You’ll remember that Clinton and Obama both agreed not to campaign in Michigan and Florida in order to qualify for running in the other states. However Clinton wisely left her name on the ballot in Michigan while Obama withdrew his name. He must have seen the error of his judgement because he subseqently followed Clinton’s lead and left his name on the ballot in Florida.
Or is there another reason for the inconsistency of Obama’s response to these two state’s renegade primaries?
Well, unless the Democrats try to subvert their own rules in favor of Hillary, Obama didn’t misjudge Michigan. To my thinking he simply didn’t pay any mind to Michigan. And really, why should he have? He was an underdog candidate fighting for votes that did matter. He didn’t have enough time to squabble over votes that in the end were worth nothing to him. It appears that that will pay off unless the Democrats try something to rig Hillary into the nomination by seating the delegates.
There was no inconsistency. Florida law prohibited the candidates from removing their names from the ballots, that’s why no one did it there.
I think this has been fairly well covered here on the boards. Trying to paint a dirty or incompetent picture of Obama won’t work. Saying things like "He must have seen the error of his judgement because he subseqently followed Clinton’s lead and left his name on the ballot in Florida." impliess one of two things: A) You don’t really understand the law laid out in Florida, B) You didn’t know there was a law in Florida about taking your names off Ballots. Either way trying to paint Obama in a bad light as having poor judgement is in a word futile. Even the Hillary folks admit Obama is running a strong, organized, well maintained campaign machine. Hillary, not so much, clearly.
Actually I think you could argue he made the right move. If he’d been on the ballot, Clinton would have a somewhat stronger argument that the delegates from Michigan and Florida should be seated because the voters had a choice between them.
If the delegates get seated as is, he might’ve made a mistake - but I don’t think that will happen. Even if it did, he’ll get almost all of those uncommitted delegates.
I was unaware of the Florida’s law. Seems there was good reason for that law since though Florida doesn’t count there voice was clearly heard.
Unfortunately not the same for Michigan. Obama might have saved himself a few bucks, but he took away Michigan’s clear voice. Not exactly a move for a presidential hopeful who says he wants to be a caring president for all of America.
Define “clear.” This was a murky, ugly situation and was going to be that way no matter who was on what ballot.
If you say so. I think that’s a really strained interpretation of what happened over there.
Marley’s being nice. Obama didn’t take away anything from Michigan - implying as much is both obtuse and misinformed. I’m not going to fling all kinds of nasty’s your way Dutch. And I’m not going to try and explain Michigan, it’s been done ad infinitum - But I will say I think you are reaching for any dirt on Obama. And him taking his name off the ballot - by following the rules - isn’t dirt.
What evidence is there that Obama saved any money? All the candidates’ names were on the ballot. All of them had them removed except for Hillary. The other major candidates showed solidarity with the DNC and removed their names. The Clinton campaign signed off on the votes not counting in those two states as did all the other campaigns. Hillary’s “victory” in Michigan is about as convincing as Castro’s electoral victories.
Again, there were no rules requiring Obama remove his name from the Michigan ballot. I suppose there are no rules against him taking his name off the ballot, if that’s what you mean. In that sense I guess, he followed the rules.
He did it voluntarily to show he supported the four early states favored status, and as a strategic move coordinating with the other 2nd tier candidates in order to alienate Clinton when she was the frontrunner.
Personally I consider this insulting, as I also consider the 4 state pledge letter insulting, which essentially every candidate HAD to sign in order to campaign in Iowa and NH.
He was lucky that removing his name allowed him to claim the vote wasn’t representitive of his support in MI and to build up his popularity in general. Assuming the votes from the first primary are discarded, I think it’s likely he’ll do better a second time around.
Oh yes, he set out to alienate her before the contests even started. That makes a whole lot of sense.
Do you also consider it insulting that Hillary herself said of the voters in Michigan,
but made a strategic move to alienate the voters against Obama by making it look like he didn’t give a rat’s ass about them?
I’m gonna guess you’re answer will be ‘no’.
Yes, I do. She said that in Iowa to keep in line with the four state pledge bullshit that they made everyone sign. The whole cause of this MI & FL mess is the privileged place Iowa and New Hampshire have in selecting the next president.
Well I’ve never heard of that claim, feel free to provide a cite… I have read the about the Obama’s name removal being strategy, however.
Thats just politics though. Like I said previously, a second primary is likely to work out better for Obama in the long run.
The strategic move isn’t what I have a problem with, its the 4 state pledge crap, and the DNC selectively applying punishment to MI and FL, but not New Hampshire.
Really, the only misjudgment here was on the part of Michigan. I don’t like the way Hillary has handled us or Florida at all, but the fact is our state DP knew what it was getting into, was given a fair warning from the DNC but voted the date through anyway.
Last month I went to a meeting in Lansing for Obama supporters to discuss was we can still do for the campaign. Before the “Obama people” spoke, party chair Mark Brewer was given time to try to get us to sign up for the MDP and talk about the delegate process a bit. He tried extremely hard to dodge any and all questions about why we held our joke of a primary, but insisted that we will be seated, comfortable in sharing that not only has a state never been denied its delegates at the convention, but that he has also been to the hotel in Denver where rooms for our delegates have already been booked.
I’m going to try to stay away from talking what a slimeball this guy was, except that he was very unwilling to answer any questions about why Michigan still pushed its date forward, telling us to email someone else or that he just doesn’t know. Mark told us that “all he knows” is that he presided over the meeting where our party decided to go against the DNC’s direct warning, and that they voted in favor of that 79 to 1. He “doesn’t know what the intentions in the room were,” so I guess “presiding over the meeting” means he just kind of sat outside to make sure no one else went in the room.
I’m obviously going to have to hope you can take my word on these events, and if you’d like a friend of mine made a detailed write-up of the whole deal over at another forum I post on (I would not recommend reading any of our threads :P) back when it happened, it is much better account of the whole thing, as he wrote it the day after.
Anyhow, I just wanted to say it’s clear that our state party thought from the beginning that it’d hardly see a slap on the wrist for its actions, even after the candidates took their names off the ballot (I have a little bit of Hillary suspicion going on as well, but it wouldn’t hold up for more than a few paranoid minutes if I took it seriously).
Either way, Michigan’s arrogance and inept state government should not be considered a misjudgment on Obama’s part. All he did was follow the rules.
What rules are you talking about?
Michigan had it’s primary early in order to force a change the process.
I’m proud that my state’s democratic leadership had the backbone to stand up to Howard Dean and the spineless DNC leadership that continues to bend over backwards to kiss Iowa and New Hampshire’s ass.
Had the DNC forced New Hampshire to follow the agreed upon primary calendar from the this whole shitstorm would never have happened. All they had to do was do what they did to Michigan, recommend that the candidates not campaign there and threaten to strip their delegates.
Here is the letter Carl Levin and Debbie Dingell sent to Howard Dean when New Hampshire announced that they would be pulling their primary ahead.
http://www.michigandems.com/Levin-Dingell%20Letter.pdf
They got no response.
It’s unfortunate that Mark Brewer couldn’t explain the situation to you better.
By “rules” I mean the instruction not to campaign in Michigan and Florida.
I agree that a change in the process needs to happen, but I think that Michigan went about it in the most arrogant and immature way possible. Maybe Mark could have explained it better (if he would have tried at all - he kept insisting that we just find someone to email), but personally I don’t think that states rushing up the calendar will do anything but damage the primary process. Again, I agree with you - the process needs to be changed, but I think that the idea behind states like New Hampshire and Iowa leading off the primary calendar is a good one, and that a compromise should be reached. At is stands, I do not see this having any sort of positive effect on future primaries, and in fact it will only postpone change when people say “yeah, well remember how screwed up things got in 08?”
Michigan should have done what Mark Brewer told us to do in that room when we asked why Michigan did what it did and what we can do to make sure the results come out as fairly as possible - go through the proper channels and create some sort of organized effort rather than pretending you can do as you please and it will work out the way you want.
I do find it interesting that originally Nevada was going to hold a caucus prior to New Hampshire, New Hampshire’s secretary of state made it well known that no matter what day Nevada held their caucus New Hampshire’s was going to come earlier.
I believe he also further explained that the only reason New Hampshire has no problem with Iowa’s caucuses coming before their primary is because it was “grandfathered in” since, back when New Hampshire state law actually was written to insure New Hampshire was the earliest primary Iowa was the only state which held an earlier contest.
You know, this process is pretty lame. I say we let Iowa and New Hampshire stay as the first and second, and then split the country up geographically (4 or 5 or 7…whatever) and rotate the order of voting in the chunks and then the order in which the geographical chunks vote. There’s no reason that the first two states should have everything come t them. Fix the dates so the process isn’t so long, have it regimented so there’s a primary a day or something in that ballpark and be done with the process in a little over a month and a half.