While responding to a comment here on MyDD, it occurred to me that a straightforward Question & Answer approach would be the most effective way to pierce through the distortions. The entire 2008 Delegate Selection Rules are available above in the hyperlinked word "rules."
Florida and Michigan Q&A
1. How many states, and which ones, held contests in violation of the timing provision in Delegate Selection Rule(DSR) 11.A?
Five. Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina all violated DSR 11.A, which reads:
No meetings, caucuses, conventions or primaries which constitute the first determining stage in the presidential nomination process (the date of the primary in primary states, and the date of the first tier caucus in caucus states) may be held prior to the first Tuesday in February or after the second Tuesday in June in the calendar year of the national convention. Provided, however, that the Iowa precinct caucuses may be held no earlier than 22 days before the first Tuesday in February; that the Nevada first-tier caucuses may be held no earlier than 17 days before the first Tuesday in February; that the New Hampshire primary may be held no earlier than 14 days before the first Tuesday in February; and that the South Carolina primary may be held no earlier than 7 days before the first Tuesday in February. In no instance may a state which scheduled delegate selection procedures on or between the first Tuesday in February and the second Tuesday in June 1984 move out of compliance with the provisions of this rule.
Whatever the motivations in moving the contest date, Iowa's January 3rd Caucus, New Hampshire's January 8th Primary, and South Carolina's January 26th Primary are just as much in technical violation of the rules, as written, as the "disputed" Florida and Michigan primaries.
2. Is the exclusion of Florida and Michigan mandatory?
No. The decision to count or suppress these votes is as optional and discretionary as the decision to fully seat the delegations from the three other offending primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The initial power-play ruling that, in effect, temporarily suspended certification for Michigan & Florida is subject to, at minimum, three more revisits. The first will be the states' appeal to the Rules & Bylaws Committee (RBC) at the end of May. The second will be handled by the Credentials Committee in the summer. And if those Committees still intend to omit the 2.5 million voters in those states, there will be a vote at the Convention in August.
Note that the RBC ruling, if favorable to Hillary, may still be challenged by Obama subsequently. But consider the change in dynamic. Instead of Hillary privately advocating for two states' inclusion, we would have Barack Obama publicly calling for their exclusion, an embarrassing position for any "uniter" in a democracy. Can anyone really imagine Obama looking the camera in the eye and saying "I want to exclude the votes of 2.5 million Americans because of a rules technicality"?
3. Why are people talking about a 50% reduction?
A 50% reduction in pledged delegates is the suggested penalty for a state in violation of DSR 11.A. Nothing prevents the RBC from imposing a higher sanction (as they did for Michigan and Florida) or lifting the penalty entirely (as they did for Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina). It's just as easily waived for Florida and Michigan as it would be for any other state.
4. Would that penalty exclude FL/MI's superdelegates?
There is no clear answer. The initial ruling, which will be revisited no less than three times, excludes the entire delegations, including superdelegates. However, the states are arguing that the superdelegates (aka unpledged delegates) derive their authority from the DNC Charter and hence have a status immune to sanctions imposed by the RBC under the 2008 rules. Secondly, the suggested (not mandatory) penalty for violating the timing prohibition in DSR 11.A is to deprive offending states of DNC members and "unplegded delegates allocated pursuant to Rule 8.A." But, ooops, Rule 8.A. has absolutely nothing to do with unpledged delegates; it deals with the acceptable methods for weighting district-level proportionalities (e.g. past voting history in presidential and gubernatorial elections). Unpledged delegates are defined in the rules under Rule 9, not Rule 8, so the language that strikes at the very heart of this matter is warped by a major error in transcription.
That's correct: just when it seemed this rules debacle and primary season couldn't get any more bizarre, the rules governing the suggested penalty for the offending states' superdelegate votes has a big glaring typo in it. It's anybody's guess how that will play out. Either way, the penalty outlined is only a suggested penalty and may be waived (as it was for Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina) or appealed, or the superdelegates may have been untouchable in the first place, via the DNC charter.
5. Were the candidates supposed to remove their names from the Florida and Michigan ballots?
No. No candidate was required or encouraged to remove their name from the ballot. In fact, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama remained on the Florida ballot.
6. Why would Barack Obama remove his name from the Michigan ballot if he didn't have to?
Barack Obama's decision was a voluntary gamble he made for two reasons. First, it allowed him to downplay and delegitimize a contest he was widely expected to lose. Second, it allowed him to pander to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa who felt that their first-in-the-nation status was being threatened by Michigan. The strategy paid off and Obama won Iowa helping him amass a great momentum for the early primaries. He, in essence, had his cake.
But the tactic of removing one's name from an unfavorable contest to preempt a loss isn't one that should be rewarded retroactively. Otherwise, Hillary Clinton would have been strategically correct to say, "Look everybody, I have a plan. I don't want to lose in the Illinois primary. Instead, I'm going to take my name off the ballot and then say that the votes don't count." Her voluntary removal of her name from that ballot would give her no right to challenge the contest's legitimacy after the state voted or to imagine she was magically entitled to some "fair share" of votes never cast for her. Nor would it help if she said, "alright, we can count the votes in Illinois but only if we split their delegates 50/50 and ignore the popular vote." She would be ridiculed, and rightfully so.
But this is exactly what Barack Obama and his most ardent supporters have suggested regarding the Michigan primary. Who is he fooling? Clearly, many. But a closer and more honest look at his Michigan gambit shows a tactic that cannot be justly rewarded by silencing or nullifying (50/50) the voiced preferences of hundreds of thousands of voters.
7. What about Hillary signing the "Four State Pledge"?
The four-state pledge was simply a promise not to campaign in Florida and Michigan. That was the full extent of it; it had no effect on the seating of delegations and still does not. Hillary agreed to its terms and abided by them. She did not campaign in Florida or Michigan. Barack Obama agreed to the pledge as well, but actually violated both it and the DSR Rule 20.C.1.b. by concsiously running a cable news ad that would reach 94% of Florida households.
The famous Four State Pledge has no bearing on the seating of delegations. Nothing that Hillary or Barack or their surrogates said about the contests in the distant past has any binding on the RBC. Moreover, if push comes to shove, not only may Florida be seated in its entirety, but Barack Obama can be stripped of 100% his Florida delegates by breaking the very rules his supporters love to celebrate.
8. Shouldn't the people of Florida and Michigan be punished for having a different primary date?
Absolutely not, because the voters in those states were not responsible for the primaries' shift in chronology. The calendar changes were enacted by state legislators, an overwhelming majority of whom are not even memebers of the Democratic party. Florida and Michigan have GOP-dominated legisilatures and one of the explicit goals of the move was to rattle our nomination process. Unfortunately, they have succeeded thus far. But blaming and punishing the voters in those states, who had no control over the decision, is not only extremely bad publicity, but it is also misplaced aggression.
9. Wouldn't seating MI/FL set a bad example for states in future primaries?
No. Given that the universally deplorable processes that the party has set out for determining the nominee have come under major scrutiny in this cycle, they are likely to see a major overhaul before we even reach that stage. Fanciful hypotheticals about the 2012 primary calendar are well overshadowed by the immediate interests the party has in resolving the nomination fairly and democratically and of course, winning the critical 2008 presidential election. After this general election, the party will have ample time to concentrate on a more effective nomination system for 2012.
10. Isn't seating Michigan and Florida a dangerous option?
No more than coronating a nominee based on cherrypicked conjugation of which states count and which states do not. When the smoke clears, it's difficult to comprehend that anyone would disown the "count all the votes" approach versus the "disqualify 2.5 million voters based of a rules technicality." The latter simply rubs most Americans the wrong way on a moral and intellectual level. Most opposition to counting all of the votes comes from pro-Obama results-oriented partisans, replete with the usual dash of faux outrage.
Further, that technocratic and inherently anti-democratic line of thinking reflects very poorly on a candidate espousing it. Hillary is doing both Barack and the party a favor by keeping the issue relatively quiet for now. And we wonder why she's always smiling while he seems so dismal and listless these days.
But we need to be realistic and understand why Hillary remains in the race, despite the locusts of fake delegate counters that unapologetically (or ignorantly) misstate the state of the game. North Carolina is Obama's last opportunity to pad his delegate total because the May & June contests overwhelmingly favor Hillary. This momentum shift coupled with the seating of Florida and Michigan is going to ultimately give Hillary a convincing lead in every metric. She knows this, as does the party. Otherwise, they would have rallied around Barack Obama in droves. His chances rested on continuing his February pattern of accumulating enormous margins and garnering enough of a lead that seating Florida and Michigan as is (which was the ultimate goal of the party) would still yield him a win. But it won't.
Hillary won the race when she won Ohio.
Thanks for reading and Happy Primary Day (again)! :-)
[MINOR UPDATE] Thank you for all the replies. I'll try to respond to as many in depth as I can as the night goes on. But I have an event to go to and then we're having a little NC/Indiana Primary get-together.|
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