No rules, please: We're Democrats

From the party that cries 'electoral fraud!' any time they lose comes this. They can't live with their decisions like responsible adults, they have to have things their way when it suits their immediate desires, to hell the the consequences, and if we don't like the consequences well, we'll just change the rules and have a do-over. That's real leadership.

Florida, Michigan seek exit from Democratic penalty box

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Will the recount state become the re-primary state? And will voters in Michigan have their say in picking a Democratic candidate for president?

Political leaders from Florida and Michigan were busy Wednesday talking about plans to make sure that voters in their states are heard in picking a Democratic nominee.

The discussions unfolded amid a grueling, delegate-by-delegate fight between Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

The national Democratic Party stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates to the national convention after the states moved up the dates of their primary elections.

That means votes that were cast in primaries in those states will not translate into delegates awarded to one candidate or the other in the contest for the Democratic nomination for president.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the states can either come up with a new plan to choose a slate of delegates or appeal to the party's credentials committee when the convention opens in August.

"Out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game," Dean said in a written statement Wednesday.

The national Republican Party also penalized Florida and Michigan, but cut each state's allocation in half rather than stripping them entirely. And since Arizona Sen. John McCain clinched the GOP nomination Tuesday night, any fight over seating Florida and Michigan's delegates will matter little to the GOP race.

Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, was the only leading Democrat to appear on ballots in Michigan and made a handful of allowed fund-raising appearances in Florida in the last days before the vote, while other candidates skipped the state. She won both contests.

Now, as she trails Obama by 100-plus delegates, Clinton has called for the Michigan and Florida delegations to be seated at the party's convention in Denver, Colorado.

The Democrats' next big primary is seven weeks away in Pennsylvania, where 158 delegates are at stake. Adding new contests to the mix could prolong the Democrats' heated battle for the nomination while giving McCain more freedom to focus on November's general election.

Crist told CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday that he supported holding another primary to resolve the dispute. But Wednesday, he said the state would not pay for a second contest.

The Florida Democratic Party estimates that a new primary could cost as much as $18 million -- and Sen. Bill Nelson said the DNC should pick up the tab.

"There's no way the state legislature is going to fund another election when they are in economic cardiac arrest right now," said Nelson, a Florida Democrat. "They are cutting payments to health care, education, social services and payments to the cities and counties.

"There's no way that they're going find an additional $18 million to fund another election, nor should they. This shouldn't be the burden of the taxpayers of Florida -- this should be the burden of the Democratic National Committee."

Party officials have said they will not pay for Florida to hold a new primary because they warned the state not to move up its primary.

"The Democratic nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules," Dean said. But he emphasized that his goal was to maintain party unity, and called the statement by Crist and Granholm "good news."

"We look forward to receiving their proposals, should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans, and will review those plans at that time," he said.

But Nelson said the party's stance was unfair, since it was Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee and a Republican governor, Crist, who decided to move up the state's primary over the opposition of Democrats.

And if the state's decision to move the primary remains controversial, it pales in comparison to a bill two Florida state senators are discussing. Sen. Nan Rich, a Clinton backer, is proposing that the state remove the party's eventual presidential nominee from the state's ballot unless it seats Florida's delegates.

"That's one option," Rich said.

Legal scholars say they doubt removing the Democratic or Republican nominee's name from the ballot would be constitutional. But state Senate Democratic leader Steve Geller said he been approached by Republicans promoting the bill.
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Geller said it is a sign of how bitter the fight over the delegates has become and how deep the self-inflicted wounds are among Democrats, calling it "a typical Democratic firing squad."

"We're lining up in a circle," he said. "Maybe we're aiming low and shooting ourselves in the feet instead, but this makes no sense to me."
The national Democratic Party stripped Florida -- epicenter of the 2000 election debacle -- of its 210 national convention delegates as punishment for the state's decision to move its party primaries to January 29.

Michigan received the same treatment after moving its primary date to January as well, losing its 156 convention delegates.

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, called on the Democratic National Committee to seat their states' delegations. They accused the party in a statement of silencing "the voices of 5,163,271 Americans" who voted in their primaries.

"It is intolerable that the national political parties have denied the citizens of Michigan and Florida their votes and voices at their respective national conventions," they wrote.

And at a news conference in Tallahassee, Crist -- who signed the bill that changed Florida's primary date -- pointed fingers outside the state.

"It's unconscionable to me that some party boss in Washington is not going to permit the people to be heard," he said. "That's not what America is all about, and it's wrong."

Wednesday night in Washington, Democratic House members from Florida and Michigan met for about an hour to talk about possibilities that would lead to delegations from those states influencing the outcome of the Democratic nominating contest.

"Both delegations feel very, very strongly -- adamantly -- that our delegations be seated at the national conventions," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz of Florida.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/06/florida.michigan/index.html

Burp.

Yay for disenfranchising voters because of what their state's leadership did! That's democracy at work right there.

I think it would be more significant disenfranchisement to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates as originally voted on. People stayed home because they knew their votes wouldn't matter. In Michigan, voters could only vote for Clinton or Kucinich. While we can argue until we're blue in the face about the DNC's original decision, the current Michigan and Florida results certainly don't represent their voters.

Yeah, I'm not in favor of seating the delegates based on the results of those primaries. I'd prefer they hold new primaries, and then actually have them count. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Does anyone hold out any hope that the idiot Democrats can get anything straight at this point? If they were together they could easily take the White House, but they cannot get their house in order how can they get this country in order? If Obama is able to win all the way, it will be despite the DNC. Hillary has no chance no matter what she does in the primaries.

Please note that the "leadership" here in Florida that changed the date was the Republican governor after being warned of the consequences repeatedly.
Now he wants to squawk about the Democratic party being un-American and disenfranchising voters.

Dirt. Bag.

How in the hell do the Republicans get to decide when the Democrats hold their primary anyway ?!?

ummm. they don't. if you look at other states, democratic and republican primaries are sometimes held on seperate dates. The Democratic state leadership in those states moved up their dates along with the Republicans so as not to be left out, despite the warning that their delegates would not be seated.

The only way those delagates should be seated is if the primaries are done again.

Both points of view have some merit. The party leadership knew exactly what it was doing when it moved the primary up.

On the other hand, the voters did nothing wrong.

I've seen discussions of a do-over. That's probably the only fair way to approach it. The vote would probably be a lot different if the voters (and those who stayed home) knew it would count.

As far as enforcing discipline on the party leadership, perhaps we could deny those states their superdelegates.

Ummmm. No, they did.

St Petersburg TImes

Salon

Did you miss this part?

"it was Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee and a Republican governor, Crist, who decided to move up the state's primary over the opposition of Democrats."

Once more with feeling, the Democratic party leadership had nothing to do with moving the election date.

The Republicans in Florida were apparently well aware that the penalties, should they be enforced, were much stricter for the DNC than they were for the RNC.
So that was their strategy. Ye olde "hell, we might both get spanked, but you're going to get spanked a lot harder" plot.

ooow.......nice spin

yahoo

They've had a problem for 36 years and will continue to have a problem because they insist on pandering to New Hampshire and Iowa. In point of fact it's New Hampshire that started this mess in the first place; they've moved their primary seven freaking times.

I don't think most people understand that this is not some rigid, time honored, process with cogent and reasonable rules. This is politics, plain and simple, it moves with the balance of power, and has only been the system of selecting delegates, really, since 1972. Pretending that arbitrary rules that were adopted in contravention of completely opposite rules mandated after 2004 is somehow noble or proper or necessary, I suspect is an ends determinative analysis.

ok. I stand corrected.

I still believe that the votes as they were done are invalid and need to be redone if the delegates are going to be seated.