The DNC Rules & Bylaws committee meets in a little over a week to decide the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations. David Axelrod has expressed a willingness to compromise, to give a little, in order to move past this whole issue. One good way to start the search for a compromise would be to decouple the Florida and Michigan situations.
Yes, both Florida and Michigan violated the DNC rules in the same way, and therefore, in principle, they should both be subject to the same punishment, whatever it might be. But the way these violations played out in practice argues for different solutions for the two states.
What we had in Florida was this:
- The decision to violate the rules was driven, at least in part, by a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled legislature. Yes, I've seen the same video of that despicable buffoon Geller posturing before the legislature, and it's clear that Democrats conspired in the violation, but even so, they were not the ones driving the bus.
- Democratic voter turnout in Florida, while low compared to the average of all other primary states, was in the same ballpark as in states like Delaware, Arizona, Louisiana, Connecticut, and New York. (Note: As a proxy for turnout, I look at votes cast in the Democratic votes as a % of Democratic votes cast in the 2004 Presidential election.) Many of those going to the polls may have been there to vote on the property tax referendum, but they went ahead and voted in the Democratic primary, and there is little reason to believe their votes disproportionately favored Clinton or Obama.
- Candidates were unable (due to an important legal technicality) to remove their names from the Florida ballot, so anyone who wanted to vote in the primary could vote for whichever candidate they chose.
The net result of the above three factors is a primary flawed only by the inability of the candidates to campaign and by the the ability of Democrats and Independents to vote in a competitive Republican contest (remember Giuliani?) in which their votes would count rather than in a Democratic primary in which they would not. Both these factors of course favored the perceived front-runner and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, so it's not terribly surprising that she "won" Florida. But that in the end is the only argument most people have ever made about the Florida primary: that given the ability to campaign in a primary that counted, Barack Obama would have performed better.
Now compare that to the situation in Michigan, where:
- The decision to violate the DNC rules was driven by a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature.
- Turnout was abysmally low -- 40%+ below the average turnout in other states, nearly 20% below that of the next lowest primary state. It is likely (not just possible) that the number of "likely Democratic voters" who sat out the primary or voted in the Republican primary far exceeded the number who actually voted.
- The name of only one major candidate appeared on the ballot -- the other two had removed their names in support of the DNC ruling.
The net result of the above three factors was a totally meaningless primary in which the inability of prospective Democratic voters to select the candidate of their choice led most of them either to vote Republican or to stay away from the polls entirely.
All of which leads to a potential compromise:
- Accept the Florida vote as tarnished but not tainted. As punishment for violating the DNC rules, cut the number of pledged delegates in half and toss out all the superdelegates (who should have been working to stop this trainwreck before it happened). Allocate the reduced number of pledged delegates according to the tainted Florida vote.
- Accept the Michigan vote as hopelessly flawed. As punishment for violating the DNC rules, cut the number of pledged delegates in half and toss out all the superdelegates (who were for the most part directly responsible for this trainwreck ). Allocate the reduced number of pledged delegates 50/50 to HRC and BHO.
I do want to make one thing clear: I don't personally like the idea of compromising on either Florida or Michigan. It really does feel like rewarding Hillary Clinton and her supporters for persistent hypocrisy. And yes, I'd like to see Hillary Clinton punished for arguing in effect, as she did to a clearly aghast Steve Inskeep on NPR, that if Barack Obama was stupid enough to play be the rules, he doesn't deserve to win:
Honestly, it's probably naive of me to hope that anyone who thinks like this is even remotely capable of compromise. And I know that the Clinton campaign has already disdainfully rejected a 50/50 split for Michigan. Nonetheless, I like think that a compromise the separates the merely unfair and hypocritical from the truly idiotic might have some slim chance of succeeding with (hopefully) more rational souls on the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee.