Oh please. If no central committee is in charge of coordinating primaries, there will be total chaos when it comes to scheduling primaries. What I do fault the DNC for is their lack of creativity in trying to solve this problem earlier. Howard Dean did drop the ball on this. Also, I do agree Iowa has no business being the only state to kick off the primary season every single time. They should have a lottery where states are assigned to different geographic pools under some kind of a draft like lottery that exists in the NHL. States that prefer to go later can opt out of the early lotteries.

How do you think the nomination process should be organized, or do you think it should not, and let a states free for all define the order?

Central authority - or not.

Before he turned into an Obama hack.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1 /2/12427/74720

``What's more, Clinton was the only top-tier candidate to refuse the ultimate Iowa and New Hampshire pander by removing her name from the Michigan ballot. That makes her essentially the de facto winner since Edwards and Obama, caving to the cry babies in Iowa and New Hampshire, took their name off Michigan's ballot. Sure, the DNC has stripped Michigan of its delegates, but that won't last through the convention. The last thing Democrats can afford is to alienate swing states like Michigan and Florida by refusing to seat their delegates.''

Whether or not is was the right thing to do, you can't change the rules after the fact.

What organizing principle would you have instead?  Unless you want the 2012 primaries to start in 2010, there has to be some order to the system.  Why not just have a rotating schedule, so that all states have an opportunity for early primaries?

I don't get this talk of FL being a "swing state" or the "big enchilada".  Sure, it would be great if Florida voted Democratic.  Same with Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  But I've seen absolutely no evidence that this is likely.  Face it, Florida is a purplish-red state that will in a likelihood vote for the Republicans this year.

Your other points about the foolishness of the primary calendar in general have some validity.  At least you were saying this last summer before it become cause du jour among Clinton supporters.  Kudos for that.

But still, when Florida votes Republican this year, it will have had nothing to do with the DNC rules and everything to do with demographics (rich old white people and Cuban expats).

it would be impossible for Clinton to get hold of the Credentials Com.

1.  The blame has to go to Howard Dean.  Pure and simple.  And some of the blame has to go to Gov. Granholm for signing the bill to move up Michigan's primary.

2.  So this is why McCain is doing so well.  Because we don't stand for what should be our core principle--all votes count, in all states.  And now we're suppressing two impotant states.  It just doesn't make sense.

Ah yes, the primary by anarchy argument.

I didn't like it then either.  

What I truly hope is that this leads to an honest, serious discussion about how a primary should be held AFTER this election, but before the next one.  

One thing we need to realize is that under our federal system, states have authority over just about everything to do with elections (the constitution sets out some basic requirements for how we elect Congresspersons, Senators and Presidents, and there are federal laws such as the Voting Rights Act and HAVA). Primaries are conducted by the states, paid for with state tax dollars, thus   whatever authority the national party has in setting the dates is purely voluntary (which seems to work pretty well...despite the "super Tuesday" rush, plenty of states (OH, TX, PA along with many smaller ones) left their primaries in place later in the calendar. Caucuses are cheaper, but have to be paid for by the party and of necessity have much lower participation than primaries. Open primaries seem to be popular in a lot of states, but an open primary kind of has to be coordinated with the other party's primary in order to avoid the voting-twice issue.

Lessons learned from this year: Money counts. Obama had his ups and downs in 2007, but he won (or came in close behind Clinton) in the "money primary" in the spring of last year and was always miles ahead of every other candidate but Clinton; it should not have been a surprise that the final came down to Obama v. Clinton. In the end, Obama's  high-paid PR consultant was a whole lot better than Clinton's (and a bargain, too, from what we've heard about their fees). The notion of an underfunded campaign "catching fire" via retail campaigning in IA and NH is probably a thing of the past...it's time to stop sucking up to them and face reality.

Of course there should have also been a lesson for Florida and Michigan in this year's race (unusual though it no doubt was)...if they'd only left their primaries later in the calendar, they would have been far more influential than they could have been if they'd "counted" early. Obama could have won Michigan, Clinton would have still carried Florida but perhaps by a narrower margin if Obama had an energized African American turnout there.

That in an age where Al Gore lost the presidency by approximately 600 votes, apart from all the other shenanigans, to eliminate two of the largest swing states is malpractice and malfeasance on the part of Howard Dean.  His bribe was his chance to play out his vendetta against the Clintons and to conspire with one candidate over another, whether it be direct or via perimeter comments.  His unequivocal approval of Obama's praising of Reagan, shows this guy's true colors.

The only thing I can think of to stop them, is to threaten that our disgust will be so overwhelming that without actual re-votes in Florida and Michigan, we might not be able to vote or worse still, we will vote for McCain, so as not to be enablers for this conspiracy against Democratic voters.

A fair fight leaves almost all of us ready to support the nominee, whoever it is.   However, given Obama's closeness to Jeremiah Wright, given the arrogance of his wife Michelle and given his injection of race into this campaign and without exercizing the most foundational principles of fairness and voting rights  by the DNC, I cannot vote for Obama.

I've seen us powerless to convince Nader to step down for the good of the party.  I have seen us powerless in trying to get John Kerry to wake the hell up during his 2004 campaign.  I don't want to be powerless anymore and withholding my vote or voting for McCain, if 2 huge states are disenfranchised by an oddball DNC chair, then either they reconsider this passive aggressive assault on the Democratic vote5s or many of us will disunite.

I believe after all is said and done, Hillary has the better chance to beat Obama because the Republicans won't care about being politically correct.  They will talk about Jeremiah Wright in the White House, in the Lincoln bedroom, continuing his mentorship and they will talk about Obama's Cocaine use, his arrogant wife and worst of all, how he is that conniving kind of person we all know in different forms, who acts so magnanimous and giving but who camouflage his lies and his shortcomings by throwing the race card in front of him as a shield.  Eddie Haskell is his alter ego.  Americans do not want that in a president. I sure don't.

"But I see no reason to change the principle that the DNC has no right to decide when a state chooses to set their primary or caucus. It certainly doesn't jive with the mission to decentralize the power back to the states."

Are you serious?  Then you advocate complete anarchy in 2012, only it will be 2011, since the states will keep leapfrogging backwards over each other to be "first", and the primary season will start sometime in summer 2011, and we won't know exactly when until about a month before it happens.  Chaos.

The DNC must have the authority to manage the schedule, or we look like a joke.  Oh wait, we already do...

A post from Markos before he consumed the Kool-Aid.

What's more, Clinton was the only top-tier candidate to refuse the ultimate Iowa and New Hampshire pander by removing her name from the Michigan ballot. That makes her essentially the de facto winner since Edwards and Obama, caving to the cry babies in Iowa and New Hampshire, took their name off Michigan's ballot. Sure, the DNC has stripped Michigan of its delegates, but that won't last through the convention. The last thing Democrats can afford is to alienate swing states like Michigan and Florida by refusing to seat their delegates

What none of this takes into considerations is that if MI and FL had just stayed where they were they would have had a crucial, if not decisive role in the nominating process. By trying to push to the front of the line they shot themselves in the foot and stripped themselves of their power. Lets not mince words here, nobody "did" this to them or is "disenfranchising" them now. They chose to break the rules at a time when the punishment for breaking the rules was well known. Whether you agree with the validity of IA and NH going first, you must agree that there were known rules and known consequences and if the DNC didn't stick to their guns on this every state in the union would try the same trick and we would be having October primaries.

Obviously, she wouldn't do near as well now as she did then.  I don't see the harm in re-votes and I bet you anything Clinton to a re-vote than Obama.  Now she gets to control a narrative that Obama is obstructionist and people have been disenfranchised.

I see the stupidity in the DNC not just stripping them of half their delegates, but I understand the need for a strong party structure.  You break the rules and their are consequences.

The Clinton campaign keeps saying that the repubs in Florida did this, but they did it with full Dem support (votes and the head of the FL Dem party).  They got greedy. The party had already agreed.

The delegates will be seated and any advantage to Clinton will have no effect, given the current numbers.  She just can't win it with them or without them.

Everyone will have a nice fat kumbaya and Florida and Michigan dems will vote Obama in November.

Where was all the outrage over MI and FL when it happened in 2007?

Where were all the Clinton supporters when Dean made this decision back in 2007, not in 2008 when their candidate needed more votes?

I never liked the idea of stripping these 2 states of their delegates, but unless you've been fighting for re-votes or to have them counted since 2007, you're arguing this point for political reasons.

"Clinton to a re-vote than Obama" should read

"Clinton objects to a re-vote more than Obama"

sorry.

HRC is the only candidate actively trying to override the will of the people who voted and followed the rules in this election.

What does that say?

CHILL OUT.

Your silly pointing out of ONE current evaluation of EV right now (yes, that's right SEVEN months from the election) is more than counter-balanced by the fact that by 2-1 the Democrats and GOP around the country beleive that OBAMA, not Hill is the stronger cnadidate, the one more likely to beat McCain.  It MAY be the only thing we can agree on.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105904/Dems-R eps-Agree-Obama-Tougher-Opponent-McCain. aspx

The delagations will be seated and votes counted in both MI and FL, within the confines of the agreed upon rules.  Howard Dean may be a doofus, but he isn't STUPID. As Hillary herself said the other day "THAT'S WHAT CREDENTIALS COMMITTEES ARE FOR".

So why not just exercise the better part of valor and intelligence, and let the agreed upon rules and the candidates manage this? THE VOTES WILL BE COUNTED and DELEGATES RATIFIED & SEATED!

So long as they ARE...there should be no complaint.  

2008 has been a mess, but your solution would make that ten times worse.

The nominee is the nominee of the federal Democratic Party, not the nominee any of the state parties. So there's a clear case to be made that the DNC should police the calendar. But in addition to that, there's the fact that the state parties are competing with each other for attention. An unregulated primary calendar would lead to God alone knows how many changes of primary dates, a badly lopsided calendar and a total loss of credibility for the nominee.

Once this is all over we need to have a conversation within the party about how to fix the system for 2012. There are a multitude of changes you could make. But throwing away any attempt to regulate the process is not the answer. Giving power back to the state parties is great for building a proper national infrastructure, but when they are competing with one another for attention it's never going to end well.

Also, I just don't buy that this debacle has harmed us that much in Florida and Michigan. Obama and Clinton are both within the margin of error in Michigan, which isn't a deep blue state anyway, and they've managed this whilst engaged in a messy primary battle. Obama's still in touch in Florida, although Clinton's further back, but Florida leans Republican. These gaps are not insurmountable and it's worth noting that both do badly in Wisconsin - Clinton especially so - suggesting that it's more complicated that hostility towards the DNC.

"If MI & FL become the wedge issue...."

Keep trying!

(Off topic: CNN just showed a Hillary "rally" in PA and the crowd responded to her punch lines as if they were at her funeral. They know it's all over but the sour grapes and party destruction.)

In its Call to Convention (see http://s3.amazonaws.com/apache.3cdn.net/ c313170ef991f2ce12_iqm6iyofq.pdf), the DNC indicates that there will be 161 members of a standing committee (which includes credentials committee), casting 158 votes, allocated among the states as set out in Appendix D.  (See page 8, part VII.A.1. Unfortunately Appendix D only allocates 147 members casting 144 votes.   I cannot find how they got to 161/158.   The difference may be that Florida and Michigan are zeroed out in the Appendix, but why they did it in the Appendix and not in the main document, I'm not sure.    The three non-votes are really four delegations that get to cast one vote (American Samoa, Guam, Virgin Islands and Dems. Abroad).

Because nothing can be simple under convention rules, the delegates are allocated proportionately based on the popular vote of their state (how this is done in caucus states is unclear to me).  (see page 10, VII.C.)

In addition to the members selected by the states, there are also 25 members selected by the DNC.  

As for the "rules are rules" argument, I think the question is whether these rules are so important that they are worth risking the presidency for.  It's not a guarantee, of course, that not seating Florida and Michigan will definitely lead to a democratic loss.  But it puts Democrats at a disadvantage in two large states with 44 EVs.  That's not nothing.  So the question for all democrats is whether punishing the early voting in Florida and Michigan is so important that this disadvantage is worth taking on.  To me, it's not.  

wow, are you guys bipolar or something? Making things up as you go along?
stop the whining. Obama is the nominee.
You going to vote for Grandpa? I don't think so.
He can't raise money? 11 million? That is nothing.
And he has broken campaign fundraising rules.
But now he has brought out his stepford wife and his mom to campaign for him. How special is that?

And get this - Fl and MI broke the rules. You know rules, don't you? And the other 48 states followed the rules. THE RULES THAT ALL THE 50 STATES VOTED ON.

...Heavily relies on a lot of my past writings and features the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article I was quoted in, let me say this...

...Politico.com ran an article this morning that discussed this very issue; the credentials committee  [Source:  4/1/2008 Politico/Ben Smith blog "Explaining the credentials committee"].

As it stands right now, neither Sen. Clinton nor Sen. Obama has a majority of the votes needed to send a "majority report" to the floor for the entire  Democratic National Convention to accept or reject.    

However, both Clinton and Obama have the votes to send out a "minority report" and both Sens. Clinton and Obama have the votes to request a roll call vote that would put every single delegate (pledged or unpledged) on record as being for or against restoring the voting rights of Florida and Michigan.

In an earlier diary, I outlined how this process would go and it's looking more and more like that's what we're going to see on the first day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Missing in the argument is that Florida and Michigan moved up their primaries assuming that they would only be stripped half of their delegates. The Republicans were smarter than the Democrats in that they made their punishment of stripping one-half of the delegates, certain and they stuck with the punishment. In addtition, the punishment was proportional to the violation, and not like imposing the death penalty for adultery.

Since Obama is the front-runner it's really up to him to take the lead and resolve this issue. He's the uniter right? Time for him to take the lead and unite the party. If not, not only will Florida and Michigan vote for McCain in the fall, but many Clinton supporters will stay home or vote for McCain because Obama will look to them as just another typical politician looking out for his own interest at their expense.

If we lose Michigan, we are then in negative territory compared to states Kerry won.  We may not win Florida anyway, but we can't afford to lose Michigan (or any other Kerry states).  

Democrats try so hard to be "fair", but "fairness" seems to mean different things depending on one's point of view.  The Florida/Michigan debacle exemplifies that.

To me, all states should be counted in a close race such as this one.  Florida could be seated as is, as both names were on the ballot.  Michigan should have a special election.  Why not let these two states decide the nominee? Why the obsession with "punishing them"?

I've posted the link below before. But I will repost it again, and again. Iowa has the least percentage of Gays in it. Florida has one of the highest percentage of Gays and openly Gay people in the United States. Iowa is 50th out of 50. It is not fair not to represent the Gay votes there.

The DNC cares nothing for Gay people. You know that in a hundred years Iowa will still go first, no matter how much we bitch about it, because the leaders of the DNC want it that way. And the DNC cares little about our opinion. Who made the DNC king.

http://www.gaydemographics.org/USA/state s/iowa/2000Census_state_ia.htm

I see no reason to change the principle that the DNC has no right to decide when a state chooses to set their primary or caucus.

You're right.  Everybody should go first if they want.

Seriously, if letting the states pick whatever dates they want wouldn't be a classic instance of a 'market failure,' I don't know what qualifies.

It certainly doesn't jive with the mission to decentralize the power back to the states.

Decentralize what power?  How do you resolve a competition between states by having nobody set the rules?

And its still an idiocy that Democrats are talking about not counting Florida and Michigan votes.

'Democrats' aren't talking about it.  Hillary and her supporters are the sole participants in this conversation anymore.

It's a small wonder then, that today McCain is projected to have a 324-205 EV lead over Obama, and McCain over Clinton by a 304-203 margin.

Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc.  In other words, just because B follows A doesn't mean B was caused by A.

Alice in Florida states that states has strong, primary control over elections (limited only by some Constitutional and federal statutory requirements). That is true as far as it goes, but it very misleading when it comes to primaries.

General elections are the classic purview of state election laws. States can regulate the manner of election, the places where elections are held, reasonable restrictions on election day campaigning, and so on. This power is very broad when it comes to state and local elections. Further, states can recast their internal governmental systems. For example, any state could shift to a unicameral legislature, and the federal government would have nothing to say about it (unless there was overwhelming evidence that the change was a scheme to disenfranchise certain voters). States are also free to make state offices non-partisan.

The states powers to control election to federal offices, however, is far more limited. The election day for federal offices, for example, is not something that states can change. Thus, states do not have plenary authority when it comes to controlling their own elections.

Primaries and caucuses are an entirely different matter. While parties were not foreseen (and sometimes actively opposed) by the framers of the Constitution, the right to organize within political parties has been firmly established as a right under the freedom of assembly clause of the First Amendment. This places limits on what states can do about the selection process for the parties' nominations. Those limits are sometimes vague.

States have the power to control aspects of party primary elections. This is reasonable, since the state is really in the best position to ensure the fairness and accuracy of the voting process. The state can, I believe, even tell the parties that the determination of nominees will be by election rather than some other method. As a practical matter, the states usually work with the state parties on the process, and often offer different options for parties to use (primary, caucus, convention). Minor parties are often given the short end of the stick when it comes to controlling the process, because they usually have far less clout in the state than the two major parties.

There are limits to what the state can impose. Washington state is going through litigation all the way to the US Supreme Court (and will certainly be back again in a few years time) over the method of primary the legislature has chosen.

However, I don't know of any Constitutional or statutory argument that a state could assert to claim it, as the state government, has the power to control whether delegates are seated by the parties. The parties are private (or semi-private) organizations of people who voluntarily choose to associate because of their common views. Imagine your outrage if a state government tried to dictate the platform of your state party.

That is why Jerome's comment, "But I see no reason to change the principle that the DNC has no right to decide when a state chooses to set their primary or caucus," is so out of whack. First, I reject the assumption in the statement that the principle has been in the past that the national parties have no right to control the timing of the delegate selection process. This headlong rush to get there first is a recent and dangerous development. (I find it akin to the rush to the bottom of states in forgiving taxes for companies to locate there, or to grant public funding to sports stadiums). It is simply the culmination of the long process in which candidate selection has become more public,  and can reasonably be seen as an unintended consequence of that process.  I don't think there is a well-settled principle of distribution of power between the state and the party behind it.

Second, the parties have an inherent interest in maintaining the integrity of the delegate selection process for the two national offices AS A PARTY. To cede all power over timing to state government is to cede the ability of the private association to freely choose its candidate.

Maybe a state should hold its primary in June for the delegates to decide the candidate for 2012. The party shouldn't be able to control that, or anything else, no matter how destructive to the party, right, Jerome?

This is obviously an April Fools' post.