It's probably good that Dean lost to Kerry

[Dirt]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080309/pl_bloomberg/ax5s82ykivjw

He hasn't shown much leadership in regards to MI or FL.

[SpoofyChop]

Yearrrgh?

[Andrew Mayer]

Actually he's shown plenty.

He's just not interested in having the Dems pay for it after they deliberately broke the rules.

[NowhereDan]

If he hadn't lost to Kerry, he wouldn't be DNC chairman.

That said, I don't see the problem with his approach. He's given the states options, and is letting them work it out for themselves. Frankly, that's more than I'd have done for them in his place - I'd have told them to sleep in the bed they made and told the Democratic voters of FL and MI that they should think about replacing the people who made the call to disenfranchise them by knowingly disrespecting the party rules.

[JeffL]

Yeah, honestly, the "fair" thing would be to simply say we (the DNC) are going to follow the rules we told everyone and which all of the candidates agreed to. You set your primary or caucus ahead of the time prescribed, the delegates will not count. Period. Not we'll figure out how to let you do it over if you intentionally break the rules knowing the consequence. Sure, there are political consequences, etc. but if you really want fair, you simply follow the rules and guidelines that were set and which everyone knew.

What's ironic is that if Michigan had followed the rules they would have had all the spotlight and impact that they were craving by breaking the rules. I'm still not sure I understand why they decided to go ahead and have the vote (same for Florida) when they didn't even have the candidates (other than Hillary) on the ballot - they had to have known it would be sham. Why not save the money - they knew for a LONG time the candidates were not going to be on the ballot - and just say, OK, we're going to move it back to where it is supposed to be.

[Stroker Ace]

Maybe they are tired of hearing about the god damned Iowa caucuses year after year. Fucking Iowa.

[Cosmic Hippo]

The DNC is doing this right. The worst thing they could do is allow the FL/MI delegates to be seated at the Convention, and they aren't doing that. Now that would be throwing it in the face of the rules. But also bad would be if they didn't allow FL/MI any recourse. Do they deserve it? Yes, probably. But the voters will still be unhappy about being disenfranchised, even if it is their own leaders' fault, and this could conceivably hurt the Dems in the general election.

In fact, it was expected in the first place that whoever the nominee was, Obama or Clinton, would allow MI and FL to have their delegates seated at the convention, before everyone realized that this wasn't going to end early like most primary cycles.

So allowing them to hold a re-vote, if the States themselves are willing to pay for it, seems like the most logical choice. It stops the States from getting any benefit from breaking the rules in the first place, but still allows the voters to have a voice.


As for Dean's leadership, that's ridiculous, he's handling this fine, especially since it isn't his decision alone, the Chairs also have to deliberate over it.

[Sarkus]

Dean doesn't need to act yet and so he hasn't. All this talk about FL and MI is based on the assumption that they matter to the final result. It's still possible that Obama wins before re-votes in those states would even matter. Why should Dean do anything before he needs to?

[JeffL]

Not matter what happens in FL and MI, Hillary will not overtake Obama in the delegates. Remember, she won Texas and Ohio, and got a grand total of 10 delegates increase. (And once everything was done in TX it appears Obama probably ended up with more delegates in that state.)

So this isn't about Hillary using those states to win the delegates. This is so that she can say that she won these bigger states and use that to try to get the superdelegates to overturn the elected delegate results. Oh, and potentially to see if she can get the majority of the popular vote to convince the supers to reverse the delegates. (Winning the popular vote count is actually a legitimate argument - but from what I've read, if they did a re-vote and both campaigned and were on the ballots, it's unlikely she'd get enough votes to catch him in popular vote numbers either.)

[extarbags]

Dean isn't showing leadership because he's not bending over backwards to hand the nomination to your candidate, Dirt? Fuck off.