Well technically, we’re still not sure that they will be.
Anyway, I guess they thought DNC would be backboneless pussies and lose in this cock contest. I mean it’s not that crazy an assumption to make about the democrats… Plus, these early primaries influenced the election even without being counted. Most years, if it wasn’t such a tight race, they’d have more influence being early and uncounted than being counted and too late to set momentum.
You see it as having a hissy fit, we (we being the state legislative body, not me personally) see it as abiding by a law. I have no idea how other states have been prevented from enacting conflicting laws, but it’s state law that we have the first primary.
NH’s actions were in violation of the DNC rules and should have been sanctioned accordingly.
Having it as state law is irrelevant. (or should have been to the DNC)
No one thought selecting a candidate would take this long. It was clearly a bad year to try and challenge the system given the current race.
If it had been a more typical primary race, where a presumptive candidate is chosen before or on super Tuesday, the Michigan and Florida delegates would have been seated at the convention in the interest of the party without controversy… that is until planning for the next primary season began.
Then the precedent would likely have forced changes in the nomination system. I predict that changes will be made for the next election no matter what happens to the MI and FL delegates this time. They’ll want to make the system fair to everyone to avoid this problem in the future.
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You’ve got my vote.
You have a funny way of saying that there have been almost no complaints about the RNC’s decision, and no discussions about “fixing” it. The RNC totally blew away the DNC in this issue, they got to severely reduce the impact of the moved up primaries, kept the process intact, and haven’t looked back. While I support the DNC keeping the rules as stated, they really screwed the pooch.
For the record, Florida can kiss my ass. The perpetual swing state is mad that other states have “too much” influence and they don’t get to play? As if I’m not going to hear about how critical Florida is in the actual election, while my own state is going to be tagged “solid blue” by Sept 1st.
As stated in the linked article, the bill changing the primary date was attached, by the Republican leadership, to a bill mandating paper trail voting. Paper trail voting had been a major goal among the Democratic base in FL for many years, though the Republicans had long been ambivalent about bringing to the floor.
But that was their deal: if you want any paper trail in the November 2008 general election, you must mess up the Democratic primary schedule. (The RNC had already stated they had no problem with the new FL date.) But the DNC had voiced its objections sufficiently so that many, if not most, of the FL Dems who had suppported a date change early on had come around, and no longer wanted any part of it. Nevertheless, they took the deal, hoping they could work it all out in time.
So while it is technically true to say that most of the FL Dems did vote for a bill containing the date change, to say they were “just as willing” as the (very eager, by then) Republicans to change it is completely inaccurate.
Well, they exceeded the only threshold for willingness that matters: whether or not they were willing enough to vote for it.
When the amendment was offered, how did they vote?
If there was no vote, how did they respond to the attachment? How loudly, and how long? Was the vote held up?
It’s easy now to say that they were against it. It might even have been easy at the time to posture as if they were against it. But when a bill sails through a legislative body on a unanimous vote, you have to believe no one is really unhappy with any aspect of the bill.
I wish I could remember the proverb, something like - “the willing horse doesn’t have to be whipped.”
CS/HB 537 Read the bill yourself.
Funny, Michigan passed a state law selecting a primary date, too.
I have.
Note that the bill, as originally filed, was about moving the primary date. Note that the bill, as amended and voted upon by the House on 3/21/07, still dealt primarily with the moving of the date, had been amended to make that date be as early as the second Tuesday in January, and passed 115 to 1.
There was a substantial amount of legislative finagling while it was in the Senate, but the plain fact remains: The bill was virtually unopposed by the Democrats when it was nothing more than an attempt to jump to near the head of the line. All attempts to portray otherwise by the Democrats at this point are belied by these facts.
I’d like to see the current law, because as it’s commonly stated, it’s completely silly. They can’t prevent another state from passing an identical law. Logically each state would just keep on moving up the date of its primary until the earliest date it could practically hold the primary.
This seems to be it. Section 653:9 Presidential Primary Election.
Yes, it’s silly.
I also think that the DNC thought that Michigan and Florida delegates would not be needed, that they would have had a nominee by now.
Florida will not have a do-over primary. The pundits are claiming this will hurt the Democrats, in that they will be pissed at their treatment by the DNC.
But no state ever has. So it may be silly, but so far it has worked.
My Conspiracy theory WAG is that the GoP controled FLA Legistlature thought that the DEM’s would punish FLA, and thus a precious few FLA voters would not vote DEM, thus assuring a very very close state for the GOP in the general election.
Not trying to dredge this all back up but I wanted to say thanks for clearing it up (sorta) for me. I forgot I started this thread until today when I read that MI isn’t going to push for another primary.