So, I was cleaning out some old podcasts, and I found one from
Slate that I apparently never listened to. It was prehistoric old - from *gasp* December - and discussed the Democrats and Republicans disenfranchising of delegates from Michigan and Florida and ultimately deduced that
"nobody cares."
Here's why (according to Timothy Noah):
A glance at the 2004 primary calendar
helps provide the answer. Florida doesn't care because four years ago
it didn't hold its primary until March 9, which was after John Kerry
had wrapped up the Democratic nomination. (The nomination of incumbent
Republican George W. Bush was, of course, a foregone conclusion.)
Similarly, Wyoming didn't hold its primary until March 20. By pushing
to move their primaries to an earlier date, Florida and Michigan are
essentially swapping de facto disenfranchisement for de jure disenfranchisement. Not a big deal.
Yes, not a big deal. And for those of us who have been reading the blogs since well before December, we remember this chatter and understand that had Obama not won Iowa, Michigan and Florida would still be
happily disenfranchised because the race would have been called in January.
But, now, HRC needs both states to make a run at the nomination, and knowing that a revote or helpful seating are unlikely, the press and general public are starting to grumble that she should step aside and we should declare Obama the winner (again, nothing new to the blog junkies).
What is bewildering to me is the bewilderment expressed by
HRC (
and folks supporting her) at these calls to withdraw. The most common phrases heard in reply to a, "but she/you can't win" are: "no one has the delegate count," "Michigan and Florida are still up in the air," "buh, buh, Pennsylvania!!!"
I couldn't put my finger on the source of the bewilderment - was it just that I have had a super political junkie crush on Obama since, like, 2002 (yes,
before the DNC speech), or is it something more? And, I think I found some perspective and something akin to an answer later in the Noah article. We're dealing with two conflicting issues: the rules as they're technically laid out, and the system as it has always been:
Instead of achieving the necessary delegate count, a primary candidate wins by achieving the necessary momentum. If you build sufficient momentum, the necessary delegate count will come, Field of Dreams-style. But it will come not before but after
the news media and the political establishment have already named the
putative nominee. In 2004, for instance, the BBC News Web site carried
the headline, "Kerry Wraps Up Democratic Contest"
on March 3 even though an accompanying graph showed that Kerry was
still nearly 1,000 delegates shy of the number needed to win the
nomination. Kerry's chief remaining opponent, John Edwards, hadn't
dropped out of the race yet, but President Bush had already phoned
Kerry to congratulate him and to promise a "spirited race" in the
general election.
So, this is where we're at now - they're too close in the delegate count for anyone to truly have
enough momentum to be declared a winner (at least, McBush hasn't called either of them yet), so the press and Obama's supporters are trying to manufacture a sense of momentum so we can get this over with. The hilarious part is that HRC didn't see any legitimate threats to her nomination back when the DCCC decided to strip Florida and Michigan's delegates, so she didn't have an issue with it -
de facto vs.
de jure disenfranchisement was a semantic discussion she didn't care to have back in August. But now, she's all in favor of breaking the rules to play by the rules.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this look back at prehistoric times and found some of the perspective I did. If you already knew all of this...sorry...but I found it instructive. If nothing else, I think we can safely say that the DCCC's system is broken and needs to be tinkered with before our next primary...in 2016.
