Michigan and Florida began on the same footing, both being stripped of their delegates to the Democratic convention, and both having held meaningless primaries which were nominally won by Hillary Clinton in the absence of a campaign.
Recently both of them have been discussing what to do about conducting a fair vote.
Michigan, however, is on the verge of having a plan in place which will allow a do-over primary. It does depend on Democrats raising funds to pay for it, but that is a reasonable expectation if the plan is otherwise put into place.
Florida in contrast seems to be completely clueless as to how to put something together. But it's not like a fair election couldn't be held, because Michigan will likely be holding one. Florida only has a long list of 'can't do its', even if the money were provided from outside.
Proving that Florida still doesn't know how to conduct an election, eight years after the 2000 election debacle, six years after the 2002 gubernatorial primary that was riddled with SNAFUS, and two years after a close congressional race in which hundreds of votes appeared to have been not counted but with no paper trail for backup.
Florida: Incompetent, inept, and inconsistent.
3 comments:
Not quite, Eli. Florida Democrats are playing their own game here against the DNC. They want to get away with defying the DNC's seating rules and seat the delegation that was elected back in January. They use the fact that all of the candidates were on the state's ballot and that none of them "campaigned" in Florida as an argument against a revote. Naturally, they have an ally in Clinton, who would not do nearly as well in a revote there (since she sort of campaigned in the state while Obama did a much more rigorous job of not campaigning there).
Well, Indy
My understanding is that if that is Clinton's gambit then she will lose.
The courts have held that political parties have the right to set their own rules (and a lawsuit that was already filed by a Florida voter was thrown out in court.) I don't see Howard Dean as backing down and keep in mind that he has a lot of say in picking the membership of the credetials committee.
Hillary Clinton may be hoping that they will seat the Florida delegation as elected, but as a practical matter, she has only hope on her side, while Obama (at least on this issue) has the rules on his side.
Apparently it can't be done in Michigan either, as the proposal for a revote there has apparently crashed and burned as well. So now the impasse is back pretty much where it started: as a showdown between the Florida and Michigan parties and the national organization.
This whole revote issue has been a red herring on the campaign, thrown up by the Clintons to distract the media, voters, and Obama from the main issue of convincing voters who's the best person to lead the party this fall. It's pretty much a win-win situation for Clinton (at wrt Obama) no matter how it goes. Clinton gains over Obama by this impasse continuing as her campaign is much better at throwing up red herrings to distract the media and voters. She'd also gain by a revote, since she'd win Florida and even if she lost Michigan she'd still get a net gain in delegates. The only real danger for her was a resolution whereby Michigan held a revote and was seated, while Florida didn't and was not, but that wasn't one of the outcomes being tossed around during the past few weeks (in the Michigan revotes but Florida doesn't scenario the articles I read all had the original Florida delegation being seated).
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