To very briefly recap, both Florida and Michigan moved up the dates of their primary elections so, they thought, they could be more of a factor in the nominating process. But the DNC ruled that they were holding their primaries TOO early and as punishment told both states they would be stripped of their delegates to the nominating convention. Without delegates, both states are effectively eliminated from the process. The states violated the rules, according to the DNC, so they must pay the price.
There has been a lot (and I do mean A LOT) written and talked about this matter. But the one thing I find missing from all the chatter is mention of the utter hypocrisy of the Democratic Party.
Think back to Florida eight years ago, during the presidential election of 2000. Florida used punch cards to record votes – voters poked holes in a card to select a candidate, those cards were then fed into a machine that read the cards and counted the votes. The problem was that sometimes the hole didn’t poke through cleanly, leaving behind a little piece of paper called a chad. The chads fouled the vote-reading machines, causing them to reject the ballot and not count those votes. This was an acceptable outcome according to Florida’s election rules.
But wait, the Democrats said. They argued it was clear WHOM the voter wanted to choose, the problem was the machine was failing to read their ballots. The Democrats argued the voter’s intent trumped the “rules” of the election set out by Florida, and for six weeks the country waited to find out who would be our next president.
In 2008 though the Democrats are arguing just the opposite – forget the intent of the voters in Florida and Michigan who went to the polls in good faith, their votes cannot count because the two states broke the rules.
Huh?
But this is the heart of the argument many Democrats are making. Forget what the voters want, following party rules is the most important thing. I saw a wonderful bit of irony over at the Huffington Post, where a column arguing against Michigan and Florida was on the same page as an ad for the HBO movie “Recount”, which deals with the 2000 Florida recount fight and Democratic efforts to, as they said at the time, “count every vote.”
Of course the Democrats could have avoided this whole mess by following the Republican Party model – they also punished Michigan and Florida for holding primaries too early, but they only stripped each state of half their delegates. Both states had their roles in the process diminished, but the will of their voters could still be expressed, a fair compromise.
The Democrats though have managed though to screw up the entire nominating process. Look at the system – some states hold primaries, some caucuses (and for some reason Texas holds both), each operates under its own set of rules, delegates are awarded according to percentage formulas so even losing candidates can get delegates (sometimes nearly as many as the “winner”), the formulas also differ from state to state, with some states giving extra delegates to districts that they think are more important or more loyal than others in their state, and the whole process is stretched out over six months. Then there are the “superdelegates” who are elected by no one, but have a significant role in the process…Who in their right mind creates a system like that to select a person for the most important office in the land?
By now you may be asking what exactly does any of this have to do with world affairs? Well, the United States likes to think of itself as the beacon of democracy to the world. President Bush has made spreading democracy around the world a priority of his administration – the three remaining presidential candidates have all also talked about the importance of spreading democracy in their campaigns.
So given that we set ourselves up as the model of democracy to the world, we have a responsibility to get it right at home. The 2008 Presidential race shows we have a lot of work to do.
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