Follow The Leader?
The thing about following someone’s lead is to avoid following those who are heading over a cliff.
Reading that Democrats punish Michigan for early primary, is not exactly a surprise as this has already happened to Florida for daring to attempt to be relevant in the process of selecting a President.
Since Florida delegates can’t attend the convention, I wonder if the Republican Florida secretary of state will decide that the Democratic nominee doesn’t qualify to be on the state’s ballot unless they qualify separately through a petition drive, or must run as a write-in candidate? Anyone who thinks that’s a crazy idea hasn’t been watching Florida elections this century.
I wrote about this a couple of days ago, but now Atrios and Kos have picked up on it with the additional news that Maine and Montana have followed the same “primrose path” to insolvency. It’s nice to know that Florida isn’t the only state that answers e-mails from Nigeria to show that they “can handle money.”
I’m sure the public sector employees and teachers won’t be upset when their paychecks bounce three weeks before the Solstice holidays, and the Federal government will be understanding about the withholding taxes not being paid.
5 comments
I’ve been posting about this regularly and it has appeared numerous other places, including the Nation, but Florida’s delegates can attend the convention and they will be counted. The “punishment” from the DNC is symbolic. The DNC doesn’t make this decision in the end, the nominee does and everyone, including DNC members, is saying that the nominee will definitely seat Florida’s (and Michigan’s) delegates.
There is no nominee until after the vote, and voting is what the delegation is supposed to be about.
The Democratic Party needs to put it’s house in order while it still has a house. Most of the people running have taken their names off the Michigan primary list, so Michigan isn’t going to get a vote.
The primary process has been broken for years and isn’t very democratic.
The vote isn’t really about the delegation, either. The delegates are people who run for that position in an election that takes place later. The election on 1/29 is about one thing — picking who the state party represents in the presidential race.
As for Michigan, Hillary was way ahead there before any of this happens and she’s still on the ballot, so there isn’t really much change there.
I agree with you that the process is broken, that’s the whole point of Florida and Michigan moving early, to force the DNC to change the process in the future. From what Howard Dean has said recently, it’s working and there will be a change for 2012.
Kenneth, you are assuming there is going to be a Democratic Party in 2012. If those who claim to be Democrats don’t start doing something, there may be two new major parties in 2012.
Between a Congressional leadership that refuses to lead and the primary mess, there are a lot of people more than ready to give up on the entire political process.
That’s a totally different conversation, but I’ll wager there will be a Democratic Party in 2012. And I’ll wager that you see an increase in turnout this time around. People are upset, but giving up on the process doesn’t help, it makes things worse. It gives more power to the people who are screwing things up in the first place.