Florida For Dodd
Hipparchia has a great idea: since Florida Democrats don’t get to join the Democratic presidential nominating convention on an official voting basis because of the shift in the primary date, Florida Dems should cast a symbolic vote for Chris Dodd to show support for his action in defense of the Constitution and demonstrate our distaste for the Democratic leadership.
We have to vote or the Repubs will slip some sort of nastiness by us in the form of a ballot initiative, and we may as will stick it to the DLC puppets who control things.
11 comments
…actually, as a resident of a state that hasn’t been meaningful in the presidential primary race for many, many chinook salmon lifecycles, I think the whole competition for being an early primary state and the pushback by both partys’ apparatchiks seems like a silly exhibition. How Iowa and New Hampshire earned the right to be the upper screens in the stack to begin with has always been a puzzle, given their lack of reflection of the demographics of the nation as a whole. On the other hand, the number of states trying to move their primaries up to try to be king- or, as the case may be, queen-makers in their own right seems to be a bit grasping and self-referential…
Having typed that, though, I have to say that Florida seems a more appropriate state to have one of the first primaries than someplace like Michigan or Nevada and I have been more supportive of Florida being one of the first three or four primaries than any other state. I like your Dodd vote idea because it is the sort of reward that he needs for his principled stand on the telecom amnesty provisions of the FISA bill, and it would provide the sort of complicatons that the Democratic party needs at it’s convention when it refuses to seat the Florida delegation that represents one of the more important states in the general election…
In scattered moments of reflection, it is hard to look at the state of the nation and the nature of the Republican candidates and imagine that we could have a Republican raising his hand on the temporary risers in front of the Capital on 1/20/09, but this fight between states and the Democratic Party headquarters is starting to look depressingly like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…
heh…I was going to blog about this. Guess I won’t now…
The problem is that the party can’t unilaterally determine a primary date, the states have individual laws that mandate primaries. The only way this can work is for the parties to start running their own primaries on their own dimes.
Florida Democrats don’t control the legislature, the Republicans changed the date.
I would rather see regional primaries that rotate, or a single national primary date.
Another option would be to actually elect real delegates, one from each congressional district who, along with the the top two officials from the state party, would constitute the party’s “electoral college” and let them sit through the campaign ads and debates and then select the nominee – a real convention.
The Dodd idea was Hipparchia’s. I’m just dittoing.
Write the post. Having lived on the West Coast I know the aggravation of being ignored, as the election was usually decided before the polls closed in California.
Isn’t it up to ES&S how Florida votes? Or am I still missing something?
That’s only south of the Mouse, Whig. We still use mark/sense ballots up north.
echoing bryan, i too think you should write the post, jack. the more viewpoints, the merrier. besides, if we do end up with a president dodd, then it won’t be all my fault.
although i have to say, given the [imperfect] information i ahve about the two of them so far, i’d rather have a president dodd than a president clinton. but i have until jan 29 to make up my mind and there’s no telling what’s going to happen in the next 3.5 months.
i like the single national primary date idea myself. but then, i also like the idea of campaigns being publicly funded. pie in the sky wishes, both of them.
While I really like the idea of a uniform single primary date for all states, many say it raises constitutional issues. But I thought the Supremes established in Bush v. Gore that states really don’t, after all, control their own electoral processes, or any judicial rulings regarding them. In light of the same (possibly dubious) 14th Amendment argument by Scalia, why shouldn’t a uniform primary date be established, as a matter of equal protection?
Dodd has enough other problems that I would vote for him at best reluctantly. But constitutional issues may trump all others. There’s a lot to think about here.
i’ve been looking at those, the problems sirota points out. they’re mostly waaaaaay out of my [very limited] areas of expertise, so the best i can come up with so far is that he and hillary clinton look to be about equally corporate-ocrats, with dodd looking better on constitutional issues.
i want to like clinton, because i’d like to have a woman president. i want to like obama, because i’d like to have a non-white president. i really really really like edwards for his emphasis on poverty, his changing to public campaign financing, and his vow to cut off health insurance for all the government if universal coverage isn’t passed within 6 months.
unfortunately, it looks like we’re never going to get around to impeaching either bush or cheney, and if that’s the case, i think constitutional issues probably will have to trump all others. i’m extremely angry that i may be forced to choose a president based solely on whether or not it looks like they really will uphold the constitution.
It’s more than a little annoying that we have to start reviewing candidates based on whether we think they will support and defend the Constitution, that was once a given. We have become a banana republic and you have to wonder when we have our first military coup.
The Christianists and neocons have a lot to answer for, and that can’t be put off. someone should have checked to see if the “values” being invoked by “values voters” were American values.
but america is a christian country! [ouch. it hurts me to say that, even in jest.]
looks like dodd’s not so good for the hurricane-prone [update 2]
None of them have been leaders on the FEMA front. Talk is all they have provided, and there’s a Repub in the Louisiana governor’s mansion as a result.