Democratic and Liberal political analysis and commentary

The votes of the Michigan and Florida delegations to the 2008 Democratic National Convention will be counted, sort of.

Florida's democrats had no choice in switching their party's nominating contest sooner than the DNC mandated. The republican majorities in both houses of that legislature are republican. They decided to move up the primary despite the warnings issued by the RNC. Even though I'm sure some leaders in the Florida Democratic Party didn't mind the shift, it still wasn't fair to the rank-and-file democratic votes of the state, who most certainly would end up getting short-changed in the long run.

Michigans democrats, from the office of Governor Jennifer Granholm, to the craw of Senator Carl Levin, have long coveted an earlier date. They openly defied the wishes of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and gambled with their own delegation to more up the date of the Michigan primary.

In my humble opinion, the Florida delegation should have been fully seated, lesson learned, and the Michigan delegation should have been put in proverbial time-out and had their delegation stripped. I'll admit I'm biased, being from Iowa and all...but Iowa plays by the same rules as everybody else. The decisions as to when these primaries should be held are made months in advance. Without these rules, primaries might be held more than two years in advance of general elections, which would not serve the American people. Someday, the order might be changed. But Michigan did nothing this year to advance its case. In fact, it probably put itself in a much harsher light than ever before.

If I was Governor Granholm and Senator Levin, I would focus on helping Michigan's crippled economy and get its people back to work before I would worry about some pissing match for a presidential primary.