Monday, June 02, 2008

Way to blow it, Dems

In case you missed the news, the Democratic National Committee really stuck it to democracy this weekend.

My feelings on the punishment of states for the audacity of choosing when to hold their primaries have been previously documented. The Dems were disturbingly (albeit sadly predictably) stupid in their decision to punish Michigan and Florida for violating party rules, but once they made their decision, they should have stuck by it. Instead, they opted to amend the punishment by seating all delegates with half a vote each. Okay, in Florida that mostly made sense when you ignore that candidates were forbidden from campaigning in those states.

In Michigan, of course, the problem was dicier: candidates were asked to remove their names from the primary ballot. And, with the exception of Chris Dodd (who has admitted he only left his name on because, laughingly, it would have been too expensive to have it removed), Dennis Kucinich (chortle), and of course rule-flaunter Hillary Clinton, they did. Which meant not a single Democratic voter in Michigan cast a vote for Barack Obama. This led to the result in Michigan where 55 percent of voters selected Hillary Clinton, while 44 percent remained "uncommitted".

This weekend, the DNC, in its infinite wisdom, chose to award the entirety of "uncommitted" votes to Barack Obama, ostensibly as punishment to Hillary Clinton for not abiding by party rules (I assume).

I will make this statement unequivocally: you cannot award delegates to somebody the electorate did not vote for. How do we know the intent of those people? How do we know all 44 percent would not still be uncommitted were the election held today? Or that, given the current crop of candidates, a significant chunk of those voters wouldn't choose Clinton? We don't.

The Dems have really screwed the pooch on this one. This whole debacle just reinforces how ridiculous this whole primary system really is.

Song lyric of the day:
"On the way to God don't know
My brain's the burger and my heart's the coal
On this life that we call home
The years go fast and the days go so slow"
- Modest Mouse, Heart Cooks Brain

9 Comments:

Blogger Jeff said...

It's a pretty safe assumption that "uncommitted" were the sum total of votes for Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and Biden. Of those, Edwards and Richardson have endorsed Obama, giving him their delegates. I doubt Biden would have gotten more than one or two delegates anyway. So rewarding those delegates to Obama isn't as absurd as it seems.

Personally, I don't think MI or FL deserve a vote at all. But the bylaws say that they have to be seated and given half a vote, so there it is. The DNC got screwed by the state parties - they did the best they could.

June 02, 2008 10:13 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

Does an endorsement automatically award delegates to the endorsed? The reason I ask is because I honestly don't know, but I recall that after Edwards endorsed Obama, CNN kept running new blurbs as more of his delegates went to Obama.

I still don't understand why MI and FL don't deserve any votes. Why shouldn't a state be allowed to decide when it wants to hold its primary?

June 03, 2008 9:01 AM  
Blogger Jeff said...

Because the national party decides how the nominees are chosen. If they want IA and NH to be first, then IA and NH are going to be first. The fact is that the MI and FL state parties thumbed their noses at the national party and got burned for it, when if they had held their primaries later they would have had a huge impact. I have no sympathy for them.

June 03, 2008 1:59 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

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June 04, 2008 7:09 AM  
Blogger Jeff said...

If you're gonna count Michigan nd Florida - whose primaries didn't count so the vote totals are bound to be skewed - you have to count Washington, Iowa, Nevada, and Alaska, none of whom released vote totals. Obama won three of those states (rather handily in WA and AK) and barely lost the other.

Andy - how does Hillary help as VP? Shouldn't she serve in some other capacity, like chief policy adviser for health care, HHS chief, or something like that?

June 04, 2008 9:40 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

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June 04, 2008 11:08 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

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June 04, 2008 11:15 AM  
Blogger Mike said...

As I know I've stated elsewhere (though I can't remember where), the primary reason I hope Hillary doesn't run as an independent is that I stand to lose a remarkably large chunk of change to a bet if she does. I still don't think she will.

However, I have to otherwise agree with Andy that Hillary really holds most of the power right now. She's more or less owned Obama these past two months of primaries, from Pennsylvania thru Ohio thru Kentucky and West VA. She does substantially better than Obama against McCain according to most polls. Her single greatest weakness was having a horrible early primary strategy.

She brings a lot to the table as VP, namely a substantial chunk of her supporters (if not all). I believe Obama will offer it to her; what she does is anybody's guess at this point.

June 04, 2008 1:55 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 04, 2008 3:29 PM  

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