This has nothing to do with eating your young even if that is what we are eventually reduced to.
The voters of Florida are innocent parties to this dispute. The Florida Democratic party can’t afford to shell out money for another primary. Howard Dean is an @$$hole with his latest “What do you expect ME to do about it?” statement. And the rest of the Big D states are held hostage to Obama and his supporters desire to win by suppressing the vote. Caucuses in a state as large as Florida are out of the question, not to mention unrepresentative of the population at large.
So, here is my compromise for getting Florida seated (Michigan can follow this example but I would definitely go with a do-over there without an option).
Present the following choice to the candidates and let them decide to either:
a,) Both candidates agree to waive The RULZ and accept the Florida delegation as is and without penalty, recognizing that the voters were not responsible for disenfranchising themselves. (this will soothe hurt feelings) or
b,) Have a do-over mail-in primary *paid for by the candidate who refuses option a*.
Michigan: The primary must be redone so have both candidates split the cost of the mail-in primary.
If I were Howard Dean, this is the way I would go. Yes, it requires a bit of leadership and impartiality. No, I don’t expect him to do it.
Filed under: Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: Florida. Michigan, primary options. |
The Confluence 
As somebody said: “Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.
I can’t believe the DNC and Dems who hate Hillary are doing their darndest best to lose the election.
It started with the absolutely silly RULZ of pissing off voters in FL and MI, 2 very important states in the GE. FL was actually turning Blue and HRC can still carry it.
Then there was this chuckleheaded 50-states strategy for the GE, like we are ever going to be competitive in all 50 states.
Then there is the unbelievable delegates apportionment. I just realized that Hillary Clinton won NJ comfortably, an important and large state. Yet her 11 delegate advantage there is offset by his win in f*#@ink ID. That was enough for me to smash my office coffee cup.
Can anybody believe this?
Am I a Democrat because I hate myself?
Geeeezzz!
MABlue, I think she is going to win this thing. Obama can only win it by suppression. All we need to do is make more people aware of it.
I proposed another solution over at TALKLEFT.
Now that Florida has been punished enough, that is: has lost ad revenue, campaigning time and money, party infrastructure, my opinion is that its delegates should be seated.
Not happy? My guess is superdelegates from Florida will count for roughly 1/4 of Florida delegation. Seat the pledged delegates from Florida, but strip Florida superdelegates of their votes!! That way:
– voters are heard.
– party officials are punished (not that it was really their fault)
– a messy revote is avoided.
Florida loses 1/4 of its delegates.
MA Blue,
Who was it that said, “I don’t belong to an organized party. I am a democrat?”
How prophetic!
Ghost2: Interesting. The best thing right now is to not punish the voters. And the candidate who makes the attempt to make it easy on them will have their support in November. I see my scenario as being a win-win for either candidate. Clinton gets the delegates in either scenario but Obama gets the goodwill and this is just as important should he manage to win the nomination.
Ghost2: Either Mark Twain or will Rogers
One more thing to keep in mind:
ALL this “punishment” of MI and FL was done to suck up to IA and NH, and to a lesser extent to SC.
We are pissing of millions of Dems in 2 of the largest states to suck up to 2 states with 3 electoral votes and a state that WILL be carried by Republicans.
Wow! The Democratic party is ran by geniuses.
Question: were the 2004 primaries THIS polarizing? Did you have the same level of hatred/passion among partisans of the different presidential hopefuls?
MABlue: Yes, and it will be to Obama’s detriment if he doesn’t just seat them already. If he is the nominee because the superdelegates want ti that way, he can’t afford to piss off a very important state. And he isn’t going to win the primary there in any case. He *might* pick up a few seats it he foots the bill. He’d certainly go a long way towards smoothing things over with them. But he can’t win the general without them. And he will definitely be on their $%#@list come November if he doesn’t do something like what I’ve suggested above.
Upstate: I wasn’t on Dkos until after the primaries in 2004 so I don’t know what it was like but I’ve heard that this is MUCH worse. I think several things are contributing to the tension. We’ve had 28 years of GOP in the White House in the last 40 and we are sick of it. This is an historic election because the two Dem candidates are novelties and have their own builtin support. The Deaniacs from 2004 got a taste of power in 2006 and have decided that this is the election to test out their theories. The primary season was ambushed by DFA types flooding the caucuses and catching Clinton off guard. The vote count so far is very close but the narrative is inverted with the big wins going nearly unexamined while a bunch of little states are getting much more credit than they proportionally deserve. It’s a mess. I blame Dean. As a leader, he ain’t
rd: Thanks.
This electoral cycle is being very educational for me.
Everyone: have you seen the latest polls in PA?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/pennsylvania/pennsylvania_democratic_presidential_primary
That’s a brilliant solution to the problem, Riverdaughter, one which would go a long way to healing the division in the Democratic party, and would also help save BO’s arrogant behind should he win the nominiation.
Which of course means it’s about 100% guaranteed to be ignored by the Dem PTB…
I think we should just keep asking over and over again if the DNC and Obama really want to ignore the votes of over 2,000,000 Democratic voters who did not chose their primary date.
At this point, we shouldn’t even be proposing “compromises”. Get the other side to admit that they do not want to count the over 2,000,000 Democratic votes. And make them admit it over and over. Really, over 2,000,000 Democratic voters went to the polls in MI and Florida but those 2,000,000 votes aren’t being counted.
Did I mention there were 2,000,000 votes that aren’t being counted?
Hillary kinda reminds us all of a very important fact:
For all those screaming on top of their lungs: “Hillary’s math problem”, here is a very good article about Obama’s math problem (Yes I am looking at you Jon Alter):
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/tough_math_on_the_democratic_s.html
If I hear this math problem non-sense one more time, I’m gonna run through through a glass door.
gqm: I agree with you completely. I think this is the strategy that Clinton is taking. Of course she wants the votes to count: she needs them and she doesn’t want to mess around with these two states. sepecially Florida. So, what gives, Barry? You can’t win Florida anyway. Why not make the voters happy? Or, if you really insist, pay for the damn primary yourself. it’s not like you’re strapped for cash, especially if you really made $55M last month. (Just goes to show you that money can’t buy you love.)
I think the real problem with coming up with a solution is the Obama-supporting media constantly regurgitating Obama talking points 24/7. I think reasonable people would agree on your suggestion, riverdaughter, if they were allowed to hear it, and if they were told all the facts (particularly the fact that a wingnut legislature forced this on Florida dems).
But that is the big, big problem. There are reasonable solutions (and a caucus is NOT one of them). But no one ever hears about them. They just hear Donna Brazile whining over and over again on CNN that she’ll quit the dem party of they get seated. Personally, I say throw her ass out and good riddance. She is part of the reason this problem exists in the first place.
CD: Well, if they hear Hillary repeat it at every opportunity, it may just sink in regardless of what Donna Brazile says. But yeah, Donna’s got to go. This is the Democratic National Comittee, not the Obama Surrogate Campaign Committee.
Today, my daughter tells me that 5 kids in her science class were not behaving in class yesterday. The Science teacher informed the class today, that because the 5 students broke the class rules by misbehaving, the entire class received an F for yesterday’s lab. The punishment of an F to those who did nothing wrong seems a bit harsh and totally unfair.
This is like what Dean is doing, he is punishing the voters of Florida for others who broke the rules. The voters did nothing wrong and broke no rules. The punishment to me of 100% delegate penalty vs 50% does not fit the violation committed. He is giving the voters of Florida an F for something they did not do.
I suggested in another thread:
Winner-take-all (and I do mean ALL), loser pays.
ronK, Oooo, I *like* it.
I like the let rich people pay for a brand new primary idea. Also, a do over will seem “fair” to both parties however unfair it is to Clinton. Best to placate Obama and his supporters to prevent any talk of Clinton “stealing” the election.
It would be great if there was a new primary, and Sen. Obama lost by a bigger margin than the last Florida primary. That will be worth a media cycle or two.
There’s news that Michigan might go with a caucus but it’ll be New Mexico style. I still don’t want a caucus and Hillary has to tell Granholm that she wants a primary. Rich private donors could probably be found to donate for a new primary.
I’ve read the State runs primaries but state parties runs caucuses. Michigan Republicans might drag their feet on this, but still, they should push for primaries.
There’s no reason to redo Michigan. Obama and Edwards took their names off. This sets an absolutely horrible prescedent, now any candidate who’s going to lose a state big can yoink his name off instead and then demand a do-over or threaten to protest the seating of those delegates. Horrible, horrible prescedent. I’d even go along with giving all the undecideds to Obama instead of splitting them as they should be, but not a revote.
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