The Florida and Michigan Debacle

Honestly, the DNC should have followed the RNC and penalized Florida and Michigan by taking half of their delegates, but still let the candidates campaign there.

But they chose to ignore the rules and decided to bring up their primaries on an earlier date, and they lost their delegates. Those were the rules.

Now Florida and Michigan are complaining about being silenced. Don't ignore the cries of over 5.1 million Americans, they said. They say it's "intolerable" that the Democratic National Committee has denied their citizens their vote.

But wait a minute, you broke the rules, so you got punished.

Florida, you lost your 241 delegates.

Michigan, you lost your 156 delegates.

All of the candidates removed their names from the ballot except for Clinton (how convenient!).

Now you are demanding the right to seat your delegations at the National Convention. You are saying that over 5.1 million voters will lose their say. Then I would say you are damaging the legitimacy of the entire nomination process by potentially deciding the winner and depriving millions of voters their say.

You are also telling the rest of the Democratic state parties that no matter what the rules, your delegates get counted in the end.

Of course the Clinton campaign wants the delegates to be seated because their candidate won both states.

Howard Wolfson states “Our position is the voters of Michigan and Florida have spoken. Those votes ought to count and the delegations ought to be seated.”

But if you ask him if seating the Michigan [and Florida] delegates would cast a pall of illegitimacy over the election because she was the only candidate on the ballot, he says, “I think not giving participation to delegates from those states would send a very unsettling signal to the people of those states.”

Answer the question! Just say yes, we want those delegates because Clinton stayed on the ballot and she knew she would get the votes and knew that by the end of the campaign, the Florida and Mchigian delegates will get counted, and she can win the nomination.

Was that hard to say? Sheesh!

Now they got all these options:

1) The DNC will let the Florida and Michigan delegates sit at Convention, and they will vote based on the current results.

2) The Florida and Michigan state democratic parties will organize a do-over primary at their expense.

3) The Florida and Michigan state democratic parties will organize a do-over primary at the national DNC expense.

4) The DNC Credentials committee can choose to recognize the Florida and Michigan delegates but they lose half of their allotment. (I would choose this)

5) The DNC Credentials committee can choose to deny both state delegations their right to sit at Convention.

I would say "abide by the rules," but I think giving both state delegations half of their delegates would be an appropriate compromise. I would bet that the Clinton campaign won't like that because they need all those pledged delegates to overtake Obama.

Link