Given that Hillary Clinton “won” both the Florida and Michigan primaries, it’s not surprising she’s leading the bandwagon of either accepting their results, or holding a re-vote.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton weighed in today on the dilemma of disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida, arguing that their delegations should be seated at the Democratic convention unless the two states hold new primaries.
“Honor the results or hold new primary elections,” she said. “I don’t see any other solutions that are fair and honor the commitment that two and a half million voters made in the Democratic primaries in those two states.”
No, “fair” is setting the Florida and Michigan Democrats on their local party leadership who moved up their primaries even though they were told repeatedly by the DNC that they would not count if they did so.
To come out now and push for the results to be counted would not only be absurd, but grossly unfair, since Obama took his name off of the Michigan ballot and didn’t campaign in Florida. And, as BD points out, the Florida congressional delegation has rejected any idea of a new vote.
Fine. Next time follow the rules.
And, Hillary — in your drive to win the nomination at any cost, you are damaging the party as a whole, and a lot of potential support you might get if you should actually pull it off. For someone who claims to be so experience and leader-like, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.
And considering that Clinton broke the Rules (and sadly Kucinich, not that it matters any more) by being on the ballot in Michigan.
Being a (naturalized) Floridian Democrat, I have to defend the party at least a smidge. The reason they agreed to push up the primary was because the Republican-controlled legislature tacked it onto a bill about returning the election process here to one that has a paper trail. After trying to amend the bill and get rid of the primary move, Dems were forced to choose between maybe getting their hand slapped by the DNC and voting against badly needed election reforms. Back in April of last year when this happened, everyone assumed that Hillary would have the whole thing sewn up by February, and the Florida votes really wouldn’t matter. (Not to mention the fact that if they wanted to hold their own primary outside the State-run one, they’d have to pony up the cash for it.)
Ironically, the Democratic Party press release when they voted to go along with the legislature said: “When it came down to it, Florida’s Democratic leadership decided that, among other factors, the potential for disenfranchisement with any other option besides the January 29th state-run primary was just too great. Florida Democrats cannot and will not disenfranchise voters.”
LOL!
Well, the amusing side note to this and a lesson to Florida is that the same thing happened in Wyoming, and yet the Wyoming Dem’s managed to hold a Caucus last weekend when the GOP voted in January.
I get the feeling that the Floridian Dem’s just thought that there was no way the the DNC would actually force Florida to follow the rules and that they could get away with cheating.
Not making excuses, but…ok, well, I am. 🙂
I’m sure that many of them thought the DNC would cave eventually and that the lure of a pre-Super Tuesday primary was appealing, but this state has never had a caucus. Even now the suggestion that we figure out how to do one on-the-fly as a substitute for the primary is laughable. Florida’s got a smidge more people than Wyoming for one thing. Not to mention the fact that it’s bad enough trying to get VOTING right…can you imagine the mess when thousands of people show up in some school gymnasium–half speaking English and the other half Spanish–and there’s no precedence to follow?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Obama supporter, and I think Hillary is grasping at straws. I don’t think this election was fair, since no one campaigned and a ton of the votes were early (practically before anyone knew anything about the candidates other than their names). But it’s not quite as black-and-white as the “let’s punish those stupid Florida Democrats” line in the media. I fully believe this was a deliberate move by the Republicans to cause chaos. “You want fair elections in the Fall, well then you gotta say ‘screw you’ to your national party. Your choice.”
I think the Florida Dems were stupid not to have made this a bigger issue at the time (though they did whine about it a lot back then), and I think the DNC is really to blame for blindly going along with the mess instead of helping us figure out a way around it BEFORE the primary and for sticking with the line that it’s all our fault.