How did the Democrats get into this mess? Pick your musical metaphor: “The Long and Winding Road.” “Incredible Journey.” Even “Off We Go, Into The Wild Blue Yonder.” All of them apply. So instead of boring you to tears–or bloodshed–with every mind-numbing twist and turn, we’ll go short ’n’ sweet.
Michigan has been pushing to break Iowa and New Hampshire’s early-primary stranglehold since at least Jan. 19, 2002. That’s the date when Democratic Sen. Carl Levin pleaded with the DNC to open up the schedule–and was unanimously voted down. In March 2003, the Great Lakes State explored moving up its contest to coincide with New Hampshire’s, but soon decided against it. Fast forward to Jan. 27. 2007, when a bill seeking reschedule Michigan’s primary for January 2008–in direct violation of DNC rules, which said that only Iowa, N.H., S.C. and Nevada could hold their contests before Feb. 5–cropped up in the Michigan legislature; seven months later, on Sept. 4, 2007, the state’s Democratic legislature and governor officially shifted the primary to Jan. 15, 2008, leapfrogging ahead of New Hampshire. And that was that.
Meanwhile, Florida was making a mess of its own. Legislation designed to push its primary from the first Tuesday of March to Jan. 29, 2008 first appeared in the state House and Senate on Jan. 23, 2007; it passed the legislature (near-unanimously) fourth months later. In both cases, the DNC worked with local officials to choose alternate dates and clearly warned that it would strip the two scofflaw states of 100 percent of their pledged delegates if their contests were held before Feb. 5; as a final precaution, the national party even gave the Great Lakes and Sunshine States 30 days to reschedule. But Democrats in Florida and Michigan rolled the dice pushed for early primaries regardless. They came up empty handed.
In the end, Clinton won both contests — after all the candidates agreed not to campaign in either state and Obama wasn’t on the Michigan ballot.
Wait a second. Didn’t Republicans have something to do with scheduling the Florida’s primary for Jan. 29? Absolutely. In Florida, the state legislature determined the date of the primary–and unlike Michigan, Florida’s legislature is in Republican hands. Determined to play a part in the nominating process, the Sunshine State GOP lawmakers pushed vigorously for an early contest, and their Democratic counterparts had little choice but to go along. Not only did the Dems lack the numbers to block the bill, but voting against it would mean voting against Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s attached proposal to replace touch-screen voting machines with paper ballots–a politically risky proposition.
That said, the Democrats were hardly held hostage. In Florida last week, Hillary Clinton told local Dems that they “didn’t break a single rule” and that the decision to vote on Jan. 29 was “beyond [their] control.” That’s not entirely true. For starters, it was a Democrat–State Sen. Jeremy Ring–who first introduced legislation to reschedule the primary for Jan. 29. “One thing you can be sure of,” he said at the time, “is that Florida will be relevant during the primaries.” In fact, Ring even campaigned in 2006 on the need for an early primary–and doesn’t apologize for leading the effort. (“I hear that a lot, that I was duped by the Republicans,” he has said. “No one duped me.”) What’s more, not a single Democratic member of the state House voted against the measure, and there was little opposition in the Senate. Even after it passed, the DNC gave the state party numerous opportunities to create a contest that would comply with the rules–including a caucus on Feb. 5. Florida Democrats said no. Finally, on Sept. 27, 2007 state party chairman Karen Thurman released a statement supportive of the move. “Florida Democrats absolutely must vote on Jan. 29,” she wrote. “We make this election matter. Not the D.N.C., not the delegates, not the candidates, but Florida Democrats like you and me voting together.”
Okay, so Clinton now demands that “the Democratic Party must count these votes… exactly as they were cast.” Was that always her position?
What about Obama? What was his stance on Florida and Michigan? The Illinois senator has hardly been an apolitical angel in all of this, either. Like Clinton, he signed a pledge on Sept. 2, 2007 not to compete in Florida or Michigan. But he then went one step further. Joining Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, Obama chose on Oct. 9 to remove his name from Michigan’s ballot. Though spun at the time as a show of respect for the DNC, Obama’s decision to jump ship was as political as Clinton’s decision to stay put: he wanted to a) appeal to Iowa voters, who were peeved that Michigan was suddenly competing for an early spot on the calendar and b) delegitimize a contest he was likely to lose. Mission accomplished. To his credit, though, Obama has been pretty consistent on the question of seating Florida and Michigan’s delegates, repeating the mantra “Let’s play by the DNC’s rules” from last fall onward. It’s just that he’s held an unshakable lead in the pledged-delegate count since February–meaning that consistency was politically convenient, as well.
I have a great idea: revotes in Florida and Michigan! Why the heck not? Sorry, pal–that ship has sailed. In early March, there was a flurry of revote proposals flying back and forth between Florida, Michigan and Washington, D.C.: DNC-funded primaries, Florida-funded primaries, primaries funded by contributions to the state parties and vote-by-mail primaries with an early June deadline, among others. But none hit the mark. On March 17, Florida’s Thurman announced that it was “logistically impossible” to conduct a state-run nominating event before June 10; on April 4, the Michigan state party followed suit.
For the record, this was another instance where Team Obama was at least as eager as Team Clinton to play politics with the process. As Clinton indignantly demanded that the party either “honor the results or hold new primary elections”–the latter being perhaps the best way to conform to DNC rules without dismissing the voters Florida and Michigan–Obama (and his surrogates) stalled and ultimately did little to help resolve the standoff. We’ll work with the national party to find a solution, muttered the candidate. Meanwhile, his lawyers carped about every possible solution, saying they would be “unprecedented in conception and proposed structure” and noting that no other states had ever “re-run an election in circumstances like these.” Dismissing the push for a revote movement as “more of a Clinton production,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe added that Florida’s mail-in plan raised “real deep concerns” about reliability and security. “These are very complicated elections to put on,” he said, helpfully.
In the end, it’s not clear that Team Obama could’ve made revotes a reality; lack of money–not lack of candidate enthusiasm–eventually doomed the efforts in Florida and Michigan. That said, the hopemonger from Illinois wasn’t exactly eager to let voters in those delinquent states have their belated say–especially seeing as they could’ve tipped the contest (which he was winning even then) in Clinton’s direction. Ultimately, though, it was politics–not principle–that determined his position.
COMING UP IN PART II: What’s Next for Florida and Michigan–and Clinton.
*Answer adapted from an earlier Stumper entry.
