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May 28, 2008
DNC Lawyers Say no full representation by FL and MI at Convention
Rick Moran
In what is sure to be a huge disappointment to the Clinton campaign, DNC lawyers are saying there is no way that the Rules and Bylaws Committee can restore full delegate representation to Florida and Michigan before the convention.
This means one of two outcomes; either Florida and Michigan win a reduced seating role at the convention this Saturday when the committee meets or Clinton takes her case all the way to the convention credentials committee where she is guaranteed to lose:
A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers.
Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party's legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo.
The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, which plans to meet Saturday at a Washington hotel. The committee is considering ways to include the two important general election battlegrounds at the nominating convention in August, and the staff analysis says seating half the delegates is "as far as it legally can" go.
Saturday's meeting is expected to draw a large crowd, with Clinton supporters among those encouraging a protest outside demanding that all the states' delegates be seated. Proponents of full reseating have mailed committee members Florida oranges and pairs of shoes to get their attention.
It is probable that the committee will decide very little since they can only award half the delegates and there remains no good way to divide them that would satisfy both sides.
It may all become moot if Hillary Clinton drops out of the race prior to the convention. But if Clinton decides to fight, she will face a credentials committee full of Obama partisans and Howard Dean puppets who would almost certainly deny any effort to seat the full delegations the way she wants.
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Comments
'as far as it legally' can go? The DNC can do whatever it wants. There are no contracts or laws preventing them from changing their own rules.
It's become a farce. They won't seat the delegates if it will 'change the outcome' of the primaries. Michigan and Florida were part of the primary system. Seating their delegates as long as they do no harm smacks of soviet-style "democracy". I thought Democrats wanted all votes counted. Neither Florida's nor Michigan's vote will count in this contest unless all delegates are seated. Hillary Clinton chose to give Michigan voters someone to choose. Barack Obama took his own name off the ballot in Michigan. That's his mistake and his tough luck. The same goes for those who stayed home in either state. None of them had to let others do their deciding for them.
Posted by: pmk | May 28, 2008 12:31 PM
If the DNC doesn't strip Florida and Michigan of at least half of their delegates then the states will never take the DNC seriously again. The DNC has no choice but to not seat the full delegations. The Democratic party dug a huge hole for themselves, but that's the ball game. Maybe next time the states won't muck things up like this. In the meantime, they all need to take their medicine instead of disingenuously whining about voters being disenfranchised. It would be refreshing to hear the state parties admit that they screwed up, but so far all I see them doing is blaming the DNC.
Posted by: EyeDoc | May 28, 2008 03:06 PM
Rules are rules and we should live by them.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 28, 2008 05:10 PM
I agree that the idea of a "legal opinion" is a farce and intended to give legitimacey to a pre-ordained outcome and give rules committe an excuse to cut short any reasonable debate.
The voters in Michigan and Florida had nothing to do with the state DNC leader's decisions about when to hold the primaries. The DNC national leadership is trying to punish the state leadership for stepping out of line, but the real effect is that the Dems will not count votes that will help them make the best decision about which candidate should be nominated. Florida and Michigan voters will particpate in the general election and the if the Dems fail to factor them in properly then they do so at their peril.
Posted by: Richard | May 28, 2008 05:34 PM
This primary is too close and the stakes are too high for millions of voters to be denied a voice because a bunch of DNC powerbrokers want to "punish" Florida and Michigan for going against their rules. What is this, Junior High School? The voters are innocent in all of this and while I agree that there should be some penalty the states pay for breaking the rules, it shouldn't be at the expense of voters losing their voice in this extremely close and vitally important process. Are we a democracy or not?!*
Posted by: Rose | May 28, 2008 11:28 PM
First off...the Dems are where they are because of their refusal to let the process play out naturally. Florida and Michigan, whose party "Leaders," by the way, are freely elected by the rank and file voters, decided that they NEEDED to be a part of Super Tuesday, so they broke the rules to do so. They knew when the elections were scheduled that they were going against the rules, but, evidently they didn't care all that much. They got their 15 seconds of fame being part of Super Tuesday. It turns out that if they had held their primaries at the proper time in the process, lo and behold, they would have been the stars of the show instead of just making the chorus line. The democratic party voters of Florida and Michigan only have themselves to blame for the clowns they appointed/elected to make decisions for them, so I say....Cowboy up, People! You knew your party leaders were breaking the rules and not enough of you piped up at the time...oh well.
At this point the Dems have painted themselves into a corner. They have pitted their two biggest demographic groups against each other, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. They're going to be forced to give Obama in order to keep the bigger demographic bloc on the democratic plantation, as it were, and they've decided that women are the lesser of the two demographics to throw under the bus....maybe they know women tend to be more forgiving...*grins*
Posted by: Duchess of Austin | May 29, 2008 10:51 AM