Please Be Seated

We're hearing a lot about the Democratic delegates from Florida and Michigan. Who would have thought when those states decided to move up their dates that the race would be so close and the penalty in the rules might actually be substantive?

Some people (probably Hillary people) are saying that the results from those races should count and the delegates should be seated at the convention, business as usual. Of course, this is total horse shit and they should be embarrassed that they are even suggesting it. You can't tell the candidates it's going to be one way and then change the rules after the fact. Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot, not because he hates Michigan or because his people are incompetent, but because the DNC told them that Michigan would not count due to a rules infraction.

Representatives of the states are saying it isn't fair that their voices aren't going to count. What kind of teenage lawyering is this? They were told not to do something, under terms everyone agreed to, they did it anyway and then what they were told would happen did happen; and now they want a do over. Right, because that's how this country works.

Aside from the parental discipline angle, isn't letting them do over at the end making their elections disproportionate important? All funding issues aside I don't like the concept of rewarding the states that broke the rules with more responsibility - especially since Florida hasn't really demonstrated they are capable of accurately counting votes.

Also, it's not like either of these states is going to be a landslide, and with proportional awarding of delegates the end result after adding those seats will be no different than the result before: not enough delegates to capture and the decision is left to super delegates.

And if I may be permitted a brief aside here, who decided to call these people "superdelegates" anyway? It's not like they can fly or anything. They only get one vote. Maybe "at large delegate" would have been better, or perhaps "party insider delegate." But until we see one of these people leap a tall building in a single bound I vote we stop calling them super.

But back to the teenage bargaining.

This "our voices should count" thing is total BS as well. They will get to vote in the general election just like everyone else. The primary process is up to the political parties and if they don't want to listen to everyone they actually don't have to. Some parties don't even have primaries and just skip right to the convention. Quit whining and refine your general election procedures - oh yeah, and vote out everyone in your state legislature and executive that decided to more your primary after they learned the consequences.

So what's the solution?

It looks fairly certain now that baring any negotiated settlement between the two camps we're going to have a brokered convention. So one of two things has to happen, yes? Either the nomination will be decided on the first ballot by the at large delegates or the pledged delegates will wind up voting for someone other than who they are assigned to. So here's my suggestion for Howard Dean and the Convention Committee: seat all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan as at large delegates, free to vote for whoever they want - but, they don't get to vote until the third ballot.

Holding them back until the third ballot preserves the state results from the races that played by the rules and gives two chances for whatever maneuvering will happen with the "super" delegates. If they can't work it out in the first two votes then its going to be "all bets are off" anyway and adding in the people from Michigan and Florida will not impact the race in some artifact in violation of the primary rules.

There, Howard Dean gets his rules compliance, Florida and Michigan go to the convention without breaking the rules and without disproportionately effecting the outcome, and we can stop talking about it.