The idea of a "revote" in Florida and Michigan is now all but dead. Many commentators have concluded that this development helps Obama. Their reasoning is that for Clinton to have any hope of capturing the nomination, she would have to rack up enough popular votes in a contested primary in those states to enable her to convince a number of superdelegates that nominating Obama would be undemocratic (and unDemocratic). As the New York Times notes:
For Mrs. Clinton, all this has seemed something of a long shot since her defeats in February. But that shot seems to have grown a little longer.
The Clinton campaign's claims that voters in Michigan and Florida are being disenfranchised is silly, and amounts to wanting to change the rules after the game has been played. The leadership in both those states wanted to thrust themselves into the early primary process, on the theory that early primaries are more meaningful than later ones. Obviously, this theory (which has certainly been true in the past) did not predict the ongoing Obama/Clinton contest. Now those states want to reposition themselves at the end of the primary process, because that way their voters will regain the influence on the process that was expected to result from holding early primaries.
No one who believes in democracy could be entirely comfortable with the idea of leaving Florida and Michigan out of the Presidential candidate selection process--and yet all the other alternatives are even more undemocratic.
The legislatures and governors of both states knew quite clearly that Democratic Party rules would not permit delegates selected too early in the primary process to be counted, but they went ahead and held their contests anyway. If indeed voters in those states have, as a result, been disenfranchised, then they should hold their state governments responsible. Those governments wanted so badly to thrust their states into what they thought would be the primary limelight that they gambled that the Democrats would change their rules to accommodate them. They were wrong. They lost their bet. The party quite prudently realized that allowing FlaMich primaries to count would only encourage other states to jockey their primaries into the early (or late!) part of the process four years hence, thus creating an even bigger mess than we face today.
Worse still: if Michigan and Florida got revotes, why couldn't any other state? "We played by the rules and held our primary within the time frame established by party rules, but now that other states are violating those rules, our voters are being disenfranchised because FlaMich voters now have had two bites of the apple."
Perhaps these painful developments will eventually do some good; perhaps now we as a nation will look at a more rational way of selecting Presidential candidates. Various proposals have been made, generally allowing Iowa and New Hampshire their traditional first-caucus and first-primary positions, followed by blocks of primaries that would be scheduled differently every four years on a rotating basis. Some of these plans are better than the others, but all of them are better than the status quo.
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