March 19, 2008
Florida has a plan
This just in from CNN:
Two Florida state senators presented a plan Wednesday to seat the state’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention, hoping that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will embrace their compromise.
Florida Senate Democratic Leader Steven Geller and Sen. Jeremy Ring outlined a proposal to seat all the delegates at the convention in August. The plan recommends seating half of Florida’s 210 delegates based on the results of the January 29 primary. The remaining delegates could be allocated in a number of ways, including evenly, proportionally based on the national popular vote (excluding Florida and Michigan) or proportionally based on the total national delegate count, also excluding Florida and Michigan. “I invite the campaigns to endorse our compromise to ensure victory in November,” Ring said.
This was the part that caught my eye:
“There is no do-over, no mail-in ballots, no complicated math. Just the basic process of American democracy is in play here.”
That’s all right, then.
Obama backs revote plan. Interview on CNN tonight.
“In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates,” the Illinois senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an exclusive one-on-one interview….
“If I was just running the textbook campaign—doing the conventional thing, I probably wasn’t going to win because Senator Clinton was going to be much more capable of doing that than I would be,” he said. “We had tremendous success—and I think we were starting to get a little comfortable and conventional right before Texas and Ohio.”
“I want the Michigan delegation and the Florida delegation to be seated. And however the Democratic National Committee determines we can get that done, I’m happy to abide by those rules.”
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/obama_i_have_less_chance_of_ge.php
Posted by: Ann H | March 19th, 2008 at 10:03 pm | Report this commentThe whole distribution of looks like somebody has done the maths. Why make it so complicated? If it is the basic process of American democracy, then they should just seat teh candidates with equal distribution. However, if the decision not to seat them was to send a message in the first place, then isn’t better to seat them in the ratio of one of the national averages of either popular vote or delegate counts?
Posted by: Sunil Sivanand | March 20th, 2008 at 12:05 am | Report this commentBoth states, Florida & Michigan, should have to hold primary elections all over again. No other solution is fair to voters or the candidates. They should quit talking about it, and just get it over & done.
Posted by: Kathryn | March 20th, 2008 at 1:05 am | Report this commentI thought it said ‘no complicated math’ and ‘just basic democracy’ . . .
Posted by: HKLivingston, 26, investment banker | March 20th, 2008 at 5:30 am | Report this commentTo put it mildly, neither Democratic candidate looks very good in the Florida/Michigan imbroglio. Hillary’s claim that she wants to seat the delegates in order to “uphold democratic principles” is the utmost in hypocrisy, in view of the fact that these two primaries offered the voters only slightly more of a choice than did the recent elections in Iran or Russia, as Hillary’s opponents were not even on the ballot in Michigan and no one campaigned in either state.
Obama’s failure to support redoing the primaries in the two states more vigorously is equally reprehensible. Instead of offering the voters a real choice, Obama seems content just to try to run out the clock by holding on to his narrow lead in elected delegates, and then hoping to shame the “superdelegates” into following the elected delegates blindly, which is obviously not what the superdelegates were chosen to do.
Aside from being at odds with Obama’s promise of bold new leadership, this “run out the clock” stategy is dangerous and self-defeating for Obama. It may, for example, have prevented him from making his brilliant speech on race earlier. (sorry, Ann H., I know that you were not very impressed by the speech, but even the New York Post, which is, of course, owned by the same Rupert Murdoch who owns the Fox News Channel that you say you never watch, agreed that this speech was a truly great one in its March 19 editorial - and no one can accuse the NY Post of being biased in favor of the Democrats).
Obama should have given this speech within hours, not days, after the Jeremiah Wright guilt by association slime attack against the Senator first began to surface. His speech on Iraq and the upcoming one on the economy are also long overdue. Obama seems to be constitutionally unable to show his greatest strengths until his back is up against the wall and his whole political career is on the line.
Therefore, MIchican and Florida stand for more than just a skirmish over delegates, but also for helping to expose each candididate’s greatest weakness - in Hillary’s case, an image of untrustworthiness that she will never be able to shake and which, again with all due respect to Ann H.’s contrary view, makes Hillary totally unelectable - and in Obama’s case, an image of holding back, failing to respond promptly to some of the most vile racial attacks of any presidential campaign in our history.
Speaking of vile attacks, since I do watch Fox news for about 30 seconds each day (which is about as much as I can stand) I note that this channel has also moved beyond Jeremiah Wright. Last time I looked earlier this evening, Fox’s Sean Hannity was trying to link Obama with the Black Panthers.
Posted by: algasema | March 20th, 2008 at 6:41 am | Report this commentHow stupid are the people suggestion this plan? I can only imagine what was running through their mind:
“We were dumb enough to run a pointless primary that most people in our state knew wouldn’t count so they didn’t vote, had only limited selection on the ballot and now we want half of our delegates to be seated and awarded based on voting results good as garbage. I think we’re smart for even thinking this. How do we do it? We’re geniuses!”
Posted by: Thinker | March 20th, 2008 at 11:51 am | Report this commentIn the county in which I reside, all candidates were included on the ballot on January 29. See sample ballot: http://www.votehillsborough.org/content.aspx?id=267
I believe Michigan was missing names in their primary.
Candidates could only appear at fund-raisers in Florida - no face time for the hoi poloi. Is it democracy if you have to pay to hear a candidate speak?
Posted by: Former Florida Democrat | March 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm | Report this commentHow can seating the delegates - even half the delegates - based on the results of a vote that didn’t count possibly be considered a fair solution? THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE VOTE NOT COUNTING - IT MEANT THE DELEGATES WOULDN’T BE SEATED. If they’re going to be seated at all, it seems to me the only truly fair way to do it would be to split them 50/50.
Posted by: Erin | March 20th, 2008 at 5:54 pm | Report this commentI: ‘Leaders’ granting themselves authority to prescribe an arrangement which they believe is ‘fair’ for the people,
1 without bothering to ask the people themselves, and
2 without the willingness to accept the results,
is anathema to ‘the basic process of American democracy’.
II: Fairness as understood under a democracy refers to opportunity, not to result–to alter results by taking from one side to give to the other is ‘fairness’ as defined under authoritarianism or communism.
III: The authority of Party leaders does not take precedence over the will of the people when those people are fully capable of expressing their will in an orderly fashion–and ‘orderly fashion’ is not defined as ‘in obedience to authority’.
Those who wish their candidate to win the election
Posted by: HKLivingston, 26, investment banker | March 21st, 2008 at 7:48 am | Report this commentA: by disenfranchising another group altogether (”You defied authority so your will does not count.”), or
B: by devaluing their decision (”No matter how many of you decide no matter which way, your delegates will be split 50-50.”)
display a fundamental failure to understand the sacred concept of each vote being worth no more and no less than another–Electoral college or no Electoral College, why bother with elections at all?
Today’s article “Markets need more than a patch-up”is right on the money.” We need an entirely new model” however it is only half of a solution because your reference is inclusive of only the markets and its participants it does not include the economic changes that have to be addressed in any comprehensive and viable solution. Confidence in the US is sinking fast both here domestically and abroad. The financial problems have served to verify and justify the warnings of many over the last decade. I believe that as much as the last 12 months have been a financial issue going forward the issues are going to be economic. We can paper over our many problems by throwing money at it and produce a more coherent and safe regulatory environment but until we address our economic ills with concrete fixes the dollar will remain weak, the likelihood of the Arab states moving to a basket currency approach will increase rapidly and economy will slowly deflate. The US has gotten away with many sins because of proclivity to consume and other nations needs to sell to us and more importantly because we are the world’s reserve currency. What has happened so far is just a warning shot. Everyday we become a smaller % of world GDP at some point the world’s players will cut us loose and there will be a dollar crash unless we can develop economy policies that reinforce the belief that dollar investments continue to depreciate. Corporate tax receipts are already going down sharply and individual receipts are soon to follow. It is not inconceivable that we could be confronting a 1 Trillion Dollar budget deficit during a severe recession. the only way to finance that kind of deficit is to convince those with the money to buy our paper that our long term economic prognosis will get much better. Addressing the financial problems while an absolute necessity today only temporarily fill the holes in a very porous dike.
Posted by: mike hart | March 31st, 2008 at 4:00 pm | Report this comment