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Common Sense Was The Loser In DNC Ruling

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 3, 2008

As a Solomon-esque display of even-handedness, a pursed-lipped clutch of Democratic National Committee clipboards have managed to split a very, very ugly baby.

Over the weekend, the DNC rules panel, otherwise known as the Future Condo Association Presidents-In-Waiting, restored a portion of the exiled Florida and Michigan representations, allowing each state's delegates to have half a vote at the party's nominating convention this summer.

As well, the respective delegations must keep their hedges trimmed to no more than two feet, get rid of the yard gnomes and repaint their homes a uniform Stepford beige.

Florida and Michigan were sent to detention hall by the DNC lanyards because the two states had the audacity of reality to think they ought to have more juice in selecting the next president of the United States than a suburb of Montreal and a place that is more white than Norway.

Ergo the states moved up their primary dates to January, which sent the DNC rulebooks into a befuddled tizzy rivaling an Amy Winehouse concert promoter.

Hurt Feelings

Consequently the pocket protectors of the DNC last year ruled that Michigan and Florida would be stripped of their entire delegations, which had to be a bit like blackballing the United States and Russia from the U.N. Security Council because Estonia and Chad had their feelings hurt.

The hypocrisy of the DNC huffiness was that everyone knew eventually some solution would have to be crafted to accommodate Florida and Michigan at the convention.

After all, even the handwringers at the DNC realized you can't banish two of the most influential Electoral College players from participating in the primary process and then expect Democrats in the jilted states to rally around the presidential candidate as if everything was simply marvy.
Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Florida and Michigan primaries. More than 2 million citizens in the two states turned out to cast their votes. It's called democracy, messy though it may be.

Bane Of Political Life

Solving the Florida primary brouhaha was fairly simple. Even with half-votes, Clinton still receives 52.5 delegates, to Barack Obama's 33.5 delegates, in keeping with her original margin of victory.

Still, the biggest loser over the weekend was the bane of political life - common sense.

Obama never campaigned in Michigan, and he voluntarily removed his name from the ballot, giving Clinton a free pass to win the state's primary. Yet the French figure-skating judges on the DNC rules committee, at the urging of Michigan party officials, voted to award Obama 59 delegates he never campaigned for and whose votes he didn't earn.

Yes, that was the sound of registered Democrats in cemeteries throughout Chicago cheering at the chutzpah of awarding votes that were never cast.

In the end, you could argue the whole point of the weekend meeting of the DNC rent-a-rules apparatchiks wasn't so much an effort to resolve the delegate mishegoss, but to simply get everyone on the eve of the end of the primary season to simply - shut up.

Did it work? Let's have a show of hands. But half of you don't count.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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