Florida, Michigan & the Supers

Last Friday I posted about the notion of some Supers waiting to see the final resolution on appeals put forth by Florida & Michigan before making a decision.  This story issued today has me thinking about this idea again as well.

Florida and Michigan should be seated at the convention, but they should not be allowed to play a factor in this nomination process.

Edit: The leadership of these states failed their voters.  And it is disingenuous for that leadership to cry disenfranchisement when they knew the rules, they knew the penalties, and they moved forward anyway.  Thus we should include the states at the convention, but we should not reward them by granting them leverage during the nomination process.  The best solution to this is to seat the delegates and not give them a vote, or to split the vote allocations 50/50 for each candidate - in effect nullifying their votes.

My comments last week were as follows:

"...as much as I stand by my comments in that I don't want to see the nomination tipped one way or another by Supers, I would much prefer that Supers decide this thing than allowing delegates from unsanctioned Florida and Michigan elections to determine the nominee.  That would be the ultimate injustice because it would be rewarding to rouge states, no matter who the nominee shall be."

The DNC rules which are currently in place came about from a commission which was created at the urging of the Michigan delegation in 2004.  The recommendations of the commission passed with near unanimity in 2006, including support from Florida and Michigan.  The law changing the primary date in Michigan was passed and enacted by Democrats, while the law changing the primary date in Florida was supported by nearly every single Democratic member of the Florida legislature...and it was endorsed by the Chair of the Florida Democratic Party.

My favorite comparison of the Florida and Michigan situation was made on the "Stumped" blog at the Washington Post:

I have a spirited 3-year-old boy. The other day I told him that if he really wanted to have a big cookie in the middle of the afternoon, he wouldn't be able to have dessert after dinner. Sebastian opted for the cookie, but then still threw a tantrum after dinner, acting as if his human rights were being violated when I told him we'd have to abide by his earlier choice.

Leading politicos from Florida and Michigan are acting a lot like Sebastian these days.

Comments

[Susan]

great analogy...I couldn't have expressed it better....
THANKS MR SUPER...

[Dan_in_upstate_NY]

I agree 100% about the FL/MI issue. However, we all know that Clinton is not going to accept a 50/50 seating of the delegation. She will take it to Denver rather than accept such an option.

This provides, I think, yet another reason for undelcared supers to come out now: namely, as a means of rendering any further debate about FL/MI moot.

[G Davis]

I agree. The worst thing to come of allowing the rogue states to *win* this argument is that it completely neuters the Dem party and it's rules and leaves them completely vulnerable to Rep state congresses that would love nothing more than to mess with the Dem nominating process. Florida is a prime example of this.

Besides, if those states are counted in any way especially the popular vote, don't we have to figure out a way to count the caucus state representative popular votes? I live in Washington State and Obama won EVERY county here but our popular vote is not counted at all.

Rules are rules. The rules were set up and agreed to by all parties before the fact. The popular vote doesn't count except to figure the pledged delegate count. To represent otherwise is disingenuous at best.

Most of all, please don't allow the superdelegates of these rogue states to count. They are directly responsible for this mess as they were directly involved with their state moving their primary.

[suekzoo]

Registered Michigan Democrat here. I totally agree that my state delegates should not play a role that tips the scale in either direction in determining the nominee. However, I do believe they should be seated and have voting privileges for other convention business.

I am very dismayed at the behavior of the elected leadership in Michigan. Many of us started screaming the minute our delegates were stripped. They did not pay attention to their constituents. We'll have to deal with those facts separately, but in the meantime, Michigan cannot play any role in this nomination, as much as I hate that.

[suekzoo]

I also want to point out that there is one campaign who insists on following the rules and always has, "from Day One." There is another campaign who is throwing the temper tantrum and insisting that they get their way after having agreed to the rules at the onset of the contest. While the "Sebastian-like" politicos in FL and MI should not be indulged, neither should the candidate who was taped saying that MI "would not count for anything" be.

[Alicia]

Dear Mr. Super,

Please read this link which explains how the Super Delegates can end this thing:

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/04/heres-how-democ.html

[polo]

I think it's rogue, not rouge for Fl and Michigan, though rouge does work! ;-)

[flavoter]

the florida primary was not endorsed by the democratic party chair karen thurman until AFTER it passed the 2 to 1 Republican Legislature and Republican Party. the party tried to figure out how to do a separate primary but florida is too big and there wasn't any money. Democrats in the legislature voted for the bill because it contained a requirement that florida elections have a verifiable paper trail beginning in 2008. this was a huge democratic priority and may seriously change the way that elections occur in florida for the future. remember 537 votes (and the butterfly ballot, etc) in fla gave us the iraq war, a recession, destruction of civil liberties, increase in poverty, a mortgage crisis, the aftermath of katrina, etc etc etc ETC!

"...Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman wrote a letter saying that the party only supports moving the date of the primary to Feb. 5 and no earlier."

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2007/02/unanimous_vote_.html

[Mr Super]

I just beg to differ.

I'm aware of what Florida did and did not do to the extent of having its primary moved as I was involved in setting the Presidential primary calendar, and I worked closely with the early states during the early nominating window.

And in this case, there is a lot more that Florida did not do to prevent their early vote change.

From the New York Times:

“Florida Democrats absolutely must vote on Jan. 29,” Karen Thurman, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party said in a press release last September. “We make this election matter. Not the D.N.C., not the delegates, not the candidates, but Florida Democrats like you and me voting together. We make it count.”

The Democratic National Committee gave Florida and Michigan Democrats every opportunity to work with the agreed-upon calendar, but they chose to not play by the rules. Florida and Michigan each had the ability to submit a compliant plan, but they chose not to. The committee even offered Florida Democrats $900,000 to help run an alternative primary on an acceptable date; again they chose not to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/opinion/19giddins.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

[Dan_in_upstate_NY]

Mr Super,

How widely shared are your views on FL/MI among the other superdelegates? Do most of them take as hard a line as you do? I ask because one of the news items today is DNC-member Joel Ferguson pushing to have the MI delegates seated based on the January results (albeit with only half a vote each).

[Martin]

"the florida primary was not endorsed by the democratic party chair karen thurman "

It was a Democrat that introduced the original bill to move the date:

"And Jeremy Ring, a Democratic state senator from Broward County and co-sponsor of the legislation, defended it.
“If the choice is Florida is relevant and has no delegates versus being irrelevant and having delegates, I’d choose being relevant with no delegates,” Ring said. “We did this so 18 million Floridians could take part in the presidential primaries, not so a few hundred people can go to a party in Denver.”"

Thurman and Gellar were perfectly happy with this plan. There's even a provision in the DNC rules that if the opposing party puts you in violation of the DNC rules, you can petition for no sanction if you make a good faith effort to correct the situation. FL Dems never made such an effort. Well, they did make an effort, but if you watch I don't think you could conclude it was a good faith one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r25wUeMAwdE

FL Dems lied to the voters and lied to the DNC. And I don't like the fact that Clinton keeps reporting that all of this was the fault of the GOP (her US News interview last month):

"On a "do-over" in Florida and Michigan, which held nominating contests that broke Democratic Party rules

I would not accept a caucus. I think that would be a great disservice to the 2 million people who turned out and voted. I think that they want their votes counted. And you know a lot of people would be disenfranchised because of the timing and whatever the particular rules were. This is really going to be a serious challenge for the Democratic Party because the voters in Michigan and Florida are the ones being hurt, and certainly with respect to Florida the Democrats were dragged into doing what they did by a Republican governor and a Republican Legislature. They didn't have any choice whatsoever. And I don't think that there should be any do-over or any kind of a second run in Florida. I think Florida should be seated."

I'm no fan of the GOP, but I'm much, much, much less of a fan of deceiving voters. Ickes and McAuliffe know exactly what happened in Florida. It's unconscionable that she would be pitting voters against the party.

[truth]

"That statute, in turn, requires that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12" Supreme Court 12/12/2000

I never thought I'd see the day Democrats disenfranchise certified votes on a technicality. I guess the DNC is not serious about winning the general election.

[Truth]

"By the way, I have to say, I think Al Gore won" - Obama 4/14/2008

So Obama thinks that Gore won, meaning he believes the actual vote of Florida was more important than the rules. I agree.