The DNC Agrees It Needs To Talk About Seating Florida And Michigan

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is planning a meeting late next month to try to resolve the Florida/Michigan fiasco. “The main item of business on the Committee’s agenda will be the consideration of two pending challenges,” in a memo sent to members Friday. “We hope you are able to attend this very important RBC meeting.” The meeting is scheduled for May 31st. DNC members Joel Ferguson of Michigan and Jon Ausman of Florida have proposed a plan to seat half-delegates based on the outcome of the state’s primary elections. If Florida’s elections were valid it would have given Clinton 105 delegates to Obama’s 73. In Michigan Clinton would have gotten 73 delegates, while 55 were uncommitted. Using the half-delegate plan will give Clinton 89 more delegates and Obama 33.5, with 27.5 uncommitted. This is still not enough for Clinton to overtake Obama. Clinton would like to seat the rogue state delegates, while Obama wants to split the delegates of the two states 50-50. Obama’s plan is the same as not counting them at all, but he believes that this is fair because all the candidates agreed to boycott the contests and his name wasn’t on Michigan’s ballot. The Florida primary was moved up by a Republican controlled state legislature with a Republican governor. The leading state Democrat tried to move the date back to Super Tuesday, but was voted down by a legislative body controlled by the Republicans . Obama’s camp likes to point out that he wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan. John Edwards and Obama pulled their names from the ballot to show support for the DNC’s poor decision to ignore these two states. The Obama camp likes to say that Clinton was the only person on the ballot, but that is not true. Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd, and Mike Gravel all left their names on the ballot. Obama doesn’t mention the fact that he encouraged his surrogates to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan. Isn’t that a form of campaigning? He was also the only Democrat to have T.V. ads running in Florida. So when Obama says he agreed to some type of boycott, he lied, because he was only Democratic candidate campaigning in either of those two states. And now Obama is trying to make sure these two states are not counted, since he lost both of them. Many that don’t live in those two states are quick to punish the voters for something they had nothing to do with. They like to point out that the states broke the rules, but they fail to understand that the voters didn’t break any rules. And why doesn’t Nevada and South Carolina get punished for moving their elections up? Florida voters came to the polls in record numbers, and if the DNC doesn’t come up with something better than this these same voters will show up in November for John McCain. This proposed meeting is over a month away. I suppose they are hoping all this will just fix itself, and by then Florida and Michigan won’t matter anymore. The DNC can’t disenfranchise over 2 million voters and expect them to come back to the Democratic party like nothing happened. Howard Dean has taken a party that was a sure bet, and has turned it into a sure loser in about a year. The total incompetence of this Democratic leadership will guarantee a Republican victory despite President Bush’s disastrous 7 years.
Alan Cosgrove