Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee? -- The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan

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.

Comments

[bayareavoter]

Obama knows that counting the votes as is or re-voting will ruin his narrative that he is sooo far ahead that Clinton has no chance of catching up. If you don't count about 2 million votes that's true.......

This well-researched post proves that Howard Dean is an idiot and that these 2 states were unfairly punished. Great going, Howard!

Why should one candidate have more sway than the other when it comes time to resolve this? Tell Obama to play fair for once.....oh, I forgot, starting with the way he disqualified Alice Palmer, he never has!

[EinChicago]

Obama has an unsurmonuntable lead... if you don't count teh 2.5 million votes cast in FL and MI,... and if you pressure HRc to drop out before PA, IN and PR....and if you only look at caucus results in TX and ignore the hundreds of thousands more votes from the primaries.

Obama's lead is a sham bbased on manipulated icre cream parlor socials and intimidation tactics.

[BoydReed]

Have some more "inconvenient truth"...

(1) FL and MI don't count right now because they broke DNC rules. Remember, the DNC is composed of party activists and insiders - who came out in droves for Clinton last year. That's where a lot of her initial bloc of superdelegates came from - the DNC.

(2) Please don't forget that Clinton AGREED to the rules. She even said in an NPR interview in New Hampshire that "this election [Michigan is] having won't mean anything."

(3) The calls for her to drop out are based on two things: the ever-dwindling possibility of her erasing Obama's delegate lead, and the increasingly divisive and lowball tactics her campaign is using. Democratic leaders don't want either campaign to do the Republicans' general-election work for them. She's welcome to pursue that dwindling possibility (she's only 130 delegates behind....but there are only about 560 delegates left to determine). However, if she continues her Tonya Harding impersonation, she's going to tick off the supers because she's damaging the Democratic front-runner for the GE.

(4) Obama's using intimidation, is he? Didn't 20 of Clinton's big-dollar donors recently threaten the Speaker of the House for having the temerity to suggest uncommitted supers should follow the popular vote. Yeah...trying to intimidate Nancy Pelosi, who is only the highest-ranking woman ever in US government...let's see how that plays with the DLCC.

[TianZi]

It is the height of hypocrisy to blame Obama for the Michigan and Florida debacle, when it was ethics-challenged officials within those states who are responsible--they violated the DNC's rules, not Obama.

Clinton promised NOT to campaign in either Michigan or Florida, as did every other Democratic candidate. Clinton pushed hard to have the election results accepted by the DNC, despite the fact Obama did not campaign in either state as per his oath, and despite Obama's name not even being on the ballot in one state. It was only after it became clear that the DNC wouldn't allow this that she began discussing a re-vote.

Barrett had to know all of the facts stated in the prior paragraph, yet didn't mention them. That's a lie by omission, an intentional distortion of the facts. Saying that Obama and Clinton competed on a "level playing field" in Florida is an outright lie and false on its face; Barrett knows that only Clinton campaigned there.

That Clinton chose to break her pledge with days to go before the elections in both states, and that Obama kept his word even after he knew Clinton would not keeps hers, tells us something about the intrinsic nature of these two candidates: Clinton is a liar ("Bosnian snipers", anyone?), and Obama is a man of his word.

[mjc]

Absolutely not true, Tianzi, that "only Clinton campaigned" in Florida. In fact, Obama ran a whole lot of expensive ads in Florida. All the names of the candidates were on the ballot and Hillary only flew in the evening of the primary when the shouting was all over. Obama's hands are all over this debacle, but never more so than refusing to find a way to allow the voters in BOTH states to send delegations to the National Conventions. Next to Obama and the Repugs, Howard Dean is sure going to be the number one enemy of any Democrat who believes in fair play. When other states were allowed to move their primaries all over the calendar, he chose to come down on Michigan and Florida. Why??? Maybe Dean is planning on joining the Repugs.

[accountability]

Do you know what is really interesting? The way the Obama supporters are supporting the DNC now when they used to castigate them mercilessly. They did the same with the media... the media was the worst, evil, corporate whores but somehow they changed over night, now they are fair.
Unless they criticize and/or investigate Obama for anything at all.
Such hypocrisy.
The DNC will be evil again if they do something that doesn't favor Obama. Who are these people? Have they lost their minds?

[Didi47]

Demand Dean's and Brazile's resignation immediately and make sure everyone's vote counts NOW and not when it's too late!!!

[athy]

Excuse me...Sen Obama DID campaign in Florida

http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/01/obama_is_first_democratic_cand.php

Obama Is First Democratic Candidate to Advertise Nationally By Ira Teinowitz 1/21/08 TV Week

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/clinton-says-obamas-national-ad-buy-violates-fla.-pledge-2008-01-21.html

Clinton campaign: Obama is violating Florida ban
By Aaron Blake 1/21/08
“The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of knowingly breaking a pledge not to campaign in Florida by paying for cable TV ads that reach households there.”


http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/29/clinton_thanks_florida_voters.html

Clinton Thanks Florida Voters by Anne E. Kornblut
“DAVIE, Fla. — After winning Florida’s non-binding Democratic primary, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton thanked Florida voters for their support. “I could not come here to ask in person for your votes, but I am here to thank you for your votes today,”

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/bellantoni/2008/01/team_clinton_obama_violates_ea_1.html

National Obama ad that ran in Florida

[BoydReed]

My goodness...you folks sure don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

Here's some fact for you. Sorry to ruin your fun. :)

FACT: Obama ran TV ads in northern Florida prior to the primary.
FACT: Those ads were part of a NATIONAL ad buy.
FACT: Those points were bought BEFORE the DNC imposed its sanctions, and they could not be pulled without pulling the entire ad buy.

FACT: Clinton DID appear at small fundraisers in Florida prior to the primary.
FACT: Those WERE allowed under the "no-campai­gn-or-part­icipate" agreement.
FACT: Democratic candidates, while pledging to not campaign or participate in any unapproved primary held before February 5, were allowed to appear at fundraisers in those states that were under 200 attendees.

"Facts are stubborn things." - Sen. Edward Kennedy

[accountability]

If you read with objectivity and not defensiveness you will see that he is not blaming Obama for the actions that led to the "punishment." However I have to say it does look a little suspicious that firm supporters of his in both states first pushed fort the date in defiance of the DNC and then tried to change it after the fact.

Also, can we deal with one story at a time, there are many threads dealing with Bosnia. Introducing it in this thread is a typical republican tactic of trying to change the subject as well as an obfuscation of facts by someone who doesn't have a clear, objective and well stated argument.

Bringing in these distractions doesn't help nor does it distract from Mr. Barrett's cogent, well thought out, well researched and well presented argument.

There is nothing wrong with objectivity, it doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for your candidate, it only shows you are intelligent enough to look at the facts.

[bartleby042]

Let's see now. I'm trying to remember if Ms. Clinton or anyone from her circle uttered a single objection to the exclusion of the Michigan and Florida delegates when the decision to do so was made.

Nope. I'm pretty sure that didn't happen.

This sort of reminds me of the college football teams who, before the season starts, all agree that the Bowl Championship Series will determine the "national champion," but who when they get left out of the title game, complain about how unfair the process was.

Ms. Clinton had plenty of opportunity to stand up for Michigan and Florida voters BEFORE the process ever began. Funny how she only started to care about them after she and her advisers got out their abacuses and figured that they could narrow the margin of defeat if they were counted.

Think about that for a second: "narrow the margin of defeat." It really tells you all you need to know about Ms. Clinton's candidacy. Never has the phrase, "Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" been so appropriate.

[PhiloVance]

Why is it always 'us' against 'them'; If something bad happens blame the other party. It's the same in both parties. No wonder people don't trust OR vote.

[MTfromCC]

Last thought:

I am really surprised at the extent to which the Clinton campaign continues to insult the intelligence of democrats who are participating in this. Nobody defends Obama better than Obama, and nobody shoots the Clinton campaign in the foot better than the Clinton camapign. It may be a 52-48 win, instead of a 60-40 win, but make no mistake about it, Obama will win the pledged delegates -- he has been defeating Mrs. Clintion and will continiue to defeat Mrs. Clinton in the one place that matters most - with the voters and in the peldged delegates (which is ultimately the only metric that matters). Obama will control the credentials committee and defeat her gambit there, too, and show his political toughness in doing so -- but it will no doubt tarnish his attempt to forge a new type of politics, but only because the Clintons keep waging the politics of the past in a deeply corrosive way. And the greatest irony of all (as witnessed by her plunging poll numbers in PA, the safest of states for her, now only 5 points apart per Rasmussen) is that all of these lines of attack and Machievellian political maneuvers clearly hurt her more than they help her, and they most certainly do NOT hurt him.

[gloria1129]

Last thought? Promise?? Thanks!

[MTfromCC]

Second to last thought: Ultimately, fighting the Clinton gambit on MI and FL protects the rest of us -- the other 30 Million plus who participated (and will participate between now and June) in these primaries. The question is not asked enough, but needs to be: Why should we voters who voted in the 48 states that did not break the rules be functionally disenfranchised by allowing fraudulent and bogus "contests" to stand when the voters in the states themselves, and in the other 48 states, were told they woudn't count? We are voting to give Obama the nomination -- so that decision should be overturned by two states whose primaries were conducted in violation of knowing rules, and were not contested? That's fair?

That is what rules are all about, unless you are someone for whom the only thing that matters is winning. And THAT is the real analogy to Florida 2000 -- be wary of people who will twist and traqmple on the rule of law and people's emotions to win an election no matter what. The last time, it gave us George W. Bush.

[mjc]

Even though you have three very UNbalanced posts on this blog, don't believe you read it. Most Democrats in all 50 states will note that New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina chose to move their primaries up. THAT IS THE POINT! Why punish two states that did, even with a lot of help from the Repug legislatures and the Obama forces? Wayne Barrett's blog is one of the best on this site and I have heard the same info from other sources as well. It is not fair; it is not democratic; and it will surely lead to McCain taking the November election 'cause those states have a lot of voters and they don't stay home.

[MTfromCC]

And the worst part of all of this -- THE WORST -- is that the Clinton campaign thinks Democrats are too stupid to see through this, and tag her for doing it. Invoking what the GOP did in Florida in 2000 in support of Mrs. Clinton's attempt to cheat the system here is a greivous insult to all Democrats and an act of rank hypocrisy. It lessens the party's chances of a big win in November, and it's not going to work, because Obama will control the credentials committee. I think the reason she's doing it is not because she thinks it will work -- she is way too smart to think that -- but because the only way she can raise money she desperately needs at this point is to paint some path to winning the nomination and counting MI and FL are integral to that -- but that doesn't make it right. You don't get do-overs for your campaign's earlier mistakes. And Obama is under no compulsion to agree to a format for a re-vote that is unfair, that would allow for more GOP mischief, or that would bar Democrats who voted in the Michigan GOP primary because their votes in the Democratic primary would not count. And Obama had nothing to do with the problem in the first place, and is only trying to ensure that the new game (i.e., any revote) is handled in fairly and without undue benefits to his opponent's campaign .

[MTfromCC]

This article misses many important points, and is entirely biased towards Mrs. Clinton. I agree that the GOP, particularly in Florida (and to a lesser extent in Michigan) played games to hurt the Democrats, and the true story on that needs to be told, especially by the mainstream media. But the reason why the issue has become conflagrated is because Mrs. Clinton, whose proxies on the Rules Committee (Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe) voted NOT to count the Florda primary and Michigan caucuses, and who signed a pledge not to participate in them in any way (but who then breached that pledge by leaving her name on the ballot in Michigan after the other major candidates all honored the pledge they signed and took their names off thet ballot) has made such a huge issue out of it, and that is ONLY because she "won" (and I use that word very loosely) more delegates in what were, by rules and otherwise, uncontested states that do not count. So only when they had a completely bogus delegate lead in both states -- and espectially in Soviet Michigan, where Hillary effectively "ran" unopposed -- Hillary flip flopped, deviated 180 degrees on what she told voters in Iowa and New Hampshire when she was courting their votes (and what her campaign's proxies actually voted for on the rules committee), and has deliberately stirred the pot with Michigan and Florida voters to hurt the party in order to gain a personal political advantage.

[Didi47]

MTCC:

How come you're panicking now that the TRUTH is surfacing? I thought the Obama camp was into the truth. lol

[Knowsbetter]

Then why was Obama on the Fla. ballot? It was the same as Mich.? could Obama have made a political decision? If HRC name wasn't supposed to be on the ballot in Mich. then they shouldn't have been allowed in Fla. The aggrement was no campaigning, not taking your name of the ballot. Obama chose to do so in Mich. and should suffer the result of his political decision! If your name is not on the ballot you get no votes, PERIOD! BTW Obama and Edwards were the only ones to take their name off the ballot, LIVE WITH IT!

[BoydReed]

Your post would be good - if it wasn't completely wrong.

(1) NONE of the candidates could get off the Florida ballot. See, each state has its own rules about when you can withdraw your name from a ballot. Florida's are different than Michigan's. There wasn't enough time to get off the ballot in Florida.

(2) The agreement said that the candidates would not campaign OR PARTICIPATE in any primary held before February 5 that was not approved by the DNC. Not only did all the Democratic candidates sign it, but Harold Ickes even helped get it passed by the DNC. Yes, the same Harold Ickes who is a Clinton senior adviser.

(3) Obama, Edwards, Kucinich and Gravel ALL took their names off the Michigan ballot. Only Clinton and Dodd stayed on.

(4) The Michigan primary has been ruled unconstitutional by the Michigan Supreme Court. Therefore, NONE of the votes can legally be counted. Live with THAT.

[Vinkaye]

I do not understand the logic that says "forget them, they broke the rules. They knew the rules back in 2007" Okay folks, first of all, do we, as supposed Democrats, want to concede Fl & MI to the GOP in November? Isn't the point, to win the WH back? Let's remember we are in a different situation during this contest, where all cauces and primaries will actually count, because no nominee can reach the magic number. Therefore we need to know how Democrats in every primary feel. Clearly no one thought the race would be dead even in April, but it is. Now it's time to be grown-ups and figure out how to re-vote, so we have a chance of putting FL & MI in the Dems column in November.

[jackassa]

Mr Barrett.

Here's an interesting opinion on your article. I'd love to hear your response to this guy, and perhaps some of your readers would want to take him on:

http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=276

It's an amusing look into the paranoid fantasies of the ultra right wing, in the guise of intelligent, yet heated, discourse.

[inklingrevival]

Thanks for reading my blog. That was my post, and I'm curious to know what "paranoid fantasies" you found there, considering that I merely discussed the facts and conclusions Mr. Barrett noted in his article.

Plumb Bob
http://www.plumbbobblog.com

[inklingrevival]

I wrote the post you've linked to. Thanks for reading my blog. I'm curious to know what "paranoid fantasies" you found there, considering that all I did was discuss the facts and conclusions Mr. Barrett reached in this article.

By the way, using expansive adjectives like "ultra-right wing" to describe a mainstream neo-conservative merely erodes your credibility. I recommend you use more accurate labels in the future.

Plumb Bob

[mjc]

Have no quarrel with your blog..plumb bob. The point thought of keeping the Michigan and Florida delegates out of the Convention is really hard to understand since breaking the rules on when several states were going to put their primaries on the calendar was clearly known by all, including Howard Dean. The real question is why he and other supposedly neutral Dems like Donna Brazille feel that Michigan and Florida breaking the rules was SOooooo terrible that they would be punished but not South Carolina or Nevada or New Hampshire.

[texanna]

Before all of the maneuvering at the state legislature level there is the problem that the DNC has been ignoring for too long -- why do they let two of the smallest, whitest states lead the primary campaign? Why haven't they, long ago, set up some more equitable way for the primary to proceed? By continuing to let the Iowa caucus and NH primary lead off the campaign they've continued to frustrate the other states that are more representative of the general electorate until this year that frustration boiled over into a chaotic rush to move up primary dates. The DNC and more recently Howard Dean put the problem into play by doing nothing substantive to change the situation and now they want to make others responsible. And, apparently, they've compounded the problem by being ham-fisted with two of the largest and most important states. Now, why are they doing that? When it comes to politics, nothing is usually as it seems so what's going on in the Democratic Party that is being played out in the campaigns of Sens. Clinton and Obama? The only other thing that I found interesting about this article is that it is one of the rare ones on Huff Po that shows Sen. Obama to be a politician in all regards instead of the next saviour of the world. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it just isn't the way he's usually presented.

[aspen]

Republicans may have played a role in this debacle, but the DNC shot the party in the foot on this one. They could have and should have found a way to find a way around this divisive issue. After all, Florida and Michigan are not Idaho and NH. There are substantial potential Dem votes. It is very unwise to tic them off to exercise party discipline. Punishing the state Dem parties for what Reps conjured up is like punishing Sally when it was Johnny who broke the vase.

[MrWinky]

Some important points you left out:

It would be in Dean's best interest to keep MI and FL happy, and at the time it was believed Clinton was the favored candidate to win, so why would Dean want to exclude them and risk their ire?

What is your stance about Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign advisor, being one of the people that voted for stripping their delegates?

What is your stance about Clinton being ok with it until she was losing?

Also, you state Clinton is for a revote, and Obama is against it, but you don't mention:

Neither legislature passed a plan for revote on which either candidate could give a thumbs up or down.

Clinton's campaign head in FL, Wasserman-Schultz, voted AGAINST a revote.

The rulings on the illegalities of a revote and the possible lawsuits which could tie up the Dem nomination.

It would have been nice to get a neutral breakdown on this, not the honing of another agenda

[Purpladi34]

Thanks to all of those who got it right regarding Florida. I am a Florida resident, and worked at the polls, and i can tell you that in some areas the voting was light becuase voters did not think that their vote would count. Also, if you did not have a stake in lowing your prppoerty taxes or had to vote for your local government then you had no reason to vote. Funny, i had a converastion with a number of people on Saturday and they wanted an explanation was to why the votes in FL and MI did not count. Also, if they they thought it would count later why did they tell us that we did not have to vote? You see in some areas the message was, you did not have to vote because it will not count. Therefore, in some areas the people did not go to poles. I voted because I am a homewoner, local election, and I worked at the pole.

[nk007]

Dear Mr. Barrett,

If I understand you correctly you seem to be blaming the Republicans for "rigging Florida and Michigan" vote, as well as Sen. Obama for being complicit in that "rigging." This means that the Republicans knew, well in advance, when they "rigged" the vote, that Sen. Obama would be the beneficially of that "rigging." Following your logic, these smart Republicans did all that in order to deprive Sen. Clinton of the nomination for the Democratic party, because they wanted to award it to Sen. Obama. My question for you sir, is: Why didn't Senator Clinton vigorously object, at the time this scheme was hatched by the Republicans to deny her the nomination and instead give it to Sen. Obama? Is it not a fact, sir, that Sen. Clinton signed on the pledge, along with the other candidates, not sit the Michigan and Florida delegations because they violated DNC rules, only changed her stance when she realized that she could not win enough delegates without those states? Is not the case that Clinton and her supporters are clearly trying to change the rules, not because they opposed the rules in principle, but because they stand to gain from those changes?

[wheels062556]

There are several more issues you left out:

1) New Hampshire has a long standing state law requiring their primary to be first. To not change the date would have required repeal of that law

2) Senator Ring from Palm Beach County was a first termer who introduced one of several bills to move up Florida's date. His bill was never even heard in committee. The Senate adopted the House Committee Substitute.

3) And this is most important.... Why did the Florida Republicans want to move up the date? I have looked at the staff reports on the relevant bills. The Republican power structure was very aware that both parties had threatened sanctions, but they were also aware that an early primary date favored the best known and best financed candidates. When they voted, the best known, best financed candidate was Clinton. Moving up the date was all part of their strategy run against the candidate they felt was easiest to beat, Hillary Clinton. This was well before Rush promoted his much more heavy handed support of Hillary, but it was in the same vein.

[EinChicago]

1) Why on earth would FL or MI be affected by a NH law? NH has zero jurisdiction over them. NH can make a law that only NH votes sdecide teh election and the President has to be a NH resident for all it matters. The NH law and $1.25 will buy you a soda. But that's about it.