Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

A productive way for the DNC to validate rank-and-file voters is to find a reasonable way to reinstate their pledged delegates without seating any of those two states' superdelegates. Superdelegates are supposed to be experienced party leaders with the vision and judgment to do what is best for the Democratic party, even when it means overturning the will of the voters. Florida and Michigan's supers could have used their "superior judgment and vision" to get their states to comply with the primary plan that had already been agreed to by the DNC and their states. Yet those supers were either supportive of, or chose not to reject, the decisions to move up their states' primaries which led to the dilemma the Democratic party now faces. They may have figured their states could best influence the primary by shaping early perception of the candidates, even if it meant forfeiting their delegates. Their poor judgment last year and now their blaming of the DNC in a refusal to acknowledge their key role for this fiasco indicates they lack the vision and leadership skills required of superdelegates. To send a strong message that prevents future line-jumping by other states, the DNC is right to penalize the supers of these two states by refusing to seat them at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The big question is:  Can the DNC reinstate just the pledged delegates in order to uphold democracy and validate otherwise disenfranchised voters who had no real say in the decision to move up the primaries? Clearly, whoever wins the nomination will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in those states to win the general election. Is there a fair and reasonable way to reinstate pledged delegates so that Florida and Michigan voters stay engaged and trusting enough to vote next November?

Barack Obama has suggested we split the delegates 50/50, but the voters clearly didn't vote that way in either state. I'm a Barack supporter, as my other blogs attest, but splitting the votes evenly between the two candidates disregards and disrespects votes cast for Hillary Clinton. It can be reasonably argued that as more and more voters are introduced to (and engaged by) Obama, he increases his chances of countering Clinton's name-recognition advantage. After DNC stripped Michigan of its 156 delegates, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the primary could proceed as scheduled. Delegates would be awarded per the popular vote, requiring a candidate to have 15% of the vote to receive any delegates. While Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd decided to remain on the Michigan ballot, Obama, Biden, Edwards, and Richardson officially left the Michigan primary in deference to the DNC's rules. (Some political analysts claim that they may have unofficially left in order to deprive Clinton of the momentum that she would have gained in Michigan.)  Regardless, there's no way to tell now how many voters would have chosen Obama if he were on the ballot in Michigan.  

Florida, on the other hand, had both Clinton and Obama on the ballot, along with the other six candidates, four of whom had already dropped out of the race (Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson). Since neither Clinton nor Obama openly campaigned in the state, Clinton's name-recognition may have been an advantage, but Obama's campaign was running a nationwide TV advertising campaign before Super Tuesday on February 5th that was shown in all states, including Florida. (Obama's campaign asked for the ads not to be shown in Florida, but were told by the cable networks this was not possible.) We'll never know if the 14-15% of voters who cast ballots for the six candidates who have since dropped out of the race would have voted for Clinton or Obama  More importantly, we don't know when the other six candidates would have left the race if these two rogue states hadn't moved up their primaries. For instance, John Edwards stopped campaigning the day after the Florida vote.  If Florida had voted well after Edwards and others left the race, how would that have affected the results for Obama?  More importantly, can anything be done now to help mitigate the effect moving up the primaries had on the pool of candidates in those states.

One potential solution would be to take Florida's votes cast for the candidates who have dropped out of the race (Edwards, Biden, Richardson, Kucinich, Dodd and Gavel) and split them 50/50 between the two remaining candidates. This allows both Clinton and Obama to retain the delegates they've earned from votes they actually received (105 and 67, respectively), while splitting John Edwards 13 delegates between the two remaining candidates (none of the other candidates earned enough votes to be awarded delegates, see results below.) This would give each of them another 151360 votes, which changes Clinton's 49.77% win over Obama's 32.93% to a Clinton win of 58.42% to 41.58%. Since Clinton received a larger proportion of the votes, a 50/50 split of the rest of the votes benefits Obama slightly more, but it's still a reasonably fair way to allocate votes that went to candidates who may have been long gone from the race by the time of Florida's primary, had they not moved it up to January 29th.  It's true that some voters deliberately vote for candidates who've left the race just to make a point. But if those names are no longer on the ballot by the time a state primary occurs, it's reasonable to assume most people would vote for one of the remaining candidates instead. The important thing is that the voters who selected Obama or Clinton are still counted exactly as they voted, while sharing the extra votes mitigates the effect that moving up the primary had on which candidates were still running.  Of course, Michigan is another story, since Obama wasn't even on the ballot there.

This proposal may not be a perfect solution to the quandary faced by Florida and Michigan's voters, but it's a valid starting point.for the DNC to fix the problem of two states with potentially angry disenfranchised voters. Whatever solution is chosen, I hope the voters in those states feel satisfied enough to vote again next November  because we'll certainly need them.

Florida Democratic Primary Results

Candidate                  Votes      Percentage     National delegates
Hillary Clinton         870,986     49.77%         [105]
Barack Obama         576,214     32.93%          [67]
John Edwards           251,562    14.38%          [13]
Joe Biden                   15,704     0.90%
Bill Richardson          14,999     0.86%
Dennis Kucinich          9,703     0.55%
Christopher Dodd        5,477     0.31%
Mike Gravel                 5,275     0.30%

From  http://en.wikipedia.org/wik i/Florida_Democratic_primar y,_2008  
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wik i/Florida_Democratic_primar y,_2008