Scott:
I admire your initiative on this - but your ire is misdirected. The DNC made very clear in its rules - which the MI delegation agreed to - that the punishment for violating the Feb 5 rule would be that the state was stripped of all delegates. But Carl Levin and other Michigan leaders chose to ignore the rules that were properly made and schedule their primary for Jan 15. You should be asking your state leaders why those chose to ignore the rules when the consequences were clearly spelled out.
The principal of one person, one vote does not apply to candidate selection. That's why the Iowa & Nevada caucuses, one of the most undemocratic processes I can imagine, are perfectly legal. Parties have the power to pick their nominee in any manner they so choose. If Michigan wants to participate in that process, then they should follow the rules that everyone else (except Florida) seems to be OK with.
The primary system is a complete mess - it's absurd that voting began more than 300 days before the election. We have by far the longest presidential selection process in the western world. It's damaging our government and our democracy by making every year an election year. Instead of trying to fix that problem, Michigan's Democrats have been single-mindedly focused on moving up Michigan's primary. There are a number of proposals that spread the process out and rotate the order of the states - most notably from the National Secretaries of State Association.
So by all means - send letters to the DNC about how this is unfair - this is not a good thing over all for Democrats. But don't leave your own leaders out of the line of fire, because they're the ons who got you where you are today.
I don't blame just the DNC, but the entire party
Thanks for your thoughts. I have indeed complained to my state legislators, and have told them I do not plan to support them when they are up for reelection because of the part they played in the primary debacle. I agree that they played a role in this fiasco which is at least equal to the role the DNC played.
But my complaint with the DNC isn't that their rules were not spelled out clearly, it is that they are too extreme. I don't believe that disenfranchising voters is a reasonable punishment for a rule infraction, regardless of how well it is spelled out. Instead, the DNC could have refused to provide support to the legislators that voted for the change, run competitors against them in their next re-election primary, or ejected them from the party. All of these would have been painful sacrifices for the party to make in defense of their rules, and so instead they chose to take it out on the Democratic voters.
And while I understand the "one person, one vote" is not a constitutional right in a primary, I still think it is at the very core of the democratic process. If a process does not honor this principle, it is not a democratic process. And so my view is that the Democratic Party's primaries are not being run democratically. I know this is perfectly legal, but it is nonetheless unacceptable to me for my party to operate in this way.
We could not agree more about the primary situation being a complete mess.
Thanks for stopping by, I look forward to hearing more of your comments!
Blame your legislature and your state party
You guys knew the rules, your Republican legislature broke the rules, your state Party had options, they chose to break the rules. The consequences were clearly laid out well in advance. Your state party can still caucus, though it's getting late to put it together. You decided you were soooooo important nobody would do anything about it. wrong.
Oregon (my state) leg talked about jumping, our State Party (DPO) threw a fit after DNC made it clear it wasn't to be tolerated and the leg forgot that bad idea. We go May 5, when everybody (except me & a few others) thought it would be over. Looks like our (few) delegates are going to be important, after all.
I am an ardent supporter of voting rights, I get right flat in BushCo's face about it. My record is clear, you screwed the pooch, don't blame anybody but Michigan (and Florida).
Chuck Butcher
http://chuckfor.blogspot.com
hi there - same anon
hi there - same anon here.
The punishment was harsh because the DNC wanted states to take it seriously. They have tried less severe sanctions in the past and the states ignored them. They instituted a review of the primary process - largely at Michigan's behest - early on and came up with the NV & SC plan. And Carl Levin and Debbie Dingell decided to throw their toys out of the pram and schedule a primary on January 15, I think largely because they expected the DNC to back down on punishment. Can you imagine the mess THAT would have caused? If the DNC didn't enforce the rules - which Michigan agreed to before this whole thing started - then we'd have super tuesday on the 4th of July 2007 as all the states rushed to be first.
Look at the republican side - the RNC imposed less severe sanctions on the two states and no one noticed. The MI & FL GOP parties ignored the rules and still got what they wanted - attention from the national media and the campaigns. Yeah, they've got fewer delegates at the convention, but those delegates weren't identified in advance, so no one who thought they were going to the convention is now not
We disagree on the candidate selection process, however. I think a political party should be able to select its candidates in any way it sees fit - whether that be by appointment, convention, caucus, primary or some other method. But the point is it should be a method that is agreed upon in some manner by the leaders of that party. In this case, we had a system that everyone agreed to and then Michigan didn't like how it worked and went and broke the rules.
What would really make me smile is if this whole thing doesn't end on Feb 5 and the states that wind up REALLY getting the close scrutiny from the media and the campaigns are the states that didn't rush to try to be first in line.