Medical News Week

I’ve described how the Iowa caucus voting procedure is a ridiculous way to decide how might be the next president, but Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s insistence on being the first states might have cost the Democrats Florida. Here’s what the Democrats did:

Fearing likely attempts by big states like Michigan and Florida to disrupt the parties’ primary calendars with early dates in 2008, Republicans and Democrats ruled at their 2004 conventions that states trying to butt in before Iowa and New Hampshire would lose half their delegates. The Republicans left it there. The Democrats decided to try and fix things. The Democratic National Committee’s rules committee was tasked with bringing order to the chaotic primaries. Twelve states applied for two additional early primary slots, which were awarded earlier this year to South Carolina and Nevada. Democrats in other states could not vote before February 5.

That created a sticky situation for Florida Democrats when, to nobody’s surprise, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law in May scheduling the state’s primary for January 29. (In most states, primary dates are set by the parties.) The primary date was wrapped up in a bill mandating a paper trail for the 2008 election–a popular measure the minority Democrats could not afford to oppose. Besides, the loss of delegates was largely a toothless penalty, since according to precedent the Democrats’ eventual presidential nominee controls the seating of delegates–and surely wouldn’t alienate folks from the nation’s largest swing state by turning them away.

But the DNC did not leave it there. In August the rules committee voted to strip all the state’s delegates unless Florida came up with an alternative to the January 29 voting….Two weeks after the DNC vote, Democratic chairs in the “First Four” primary states jacked up the ante with their notorious “four-state pledge” demanding the candidates focus exclusively on them. The signees–including John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton–agreed to do no campaigning in Florida or any other state that might try to jump the gun. And under party rules, “campaigning” means just about everything: e-mail messages; calls to voters; TV, radio or newspaper ads; rallies; hiring campaign workers; holding press conferences. The only thing Democrats are allowed to do in Florida–where folks have been complaining for years, with some justification, about being used as an ATM for the party–is fundraise.

As Florida Democrats bayed in protest, DNC chair Howard Dean salted their wounds by opining that their votes “essentially won’t count.”

So much for the fifty-state strategy. And this wasn’t very popular:

According to recent polls, a whopping 77 percent of Floridians have heard about the Democratic boycott–pretty impressive for “inside baseball.” By a 62-to-16 margin across party lines, they think the DNC is off its rocker. And in a statistic cited by Senator Nelson at the convention, where he received a hero’s welcome for suing the DNC (and for his romp over Katherine Harris last November), independent Florida voters already say they’re 22 percent less likely to vote for a Democrat because of the whole primary mess–far more than enough, as the St. Petersburg Times editorialized, to “turn Florida red.” In another sign of trouble, Clinton has lost her lead in Florida general-election polls since the Democrats’ boycott commenced, with Rudy Giuliani moving ahead.

“There’s no question the Democrats will lose votes over this,” says State Senator Geller, who spent much of the weekend trying to hunt down a journalist from Iowa who was reportedly–and rather bravely–stalking the convention. “The only question is how many. There was great anger at the Republicans after 2000. Today, there’s great anger but it’s at the Democrats.” Among the Democrats, too. A few county leaders have reported losing longtime activists, some so outraged they’ve switched parties. Party stalwarts are encouraging other Democrats to cut off the party; top Democratic fundraiser Wayne Hogan of Jacksonville called Dean personally to cancel a DNC fundraiser this fall. Meanwhile, as Geller said, the Republicans “are smart–they won’t let it die.” In early October the Republican Party of Florida mailed fliers to thousands of registered Democrats picturing an elderly man dabbing tearful old eyes and the caption: “Has being a Florida Democrat brought you to tears? You’re not alone.” Across the bottom, the message is more blunt: Ready to Switch Parties? A voter-registration form was helpfully enclosed. The GOP has run ads proclaiming that while the Democratic “contenders have come here to take our money, they won’t stand up for our right to be heard”; online, the party is tallying up Floridians’ contributions to the absent Democrats. And, for good measure, they’re working up an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative to bring out Christian conservatives next November.

“The Washington Democrats seem to be having a hard time accepting that what they’ve done is a serious mistake and really jeopardizing the election in Florida,” says Jack Shifrel, who’s been active with the party since Bobby Kennedy’s campaign in 1968. Shifrel circulated a passionate “Dear Fellow Democrats” flier at the convention, urging them to withhold campaign money and “tell the DNC that threatening not to allow Florida Democrats to participate fully in the 2008 Democratic Convention will make the Democratic Party the butt of even more embarrassing jokes.” Shifrel, who hopes to help organize an eventual Clinton campaign in Broward County, says, “It was a dumb mistake to take a chance on turning off Democrats and independents here. It is fostering an image of, ‘Oh, here they go again. They don’t want to win. They’re such a circular firing squad.’ All the stupid jokes that people make about Democrats.

“It’s incredible when you think about it. I believe the issues are on our side, more than ever. I believe we have better candidates. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to win.”

Are New Hampshire and Iowa worth Florida? And keep in mind that a dispirted Democratic Party hurts congressional and local races too.

Fucking morons.

Source: One More Reason Why Letting Iowa and New Hampshire Go First Is Stupid: Florida [Mike the Mad Biologist]

Bookmark it:

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.