that Michigan and Florida delegates might be seated at the national convention by urging their supporters to vote uncommitted. Before the Michigan primary,
The campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards are urging their supporters to cast ballots for "uncommitted," according to state Democratic party chairman Mark Brewer. The Obama campaign says there may be "grass-roots efforts," but that the Chicago-based campaign is not involved.
...Michigan Rep. John Conyers and his wife, Detroit city council member Monica Conyers, taped a radio advertisement Wednesday afternoon. In it, they called on Obama backers not to surrender their vote.
They say on the radio spot that they intend to vote "uncommitted" and give Obama a chance to compete for those delegates in Denver.
Now the Obama camp is airing ads in Florida
Let's face it,
- political elites blundered in Michigan and Florida and the DNC, which failed to fully anticipate in turn the harsh penalties and the rush to be early, but the voters in those states didn't have a say.
They still have opinions, and they were still passionate enough for their votes to be counted, including many kossacks.
- One thing I like about Howard Dean is that he came up advocating a 50-state strategy: compete in all 50 states. Democrats shouldn't concede any states, and certainly shouldn't concede Florida or Michigan. The principle of the 50-state strategy came out of 2000, when the voters of Florida were effectively disenfranchised by purges of voter rolls and incomplete recounts. The idea was to compete in every part of the country, and count every vote. Now will they be disenfranchised again? Is that the message our nominee wants to be seen as accepting?
- if those delegates are not seated at the national convention and the split between the state and national parties grows, it badly cripples the Democratic party next November, when we are going to need all the help we can get to prevent a Republican hat trick.
Florida voters in particular were already disenfranchised in 2000, will they be disenfranchised or alienated again? It's important for the Republican party to disenfranchise Florida. Why?
A dark storm cloud is gathering over the future of the Democratic party. That storm cloud is regional demographics. Across the country, almost uniformly, blue states are growing at a much smaller rate than the national average and suffering from internal outmigration, due to those states being the most populous and overdeveloped to begin with:
If a reapportionment was performed using Census Bureau population estimates of the 50 state populations on July 1, 2007
• Gainers (9 states, 13 districts): Texas (4), Arizona (2), Florida (1), Georgia (1), Nevada (1), North Carolina (1), Oregon (1), South Carolina (1), Utah (1)
8 Bush states, 1 Kerry state.
• Losers (11 states, 13 districts): New York (2), Ohio (2), Illinois (1), Iowa (1), Louisiana (1), Massachusetts (1), Michigan (1), Minnesota (1), Missouri (1), New Jersey (1), Pennsylvania (1)
7 Kerry states, 4 Bush states.
If the Democratic party is to remain competitive in the long run, it must "change the map." Changing the map means not disenfranchising any state. Florida is a particularly important state for three reasons
(1) Its size-- by 2012 it will be equal to size as New York
(2) Its relative competitiveness-- no party has gotten over 52% of the vote there since the 1980s.
(3) Its status as a growing state-- Democrats will need to prove that they can win in states that have grown fast in recent decades.
Michigan is also important as a large state but also for more substantive reasons-- its economy is in deep trouble and the country needs to discuss how to help ailing economic regions.
To those of you who say that the penalty is only because those parties broke the rules--
- Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire also broke the rules by moving their dates up before agreed-upon times, yet they were not punished. In fact, Michigan did not change its date until after the original agreement had already unravelled:
Long disgruntled with Iowa and New Hampshire's disproportionate influence in choosing candidates, state political leaders reluctantly agreed to a reform plan that would have seen two other states vote between the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
The deal came unraveled when South Carolina, and then New Hampshire, broke ranks.
- Florida Republicans also broke the rules for their primary, yet 50% of their delegates will still be seated.
The Democratic penalty is especially harsh. But they have done their job. Iowa and New Hampshire got their first-in-the-nation status, and Nevada and South Carolina have got their second. Now it's time to start to heal the wounds in our party generated from this silly political snafu.