Democratic and Liberal political analysis and commentary

This sickens me. One step closer to anarchy. Each step farther from the political system that survived the Great Depression, WW2, the Industrial Revolution and the friggin Civil War further erodes our already unstable system.

Fogerty was right, there's a bad moon on the 'rise.

Michigan and Florida shouldn't have been seated the RNC should have had a pair and refused to seat our Florida and Michigan delegations.

Claire:

Ignoring sporie's insanity, let me suggest to you that there was more to Michigan's actions than just wanting to be near the front of the line. Levin had long been a proponent of rotating the primaries so that no one or two states would perennially be at the front of the line. Not an unreasonable premise given that frequently a candidate winning Iowa and New Hampshire goes on to be the eventual nominee rendering later primaries as exercises in self-flagellation.

The rules committee was concerned about achieving a better demographic mix in the early primaries and made some concessions. Much hasseling ensued and New Hampshire, essentially in threatening mode, managed to stay second. I did not follow, if it was even available, the machinations of the rules committee in making these decisions but Levin argues that they broke their own rules and I have no reason to suspect that he would lie. Michigan decided to call the bluff of the rules committee and move their primary date up; no doubt realizing a battle would be necessary.

Clearly it would be hard, and I don't believe they intended to, for the rules committee to take away or alter the voters of any two or more states and assume there would not be reverberations. I believe the rules committee intended to honor the votes from MI and FL after it was clear that their votes were moot, in one way or another.

The unimaginable occurred and after Feb 5 they had no clear winner. Now they had a real dilemma with no way out other than to hope that a few more primaries would create a clear winner and they could go back to plan A. this didn't happen and they were forced to convene and deal with the problem.

I won't bother you with a repeat but I have posted an email I sent to the rules committee on sporie's blog. You can read it if you are so inclined. The summation is that the voters are the only important players in this game and diminishing their votes will bring no good to the party and could do great harm.

You can have your differences with Granholm and Levin but the voters of MI should be heard. To alter or impair their influence makes no sense in what is beginning to look like not the runaway everyone thought.

The same is true of FL voters. There is no equitable solution for everyone at this point. Better to honor the voters than to worry about the candidates or the rules committee's reputation. Clinton and Obama are strong candidates and either should win in November barring unforeseen consequences. My fear is that the rules committee has just caused to be seen some consequences heretofore unforeseen.

Claire:

BTW, my first attempt to post this got me that same message that it was awaiting your approval. I had a fairly innocuous "bad" word in it so I changed it and it went through. I believe the problem may be a rather picky language censor.

I'm baack! The whole DNC delegate mess was the result of a lack of foresight that it might ever come to this. We (rightly) criticize HRC (Her Royal Clintoness) for this error, how come no scrutiny or mea culpa from the DNC. I am only glad Harold "Ick" Ickes toned down his rhetoric for the live feed. I wouldn't want the young'uns to judge the dems from that performance.As for my own words for Harold...you can't print them. While I''m up, I told O'Bama (via website commnent) that HRC as Veep was the only dealbreaker for my vote..Thanks, I'm out