Surely some misguided partisans will spin this and say Julian Bond has no credibility. But here it is:
The Politico reports today:
NAACP Chair Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, has written a letter to Howard Dean to express "great concern at the prospect that million of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted."
The letter, more clearly than the letter from Berry and Wilkins, demands that the votes already cast be counted, rejecting the notion of a new vote or caucus.
It seems unlikely that, given Obama's symbolic power, the black civil rights establishment is going to unite around this view. But it certainly gives Hillary some powerful institutional backup in making a case widely derided as opportunistic.
On the other hand, Mark Green pens a compelling counter-argument in Huffington Post: don't change rules midstream.
Oh no. Green, too makes an argument that could favor Hillary:
Here it comes: Obama supporters denouncing suprdelegates as "party bosses" who could dictate who the nominee is and Clinton supporters insisting that Florida/Michigan delegates be seated based on those primaries' voters.
Such appeals don't compute. Sure any of us could have originally come to a different method than creating 796 superdelegates or unseating delegates from states that violated DNC edicts. But now trying to alter the rules after the voting has begun -- which guarantees that one side or the other will piously whine "we wuz robbed," in the immortal words of the Brooklyn Dodgers -- is a formula for defeat. Any changes now will not only infuriate the losing candidate's supporters but also could delegitimize the nomination this Fall.
You don't change a law if you don't like the results -- you don't move the goal posts during the game to advantage your favorite team. I've lived through this one. When Mayor Giuliani tried to change a century-old constitutional precedent because he personally didn't want me, as Public Advocate, to succeed him if he won a U.S. Senate race in 2000 (against Hiillary Clinton) and left office, the public rejected him 3-1 in a referendum because we had both run under the existing law.
UPDATE - left out a portion of Green's statement:
Green says rules are rules. And that means superdelegates should not be neutered:
So I hope that we can be spared petitions and threats unless Florida and Michigan delegates are seated based on the prior votes or that superdelegates must be neutered. First, superdelegates are not Martians sent to screw up our democracy but governors, senators, representatives and party leaders who are surely interested in Democratic values and winning the White House; all together, they're less a Boss Daley than a huge focus group which wants to win. (And since smoking is prohibited in such venues, at the least critics should avoids references to "smoke-filled rooms.")
Second, if they should make the margin of difference, it's not that they'd be ignoring voters but, in effect, helping break a tie because voters themselves are essentially split between two evenly matched and superior candidates. For all but the most intense Obamamanics and Clintonistas surely now get that we have two extremely skillful center-left aspirants, each with 75%+ favorable ratings among Dems and each likely to prevail against a McCain seeking a 3rd Bush term.
What are we going to do?