We need to find an acceptable compromise regarding the issue of possibly seating convention delegates from Michigan and Florida. But first, a little rant...
There have been several blog entries in recent days regarding the reconsideration of the penalties imposed on the Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic convention. The issue may, or may not, be settled this coming weekend. Most of the Obama bloggers agree that those two states willfully violated the rules, after having been fully warned about the prospective penalties, and therefore should pay the proscribed penalties.
Without regard to whether or not we believe that Senator Hillary Clinton is a good person (or senator, or potential president) I think it is almost impossible for even her most ardent admirers to deny that she is a hypocrite on this particular issue. The Democratic Party establishment, which is loaded with Clinton loyalists, decreed last year that any states holding Democratic primaries or caucuses prior to February 5, 2008 - with four specific exceptions - would forfeit their entire delegate representation at the national convention. Senator Clinton agreed with this rule. One can argue that this rule should never have been put into place, or that the rules should have provided for a milder penalty in case of a violation. Still, this was the rule agreed to by all parties. Obviously, the Clinton campaign never imagined that her last possible chance of winning the nomination would rest on a complete repudiation of those rules well after the fact.
I have no problem with any candidate, including Senator Clinton, trying to shade the evidence in his or her own favor. She exaggerates her resume (her undefined "35 years of experience" and her allegedly helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland come to mind), and inflates the significance of fairly meaningless polls that supposedly indicate that she is more likely than Barack Obama to win the general election. I don't buy her argument, but I do not question the legitimacy of her attempting to present herself in the best possible light, implicitly at her rivals' expense. In addition, I have not joined with those who attributed sinister motives behind her clumsy reference to the 1968 Robert Kennedy assassination.
I do have a problem with obvious lying (recall her claims of dodging sniper fire) or hypocrisy (the Michigan and Florida delegations). We can be sure that if the circumstances of Obama and Clinton were reversed, Senator Clinton would be outraged at Senator Obama's flimsy arguments that the previously agreed rules should be trashed and that the full delegations from both states should be included without dilution. Senator Clinton knows this, and so do her campaign officials and her supporters.
A related hypocrisy is Senator Clinton's claim that she has the highest aggregate popular vote, and that this means that the super delegates should support her candidacy. This claim is based on extremely twisted logic that involves including all of her votes in Michigan, none of the "uncommitted" vote (which was a coded form of voting for Obama) in Michigan, and dismissing the caucus state voting, which went heavily for Obama. While she grandstands about how every vote should count, she is clearly implying that the votes in states where she campaigned vigorously should count more than the votes in states where she did not. Even accepting all that twisted logic, the assignment of convention delegates is based on each state's rules for delegate selection, not on aggregate popular vote. Again, if their positions were reversed, we can be sure that Senator Clinton would sneer contemptuously at Senator Obama's making such a pathetic case for himself.
Despite my sense that, as a matter of principle, the states of Florida and Michigan should pay the full penalty for violating party rules, it would be politically prudent to reach a compromise that would be perceived as fair to all sides. The voters of those two states can understandably feel cheated due to a rules violation that they were not responsible for. The Democrats should have a reasonable expectation of winning Michigan in this year's presidential election, and should hope for at least a credible chance in Florida. The voters in those states matter, and it is not wise to insult them. At the same time, there should be enough of a penalty to deter future violations of party rules.
My suggestion is to cut the pledged delegate representation by half in both states, after reclassifying the "uncommitted" Michigan vote to Obama. I would completely cut out the super delegates of both states, since they (unlike the primary voters) are not innocent victims of the decisions to move up the primaries in those states. This proposed solution would help Senator Clinton's chances, but not much. Senator Obama is still the nearly certain Democratic nominee. It would be easier to argue that the voters in Michigan and Florida were treated fairly, while still imposing a meaningful penalty for the rules violation. If this, or something similar, winds up being the final answer to the Florida and Michigan issue, the rules for future election campaigns should be adjusted to reflect it. The Democratic Party looks ridiculous if it imposes rules that are understood to be toothless.
I am the Bard of Wilmette, and I approved this message.
