I participated last night in a diary about the likely upcoming Superdelegate conundrum, which presents Democrats with the prospect of the winner of the "committed" delegate contest (delegates chosen by primary voters and caucus-goers) being overturned by the "Superdelegates" (an offensive concept in and of itself) who are bound by nothing other than their personal whim - and who comprise 20% of the total Convention delegates.
But the debate about the Superdelegate issue isn't what I want to address here. Rather, I'd like to dispel a talking point that developed in the course of that discussion: that the FL Democratic Party was bound by the decision of the GOP-controlled FL legislature and Governor to a January 29th date for the selection of Democratic Delegates.
Not being one who subscribes to the current victimhood craze, I decided to check for myself as to whether a state Democratic Party could actually be dictated to by the GOP. Most of you won't be surprised by what I found.
More below.
Here's how the discussion developed in that diary:
Geekesque pointed out that the FL Dems
...could have scheduled their primary for February 19, and the entire election would have revolved around them.
PamelaD replied that
...it was the republican legislature that moved up the primary in Florida, so no, they couldn't [have changed the schedule].
I was incredulous:
the GOP sets rules for the FL Democratic Party?
That in itself is reason to dismiss that primary as moot, let alone that it was ruled as such by the governing committee of the [national] Party.
Has any other state party so capitulated to the opposition?
The answer from another poster was that, yes, the Florida Democrats were bound by the rules set for them by the Florida Republicans.
Still incredulous, I got up this morning and decided to google "Florida Democratic Primary options" and (in the fourth link down) found this June 11, 2007 press release from the Florida Democratic Party. Here are the relevant quotes (emphases obviously mine):
TALLAHASSEE - Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Orlando) today announced that the Florida Democratic leadership voted unanimously to accept January 29 as the date for the binding 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary in Florida.
[...]
The Florida Democratic Party reviewed many different options for conducting the state's presidential primary process in response to the Republican-held state government's decision to move the state-run 2008 Presidential Primary to January 29. This date did not comply with Democratic National Committee rules, which threaten serious penalties to our delegation for the National Convention.
Now, granted, the FL Dems were in a bind, and they say so in that press release (please read the whole thing, it's not that long). They felt compelled to vote for the bill that the GOP sponsored moving the primary date up to January 29th because the GOP included a provision for the outlawing of paperless voting (ie, touchscreens) in the state, and the Dems didn't want to be seen as standing in the way of that long overdue correction to their voting system. Indeed, that was their main rationale for agreeing to the January date, which the DNC was on the record as not willing to accept:
"Florida Democrats have spoken, and we have listened," [Party Chair] Thurman said. "When it came down to it, Florida's Democratic leadership decided that, among other factors, the potential for disenfranchisement with any other option besides the January 29th state-run primary was just too great. Florida Democrats cannot and will not disenfranchise voters."
Did you catch that? The seed for this red herring (that FL Dems were forced by the GOP to accept the new date) was planted last June by their state Chairperson. She was saying that because they were forced to consider the paper-trail provision along with the January 29th Primary, that they had no reasonable option but to accept GOP's date.
Bullshit.
As noted in the blockquotes in bold, above, the FL Dems actively chose on their own to accept the new date. They had several options (hold a separate primary or caucuses), all of which would have forestalled the ruling voiding their primary that the DNC said all along they would make. Hell, the press release even acknowledges that:
This date did not comply with Democratic National Committee rules, which threaten serious penalties to our delegation for the National Convention.
In short, they were gambling with the primary votes of their Party members that the DNC would eventually capitulate. Why? Because they wanted to be more imortant in the primary process:
"An additional factor in the leadership's decision was the concern that any date but January 29th would take our eyes off the prize..."
As a result, the DNC did what they said they would do and the FL primary was rendered moot.
Let's be very clear about this folks: the disenfranchisement of FL voters (and this includes not just those who cast a meaningless vote, but those hundreds of thousands who stayed home because they took the DNC at their word) is the fault of the Florida Democratic Party leadership.
Period.