I managed to watch, pretty much uninterrupted, the presentations made by the FL and MI challengers and the campaigns Saturday to the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC. Although I started out in CNN, I quickly changed over to CSPAN, mainly to avoid the talking heads. After doing so, I headed out to a fundraising event for Senator Louise Lucas and Delegate Ken Melvin, returning just in time to hear the motions and the votes on the outcome.
I have always believed that the RBC overstepped its authority by stripping the two states of all of its delegates. I left thinking that Florida had made a case not just for half votes, but full votes, while Michigan really hadn’t made much of a case at all for any. I have never seen the circumstances of these two early “primaries” as being equal and the presentations did nothing to change my opinion. In fact, MI’s presentation, especially when questioned about why they held their “primary” early, did nothing but reinforce my understanding that they really had no one but themselves to blame for the outcome.
I was quite surprised, then, that the two situations were treated roughly the same. Each state received half votes for all of their delegates, including the so-called super delegates. While I understand the reasoning, I don’t have to agree with it.
All of those who say that the Democratic Party should not be one of backroom deals should be upset with what the RBC did yesterday. I can only come up with one word: travesty. There is no one who can look at the circumstances of FL and MI objectively and say that those two deserved to be treated the same. FL had legitimate reasons for holding their “event” (as one RBC member referred to it) early: the Republican-controlled legislature said so. MI’s excuse? That they wanted their state to have a say in the early nomination process and the hell with the rules.
FL went to great lengths to include as many voters as possible, despite the fact that none of the candidates campaigned there. MI? Not so much. In fact, I about lost it when MI said that they had 30,000 write-in votes that they didn’t bother to count. You are coming to the RBC to ask to be seated and you don’t bother counting all the votes? Ridiculous.
Because they didn’t do much to turn out the vote and then didn’t count all the ones that were cast, the MIDP had to come up with a plan to allocate the delegates should they be seated. One thing they relied on: exit polls. Um, earth to MIDP: why are you relying on exit poll data when you had the actual votes in hand?
The fact that both MI and FL were awarded half votes was bad enough. But to add insult to injury, they allocated the uncommitted votes to Obama. I’m actually more angered by that than the fact that they took a few votes from Clinton. The testimony offered yesterday indicated that Obama, Edwards and Richardson put out a combined handbill urging voters to vote uncommitted. So how many of those were Edwards voters? How many were Richardson’s? I don’t know and neither do the folks who came up with that idiotic allocation scheme. The rules allow the delegates to be uncommitted, so what the RBC did was to tell them that, no, you can’t be uncommitted and in fact, you voted for Obama. I say that’s bull!
Saturday’s machinations reminded me why so many folks get disgusted with politics. The old sausage analogy comes to mind. It wasn’t pretty.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Our entire election process needs to be reformed so this kind of thing (and what happened in 2000) can never happen again.
I would have disagreed with moving the delegates representing “uncommitted” voters had the other two participants in that handbill distribution (Edwards, Richardson) not already endorsed Obama. However, since the two men did endorse Obama, I don’t see a problem with it (not nearly as much as I would if only Clinton had been awarded pledged delegates, anyway). Other things I wouldn’t have had a problem with include awarding no pledged delegates to anyone and letting delegates be elected at the state convention, or not seating the delegation at all because you’re right, they didn’t royally screw this up.
The best thing, though? It’s over. People can stop wasting their time worrying about an issue that doesn’t matter and would never have mathematically altered the outcome of this primary. Thank friggin’ goodness.
I agree with your point that FL and MI should not have been treated the same but it is to late for the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC to come up with any viable solution. This should have been dealt with before the states voted! The FL vote was not fair either and the only real thing that could have been done was to re-vote in both states.
Personally I don’t care about this now and we all need to realize Obama has won and is also the best choice. Time to move on to uniting the party and we will of course need Hillary’s help.
Ben, how can you reform the process when the states will not abide by the rules the party puts in place?
I agree about the write in votes. MI is a case of screw the rules, screw the voters, screw the write in, screw the outcome, which was screwed to begin with, all in an effort to screw the DNC, IA, and NH..
I would have rather they stayed at zero or counted it as is but divided it by 4. i.e. twice the penalty of FL.
the HIstory of MI trying to go early is an affront to their voters. Look how often they get no say or opportunity to vote for the eventual nominee.
1980 went early (both carter and kennedy took their name off the ballot and Gerry Brown won his only state)
1988 went early (dukakis and i forget removed their names from the ballot and Lyndon Larouche won it. Well actually uncommitted won he was first among humans)
2000 ditto. Gore and Bradley took their names off.
forget who won. Gore won a revote which was a caucus.
2004 threatened with delegate stripping and backed down
2008 delegates stripped. Obama edwards and others took name off. Clinton wins with uncommitted largely Obama followed by Edwards. Low turnout compared to everywhere else. Write in Obama not even counted at all.
MI is a recidivist offender becasue they are determined to kill the NH IA “strangle”. Levin admits it.They have routinely sacrificed their voters pursuing this crusade. As far as I’m concerned tell the truth about them and have an election with 49 states I could care less if the state doesn;t want a real say……A G A I N
Florida did make a very good case, though they still broke the rules and some penalty is essential.
Michigan is a different story entirely. I am mad any super delegates from Michigan got added at all and anything less than 50/50 split is deliberately robbing Obama to appease Clinton, an appeasement I believe the DNC/RBC will regret in coming months… though I hope I am wrong.
I remain mad that Clinton did not honor the agreement she signed when they agreed they’d not campaign in the transgressing states.
More power to Sen. Levin. IA and NH should not have such prominence in the nomination process.
There is still one unresolved question that the HRC campaigns refuse to answer. Do you really want me to believe that not one person in Michigan , not in Detroit, not in Ann Arbor, not in Grand Rapids, no where in that state was there an Obama supporter. No one wanted to vote for Obama. That would be a travesty to suggest that!!! My own father in law voted for Hillary becuase no one else was on the ballot. He has now changed to Obama. So what about the voters in MI that had Obama as their first choice and HRC as their second? Plain and simple questions will remain unresolved, but the argument HRC was making for MI. was really really stupid and was also hillarious. I can see her now- I received all those votes in Michigan and Barack didn’t receive not one. They love me there. This whole debate is a travesty and the arguments on Michigan are ridiculous. I vote to have all caucuses and primaries on the same day nationwide and get this dumb stuff over with, all in one night.
I think the complaints about the outcome of this just validate my earlier opinion that neither state can accurately or fairly partition the votes. Any attempt is an educated guess at best. I think our candidate should be chosen by votes, not wild-ass guesses and speculations.
snolan – how did Clinton not honor the agreement? By having her name on the ballot? If so, your anger is misplaced. There was nothing in the agreement about removing their names from the ballot.
GEM – no one is not answering that question so I don’t know where you are getting that from. No one said give HRC all the votes, either. Obama took his name off – not because he was required to, but because he chose to.
Tone is right – MI did this themselves.
anon – good point on the endorsements of Obama by Richardson & Edwards.
I see that Hillary Clinton did not honor her agreement with the Democratic party concerning the rules of this race.
Hillary’s and her representatives agreed that FLA and MI primaries would not count in electing a President…
When Hillary was desperate she wanted the rules changed (this would be called being a bad sport if it occurred on the playgrounds where I grew up). Suddenly Hillary was going to fight for the voters she herself agreed should not be participating in this primary.
I don’t think she would have given the MI and FLA voters a second thought if things had gone according to Hillary’s plan and she had won the primary on super tuesday….
That’s the way it went according to everything I have seen.
buzz…buzz…
That’s bull. Did the Clinton campaign mount the challenges? No. The challenges came from a superdelegate in FL, the FL Democratic Party and the MI Democratic Party.
Did you watch any of the the proceedings? By all accounts, no one expected the turnout that came in these two states. Voters came out to vote despite the fact that the states had been sanctioned.
I am glad they reached some reasonable compromise, even if the details don’t exactly fit with any of the many competing arguments. However, the main thing that stood out to me is that there is no excuse for the behavior or language of Harold Ickes, and I was surprised that you did not mention that in your post or comments, Vivian. It seemed as if he had been drinking. Also, in view of the seriousness of the committee’s business, on national television, would it have killed him to wear a tie?
Michigan and Florida (poor Florida) are too important to be left out of this process, especially since the delegate count is so close. I agree that it was not right to punish the voters, who voted in the only primaries available to them. However, I found that argument a bit hypocritical coming from the very Michigan leaders who let those voters down.
Clinton, and members of her senior campaign staff bussed in protesters to the RBC meeting proceedings. They pushed for the challenge, after agreeing that those state’s would not be counted.
Clinton also held “private fundraisers” in Florida during the week before Florida’s unrecognized primary, despite agreeing not to campaign there.
Mosquito says it correctly, and his conjecture is a conjecture, but it seems very plausible to me.
Busing in protestors is not anywhere near what you said in your comment. You said:
Now explain to me how busing in protestors has anything to do with that. As for pushig for the challenges – the FL Democratic Party and the superdelegate Ausman filed their challenges long before the FL vote! Try doing a little homework first.
As for your claim of private fundraisers, let me clue you in: fundraising ain’t campaigning. And based on what I’ve been able to find on the internet, those two fundraisers took place in September 2007, long before the January primary.
And I notice you conveniently forgot to mention that Obama ran TV ads there.
Mosquito (a “she” by the way) is wrong. And while it may seem plausible to you, that doesn’t make it any less incorrect. If you had watched the entire presentation of the challenges, as I did, you would see just what I’m talking about.
spotter – Ickes was over the top. I agree. I wouldn’t have said things the way he said them. As for the tie – well, I’m often accused of being a bit too casual myself, so that didn’t bother me.