Today, the Democratic National Committee announced that delegates from Florida and Michigan will be given 1/2 of a vote on the floor of the convention. (forgive me if I didn't phrase that exactly correctly; but it's roughly right!).
Let me just assert for the record that this will do nothing but make everyone involved mad.
Florida and Michigan Democrats are now officially (as far as their party goes) 5/10ths of a person.
Hillary supporters are angry that their supporters are considered "less than equal" than voters in Rhode Island or South Dakota.
Obama supporters are angry (I'm having trouble finding a polite way of spelling "p*ss@d" without obscuring the real intent of the word) that states that were originally found "afoul of Democrat Party rules" are now given any legitimacy at all.
No one wins. Everyone loses. (except possibly McCain)
I regret to admit that only the Republican Party leadership could have messed up an internal situation like this any worse.
Can't we just send everyone in DC home for good and start from scratch? Maybe elevate a few city council representatives, maybe a state senator or two, and lots (LOTS) of people who have never held elective office?
A breath of fresh air, no?
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WARNING: A POLITCAL ANSWER...Am I the only person who saw this train wreck traveling down the tracks five months ago when the primary season began? Sen. Obama's act of leaving his name off of the Michigan ballot was pure politcal naïveté. He was competing against a Clinton, for crying out loud. Of course she would try and seat those delegates if she needed them. How the democratic party can justify giving Michigan democratic delegates to Obama when he clearly earned absolutely none is beyond me, but this is the party that wanted to award Florida votes to Al Gore in 2000 that were clearly cast for other candidates because they "knew" the "intent" of the voter. Yikes. Yes, it would be nice to see a fresh slate of citizen legislators in all of our houses of government, especially here is Kansas, where abortion doctor George Tiller owns the governor, and she's reported to be on Sen. Obama's short list for VP. It's frightening for us, and an absolute joy for people who support the pro-choice side of the aisle.
arby,
No, you weren't the only person who saw the train wreck coming. The moment that the Democratic party decided to disenfranchise two major swing states, some kind of disaster was a distinct possibility. It was hoped that one candidate would win the rest of the primaries/caucuses decisively enough to render Florida and Michigan moot, but that Deus Ex Machina didn't pan out, and now the Dems have a real mess on their hands.
Don't want to steal any traffic, but Chris's post here got me thinking, so I expanded on it (at great length) over at my blog. Whenever you have a close election, victory often turns on the exact set of rules used to count the votes; different sets of rules produce different victors. So changing the rules after the votes start being counted--or even just publicly considering changing the rules--is inherently a political act.
The Dems here had untenable rules going in (disenfranchising two major swing states), and so had to consider changing the rules after the primaries had already started. This is guaranteed to produce a result that someone will find illegitimate. And given how close the election is, that's a whole lot of someones.
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