I grew up in a little suburb in Michigan. Wedged between Detroit and Ann Arbor, Plymouth was and is still an enclave of wealthy, mostly white Americans, but this was contrasted by the remarkable diversity of African-Americans, Indians (the ones from Asia), and Muslim immigrants. At the age of 17, I moved out of my parents house and started my higher education at a private college in a major urban center in Florida.

When the DNC made its declaration that the delegates of Florida and Michigan would not be seated, I balked. I think most people balked; there was no conceivable way that a Democrat could take the White House without at least being competitive in these two states, and there is no better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to alienate voters. I laughed at the fact that the Democratic Party managed to slight the only two states I had ever lived in, and thusly, slighted almost every person that I've met in my lifetime. I thought that the American Democratic Party, of all the political parties in the world, would be the least likely to surrender the voting rights of its members over political moves made between bloated party bigwigs, and over a process that punishes the only people who had no say in it: the voters.

But I guess that was before the era of Barack Obama.

Is Jimmy Carter Letting Democratic Voters Down??
Posted on April 15, 2008 by GRL

On Monday (April 14) I caught a brief comment by Jimmy Carter about the Nepal elections on the BBC World Service. Carter, who was in Nepal to monitor the polling, said that whatever problems occurred had "paled" compared to the overall success of the vote. (Unfortunately, the audio report is no longer available.)

In a report issued on April 15 entitled Trip Report by Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to Nepal: April 6-14, 2008, Carter wrote in great detail about all the efforts made to ensure a free and fair election.

   <We have maintained a staff of long-term election observers for more than fifteen months. They have visited all 75 districts and had an opportunity to become familiar with the entire nation and its various and conflicting political factions.</p>

   After our arrival from Atlanta, we joined Dr. John Hardman and began receiving extensive briefings from former U.S Ambassador Peter Burleigh, David Pottie, Darren Nance, Sarah Levit-Shore, and others. Most of our 60 international observers, from 21 nations, had been deployed to the more remote areas by helicopter, all-terrain vehicles, and by foot. My co-chairman was Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, former deputy prime minister of Thailand, who was a key partner and essential to the mission's success. Our team was joined by international observers from the European Union, Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), and by several thousand domestic observers. ...

   On election day we visited as many polling sites as possible in the valley that surrounds Kathmandu and found the election commission's procedures were being largely followed. There were long and separate lines of men and women in a celebratory mood, the total turnout being above 60 percent. Despite some problems, our observers throughout the nation found the same situation among a total of 400 sites visited. Ballot boxes were required to be delivered to 75 central locations for counting, and we observed a number of these procedures.>

Impressive, no?

   I'm sorry Clintonites, I really am, but the true position of Hillary Rodham Clinton's on the MI problem has come out and, to torture a simple phrase, It ain't good!!

   The MI and FL questions are difficult ones to answer, not b/c of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, not b/c of the DNC, but but b/c of the arrogance of the state party officials. It's too bad really, b/c I initially agreed with them, that the DNC idolizing NH and IA was ridiculous. That said, the rules were set and agreed to, hence they must be followed. FL and MI knew that, and thumbed their noses at the DNC anyway. They deserve their punishment....which now leads us to what that punishment will be.

The Obama inevitability campaign marches on with the latest Obama surrogate to suggest that Hillary Clinton, for the good of the party, should drop out. First Bill Richardson, while stopping short of calling for Hillary Clinton to drop out, said the following in his speech endorsing Barack Obama:

"It is time . . . for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and prepare for the tough fight we will have against John McCain in the fall,"

Yesterday, Obama supporter Chris Dodd said this about the ongoing primary contest:

I think it's very difficult to imagine how anyone can believe that Barack Obama can't be the nominee of the party. I think that's a foregone conclusion, in my view, at this juncture given where things are. But certainly over the next couple of weeks, as we get into April, it seems to me then that the national leadership of this party has to stand up and reach a conclusion.

And now today, Senator Patrick Leahy has taken it to its logical conclusion:

"There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination. She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that's a decision that only she can make. Frankly I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate."

Well, yeah, sure they want Hillary Clinton to drop out -- they support her opponent, so I'm a bit unmoved by their concern trolling about the death of the party if more Democrats vote in record numbers. Does anyone think that these folks would be calling on Hillary Clinton to drop out if there was a string of primaries or even one that it looked like Barack Obama would win  in the next 30 days? Of course not. In fact, I agree with Chuck Todd when he argues that Hillary Clinton's presence in this race is actually forcing Barack Obama to be a better candidate.

The party ought to lay off the calls for Clinton to drop out, at least for now, because her presence at worst is making Obama a better candidate. The Wright flare-up was the first true political crisis of Obama's national political career, which is remarkable given how close he is to being the Democratic nominee. Who knows when the Wright controversy would have circulated had the nomination been locked up.

Obama needed to prove he could handle a real media firestorm, something Clinton has done numerous times throughout her career. In fact, her political survival skills have been marketed as an asset by the campaign, something I think would have sold better in '04 when the party was looking for a tough survivor to put up against Bush. [...]

Still, Clinton should feel no hurry to get out. In fact, she is also making Obama a better candidate by forcing him to up his rhetoric on the economy and start working harder to woo these working class, white voters who appear to be eluding him in the Rust Belt states.

As we saw yesterday with the candidates' respective speeches on the economy, this primary race does not preclude running against McCain and as we also saw yesterday, if Clinton does choose to try to win by tearing Barack Obama down instead of making her own case to voters in a constructive way, the superdelegates, which hold the key to both candidates' paths to the nomination, will turn on her. But ultimately if Democrats who are concerned that Clinton will take this all the way to the convention really want to make sure this ends before July 1, as Howard Dean has now called for, they'll urge Barack Obama to back remedies for Michigan and Florida. The idea that Barack Obama can claim a clear win without two states that early in the process would have gone handily to Senator Clinton is absurd. This IS her rationale for taking this to the convention, so anyone who would like to avoid that eventuality should get behind an alternative for those states. Gov. Richardson? Sen. Dodd? Sen. Leahy?  

Sen. Obama?

A new poll commissioned by the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times clearly shows the peril to Democrats in November should the Florida delegation not be seat at the convention and the votes cast by 1.7 million Floridians not count.
The survey results:

More than three out of four Florida Democrats say it's "very important" that Florida's delegates count toward the nomination, and one in four said they would be less likely to support the ultimate Democratic nominee if Florida's delegates don't count.

Looks like there will be no Florida re-vote of any sort.

Facing strong opposition, Florida Democrats on Monday abandoned plans to hold a do-over presidential primary with a mail-in vote and threw the delegate dispute into the lap of the national party. [...]

Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Karen Thurman sent a letter announcing the decision.

"A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the party were to pay for it," Thurman said. "... This doesn't mean that Democrats are giving up on Florida voters. It means that a solution will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April."

So I guess now all eyes turn to the "half-Nelson."

Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who backs Clinton, has suggested one option -- seating all Florida delegates already chosen but only giving them half a vote each. Nelson discussed this idea with Clinton and Obama on the Senate floor last week.

Based on the Jan. 29 results, Clinton would have won 105, Obama 67 and John Edwards 13. Instead they would get half those delegate votes.

Which would mean a net gain of 19 for Clinton.

Looking good for a Michigan "mulligan" primary:

Michigan Democrats agreed Friday to push a do-over primary in early June to give them a say in the close presidential race between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Amid talks with the two campaigns, the four Michigan Democrats said in a statement they were "focusing on the possibility of a state-run primary in early June which would not use any state funding." Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, one of the Democratic participants, said a likely date is June 3.

"This option would require the passage of legislation by the state legislature, and we look forward to working with the members of the legislature in the coming days to see if this option can be made a reality," the Democrats said.

The legislation, currently being written, has some serious hoops to jump through including approval by the Michigan Democratic Party, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, state party leaders and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but the momentum certainly seems to be on the side of its coming together.

And remember that whole Florida compromise where the delegates would be seated according to January's vote, only cut in half (the number of delegates, that is, not the delegates themselves...)? Looks like it's FL Sen. Bill Nelson's idea. (Nelson, you'll recall, is a Clinton supporter.)

With the Florida Democratic Party's proposed mail-in do-over of its Jan. 29 presidential primary drawing more heat than support, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson began floating the idea Friday of seating half the state's 186 pledged delegates at the party's national convention.

Nelson said he spoke Friday with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Senate floor about the plight of Florida and Michigan, the two states stripped of delegates because their early primaries violated national rules.

"Both of them said, `You have to seat Florida and Michigan.' Now, of course, the devil is in the details,'" Nelson said.

The Nelson plan still gives Clinton the edge, based on her 17 percentage-point win in January. But instead of gaining 38 delegates, Clinton's victory margin in Florida would be reduced to 19.

I'm still not sold on it and it sounds like a damn hard sell to the campaigns, but I suppose it would be better than nothing.

OK, so all that stuff I said before...

...maybe not so much.

The head of Florida's Democratic Party said Thursday the proposed vote-by-mail presidential primary is unlikely to go forward because of strong opposition and concerns about conducting the vote.

Karen Thurman said she is asking Democratic leaders, the national party and presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to consider the option as the best way to resolve the delegate dispute. [...]

When asked if the alternative will be implemented, knowing what she knows about potential problems executing the plan and widespread concerns, Thurman said, "I have a feeling that this is probably closer to not, than yes."

There are a couple of practical matters that cast the Florida Democratic party's vote-by-mail proposal in doubt.

First is the Obama campaign's concerns about a vote-by-mail primary.

[Thurman] acknowledged that Obama has had concerns and the Democratic National Committee won't support a proposal unless both candidates also back it.

Second is whether procedurally, a vote by mail primary is even feasible in a state that's not conducted such a statewide vote before.

She said there's a serious question over whether the state could legally verify the signatures of a privately run election.

"If this becomes something that we can't do, then we can't do it," Thurman said.

Thurman may pull the proposal as soon as Monday if the resistance to it persists, presumably to go back to the drawing board. The reason finding a solution that includes a re-vote is so important both to the Florida Democratic party as well as for our nominee in the fall is contained right in the memo Thurman wrote that accompanied the FL Dem Party's vote-by-mail proposal:

Florida Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller commissioned a poll of voters who participated in the state's January 29th Democratic Presidential Primary. The results are striking - 59% of those Democrats want a revote. Moreover, only 63% of these primary‐voting Democrats are committed to sticking with our eventual nominee if Florida voters are not counted. That number is dangerously low.