Unless you count that whole “breaking the rules of your party” thing, then no.
Get real. Obama’s suggestion for “resolving” this problem is that he should be handed half of the delegates in Florida and Michigan - a far more blatant “theft” than anything Clinton has been accused of*. Show me the rule that covers that.
*On reflection, this isn’t true. There’s no limit to the crimes Clinton has been accused of by some Obamaphiles. In a recent thread about the Vice Presidency, more than one poster said that Clinton would probably have Obama killed if he named her as his Vice President. You guys should remember the way we laughed at the Vince Foster conspiracy nuts ten years ago. That’s how you look now.
Naw, but she’d probably be shot at if she named Obama as her VP, according to Chris Rock. 
If you’re at all interested in chronology, that suggestion was only brought up after talk began, in contravention of the DNC rules and final edict, of seating the uncredentialed delegates based on extremely flawed results.
I’m not in favor of this solution either (just leave MI/FL out) but at least it would accomplish two things, which would result in a much fairer outcome: (i) it would allow the MI and FL delegates to be seated and to participate in the process; and (ii) by splitting the delegates rather that accepting flawed and unfair primary results, status quo based on legitimate results is maintainted, and
EVERYBODY CAN THEN MOVE ON.
Didn’t you hear? Clinton doesn’t like MoveOn anymore, even though the organization was founded to protect her husband from impeachment. Now, they’re party activists (and man…how out of touch with your party do you have to be to declare the term “party activist” (which translates to “the people who actually CARE about the damn party”) as a pejorative?)!
I’m sorry:
EVERYBODy CAN THEN STOP SQUABBLING AND BICKERING AND ACTING LIKE CHILDREN.
It is only “theft” if the delegates ought to be seated according to the previous vote. In other words, if we assume the argument you’re trying to prove, then we can prove your argument. That’s called begging the question.
Leaving aside the truthfulness of that statement, I’ll just say that if you make an assertion about someone (Obama, here), it’s up to you to provide “substance” to back up that assertion. Until and unless you do that, it’s not up to other posters to disprove it. Not to mention that it’s generally difficult, if not impossible, to prove a negative in cases like this.
Now, I actually don’t doubt that Obama isn’t doing everything he possibly could to have the FL and MI primaries done over, although I don’t know whether that would matter or not any more. Personally, I’d like to see the candidates stay out of that decision making process since it’s the party that needs to make and enforce the rules, and the candidates themselves can’t help be be biased about how they want it to play out. To me, this is more about the party and how they want to run things than it is about the candidates.
I’ve previously made this post that ultimately wondered if this is a matter of the division between national party rules re: decredentializing and states’ rights concerning re-voting, although I advocated for slightly more candidate participation in ironing out the conflicts over party rules and decisions.
[ChevyChase]This breaking news just in! Hopes for a revote in Michigan and Florida are still dead![/ChevyChase]
I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about this, and you have to keep in mind that this isn’t like voting in a government run election-- it’s a party picking it’s candidate, not electing a president. It’s not a democratic process as we usually think about that term. The simple fact of the existence of the superdelegates demostrates that.
And I’ve said I can see where reasonable people can disagree about which candidate the supers should support. If all they were supposed to do was anoint the person with the most votes, then what’s the point of having them. I also think these polls showing people will vote for McCain if their candidate isn’t selected is a bunch of bunk. It’s way to early to tell how people are going to vote, and accept for the Republicans that Obama has managed to court, the regular Democrats will likely fall in line in November.
I’m unclear about who made the original decision to go against the rule for when to hold the Michigan Primary and the Florida Primary.
I don’t think that either Clinton or Obama should be leading the DNC. (Doesn’t that job belong to Harold Ford?) I do think that they should abide by the decisions of the party or work to change them – just not after the fact. The time to protest the rule against the early primaries was before they were held. If Clinton did that and was unsuccessful, that was the decision of her party. By your own argument, Elvis, where were her leadership skills?
I, too, am sorry for those who did not get a say in Florida and Michigan. They are paying for the consequences of poor judgment. Who made these decisions why did they do it? They are the ones to blame.
I’m certainly open to learning and this makes sense. I only brought of the states’ right/party rules dichotomy because of the fact that it was the state legislatures that set in motion a change of primary date that ultimately brought about a party ruling about the credentializing of the delegates once they did that.
See above re: state legislatures.
Howard Dean is the DNC Chairman and, as such, its leader (am I right, politicos?). Everybody, including the candidates knew what the DNC ruling was going in and nobody raised a fuss until after the fact. I won’t even say who it was.
State legislatures and politicians who wanted the media attention of being closer to the front and more influential during the primary season. It also seems that there were DNC members who thought there would be a strategic advantage to a disenfranchised outcome that did not seem to occur.
Yeah, and it’s also ironic that those states would have had more influence, at least this time around, if they had held their primaries as originally scheduled.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. No. No. No.
Howard Dean is the DNC (Democratic National Committee) chairman.
Harold Ford is the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council - ugh) chairman.
Completely different organizations. One is the official party organization. The other is a pseudo-Democratic, Republican-lite, corporatist, lobbyist-loving piece of trash that should cease to exist as soon as humanly possible.
More than that…Clinton’s adviser Harold Ickes was on the committee that voted to strip Florida and Michigan of all of their candidates for pushing their primaries up.
Another Clinton adviser, Terry McAuliffe, during his term as DNC chairman, had a head-to-head with Michigan and Carl Levin over this very same issue, and held his ground on NOT allowing Michigan to move the primary up, to the point where he was apparently in a shouting match with Levin over it.
Hypocrites, all.
It started when the majority-Republican Florida Legislature proposed moving the primary dates up, contrary to both parties’ rules. To make it more difficult for the Democratic minority to oppose, they tacked on a paper ballot amendment that, as we know from past experience in Florida, was a critical issue.
Two things could have happened here; the Democrats could have unanimously voted ‘No’ on this legislation, and even if it passed, that would have shown the DNC Rules Committee that they’d taken all “provable and positive steps” and “acted in good faith” in attempting to stop legislation that violated DNC Rules. Not so easy to explain to their constituents. See the paper ballot issue above.
The other option was to propose an amendment to move the date to a later date and attempt to sway some of the Republicans to vote with them on the amendment. Had they done that with sincerity and “in good faith,” this would also have made a strong case to avoid sanctions against them.
However, not only did they unanimously vote ‘Yes’ on the legislation, the mockingly put forth an amendment to move the date into compliance, stating outright that they were only going through the motions to try to later pull one over on Howard Dean. Watch the video of Senate Minority Leader, Steven Geller, making a joke of the process, here.
Now, you might think that when the DNC Rules committee, which, remember from my earlier post in this thread, had 12 Clinton supporters on it, including her Chief Strategist Harold Ickes, reviewed all the evidence submitted to them for their consideration, found it lacking in “good faith”, and issued the 100% reduction in delegates, that that would be it, right? Nope, the Florida Democrats still had one more opportunity to make this right from the get-go.
All they had to do was declare the earlier primary a “beauty contest” and arrange for caucuses to be held at a later date, and voilà, no loss of delegates! But the Florida Democrats turned this option down flat, claiming it would disenfranchise voters who didn’t live close enough to caucus sites, and besides, people wouldn’t want to come out to vote twice. Cite. I find this laughable, seeing as how what they created instead was an entire state of disenfranchised (and pissed off) voters, and have been begging for months to let people vote a second time.
Too bad the joke had to be on their constituents. I hope that jerk gets hightailed out on his ass next election.
Then, of course, the DNC had no choice but to sanction Michigan similarly. As has been pointed out, they’d been trying that trick for years, and had been warned flat out that they’d do so at their own peril. They never before had the balls to call the DNC’s bluff. They finally did, and it got them exactly what they’d been told all along would happen. Now they’re mad and blaming the one guy in this whole debacle who had fuckall to do with it. It really is outrageous.
A revote in Florida would be fair and acceptable. The resuts as-is? No way.
Go ask florideans if they want to drag the primaries further and spend money on a revote, or just let things ride as they are. The majority would rather see that money spent on other things.
If you have hard evidence of the contrary, provide a cite. Your assertions are erroneous.
Elvis has been remarkably consistent in his arguing style for quite a while. He reminds me of Rush Limbaugh. Very skilled at saying things that seem to make sense, but… don’t, actually. But they really do entice people to argue with him.
Have you considered applying for a job on the air, Elvis? Air America may make you the next big star.
So, what concessions has Hillary been willing to make so that the good citizens of FL and MI can be heard, since she’s so gung-ho that this happen?
The simplest concession would involve a request to seat the pledged delegates but not the superdelegates. After all, only the former reflect the votes cast by the public.
Obama probably wouldn’t accept that deal. But even the offering of it would demonstrate more good faith than she’s shown so far.