TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

A Florida Democrat At The Crossroads

ADVERTISEMENT

By TINA TRENT Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 26, 2008

Increasingly strange things are being said to justify disenfranchising Democrats who happened to cast primary votes in Florida or Michigan.

There is talk of seating Florida's delegates but not letting them vote, and there is talk of Obama "giving" Clinton "some" of her votes at the convention, as if our votes for her are his to give.

There is even talk of altering the outcome of the primaries in Michigan and Florida; not through the usual chicanery involving missing ballot boxes or hanging chads, but openly. Members of the Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee actually suggested throwing out Florida's election results and replacing them with equal votes for each candidate.

Yvonne Gates, a member of the committee, explained that she views this behavior as an exercise in fairness: "My definition is a 50-50 split is something that is fair," said Ms. Gates. "It cannot be a situation where you give one candidate more votes than the other."

It takes a certain amount of cynicism, or insulation from reality, or just plain hubris for a powerful committee member to tell me that I shouldn't mind if my vote is not counted, or if only half of it gets counted, or if the vote I cast for Hillary Clinton will be voided and replaced with "half" a vote for Clinton and "half" a vote for Obama.

This is pretty astonishing talk from the same committee that decided to strip 2.5 million citizens of their right to have their votes counted because of a rules infraction - an infraction imposed in Florida by the Republican Party, not Democratic voters.

The Democratic National Committee needs to understand there will be extreme consequences for the extreme act of disenfranchising voters. And so there should be, if the Democratic Party really stands for all the things they've been telling us they stand for all these years.

The DNC is in danger of losing the hearts and minds - the loyalty - of many Democratic voters. The fact that they don't seem particularly troubled by the implications of disenfranchising so many members of their own party only magnifies the alienation felt by Florida voters.

With every day that passes, it feels more and more as if our votes are being used as pawns in a game being played by the DNC against Hillary Clinton. It feels more and more as if the rhetoric about "punishing" us is meant literally, as if we don't deserve to participate in choosing a candidate because we chose the "wrong one."

For it is hard to imagine the DNC contemplating such measures if it had been Obama who won the Florida and Michigan primaries. The party wouldn't dream of stripping votes from an African-American candidate and handing them to a white one. Doing so would doubtlessly (and rightfully) raise cries of discrimination and disenfranchisement. The Voting Rights Act would be invoked. Lawsuits would churn to life. Professional activists would fly in. Protesters would take to the streets.

But just because there haven't been mass protests doesn't mean that Democratic voters everywhere won't recoil at the sight of the Florida and Michigan delegations watching the convention from the outside looking in, their noses pressed against the glass, excluded from an election that was supposed to be about "inclusiveness."

The Democratic Party always talks a good game about inclusion, but in practice, they often leave the glass half full: justice for criminals but not crime victims; universal health care for the underclass but not the hard-pressed working and middle classes; affirmative action for middle-class minorities but not poor whites.

This is not the new politics we were promised; it is the same old crossroads the Democrats have foundered at for decades. It may also be the last chapter in this struggle for many loyal Democrats who are tired of being spoken down to, criticized, and disregarded.

Including this one.

Tina Trent lives in Ruskin.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT