her inability to campaign was also an issue, but she prevailed (without tv commercials). Obama chose to take his name off the Michigan ballot with Edwards to pander to Iowa and New Hampshire and often said that Clinton did not respect he primacy of their caucuses and primary, she took a political hit for it, but it was a gamble that turned out well for her. The Edwards and Obama campaigns actively asked people to vote uncommited to embarras Hillary and it didn't work. Florida should be seated as is, before the end of the primary season and Michigan should have a complete revote for Democrats (not people who voted in the Republican primary) costs could be split between the two campaigns.
Hillary agreed to the DNC sanctioning MI and FL. She signed a pledge. You and other Clinton supporters can spin it anyway you choose but that is the only fact that is relevant. You can not change the rules to suit your purposes once the game is in progress. If we are to beleive that she always disagreed with the DNC's decision, why did she sign a pledge that she did not agree with anyway? What does that say about her judgment? No amount of spin or political maneuvering can erase the fact that she agreed to the rules. It is quite simple.
1) The DNC has offered no plan for re-voting.
2) To claim that Hillary was at an equal disadvantage to Obama as far as not officially campaigning is absurd. She is a major celebrity known by one name and oh, yeah, the former first lady. He is, as her campaign says all the time, a nobody 1st term senator.
3) BTW, she did campaign in FL, technically calling them fundraisers. Obama did not buy airtime in any FL market. The commercials that might have aired in FL were part of a national cable buy.
Perhaps, that is what BO says in public, but his actions off the record are quite a different reality. I guess once you have consummed the BO Kool-Aid, you'll believe just about anything. Either you don't know too much about the Voting Rights Act or... you are too young to have perspective of just how important voting rights are to our DEMOCRACY in this country. FACT: BO has blocked and sabotaged every, single effort to get new Primaries in MI and FL. His latest is lawsuits. He says that he'll abide by whatever the DNC renders, but his ACTIONS are to block, sabotage, thwart, impede a re-vote.
and, PLEASE enough with the Rules are the Rules rationalizations from the BO fans. That is what ultimately turned me off and far away from the BO Campaign. Voters should NOT be punished for what Party and Elected Officials have ruled. This will ultimately be Obama's downfall. The Kool-Aid drinkers are too enraptured to see the reality of what is going on with voters in MI and FL -- they hate, despise and loathe Obama for this, especially Latinos And, that is having a ripple effect with other Latinos throughout the country. Florida will NOT forget Barry's b.s. Peoples votes should count, ALWAYS!
ginamc- why is that Obama supporters must be drinking Kool-Aid-and what FLAVOR is it? What do Hillary supporters drink? with all her lying and losing, it must be something exponentially stronger than water,sugar,and some dye. Please provide links for the "FACT" that Obama has blocked and sabotaged efforts to get new primaries;I'd have thought it would be all over the news. Yeah,the Party and Elected Officials torpedoed the People's votes...That's too bad . It happens sometimes. It happened in 2000 when NINE UNELECTED OFFICIALS ruled that a recount would harm Bush.
Obama for POTUS....OH YEEEAAAAAHHHH!
"FACT: BO has blocked and sabotaged every, single effort to get new Primaries in MI and FL. His latest is lawsuits. He says that he'll abide by whatever the DNC renders, but his ACTIONS are to block, sabotage, thwart, impede a re-vote".
Documentation?
Posted March 31, 2008 | 08:36 AM (EST)