Florida Proposes Combo Mail-Live Do-Over
Florida Democrats -- all except for their elected Congressional representatives at least -- want to schedule a do-over of their party's Presidential primary in a way that is so fraught with possible fraud that it puts even Florida's previous election shenanigans to shame. Party leaders, whose acquiescence to the staging of a primary before Democratic Party rules permitted resulted in the DNC de-certifying their election, want to hold a combination of mail-in and walk-in election June 3.
Ludicrously enough, Sen. Hillary Clinton is maintaining that both the Florida vote and the Michigan vote should count exactly as held, outside party rules. She'd love that. Obama wasn't even on Michigan's ballot and Clinton's appearance there was, if not against Party policy at least unfair to all other candidates. She took 55% of the votes but as the only named candidate, that is hardly surprising. Obama reacted to Clinton's proposals by saying, "The notion that somehow it would be fair for her to obtain significantly more delegates than me in a contest we agreed wouldn't count and I wasn't on the ballot and I didn't campaign there just defies logic," he said.
In Florida, no candidate was allowed to campaign and all of the Democrats stayed away. But Hillary bent even that rule; within a very few hours after the Florida primary ended, she made a clear campaign stop there to tell voters that their opinion should count. In other words, she flaunted party rules to her own benefit again. She has amply demonstrated that rules and fair play will not be allowed to stand in the way of her now all-but-impossible effort to win the Democratic Presidential nomination.
I am in favor of the DNC sticking by its guns and just not seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. But if they are going to allow a do-over, then the plan must be one that provides both remaining candidates an equal opportunity to win delegates.
More than that, I am in favor of Clinton just stepping gracefully aside and letting the peoples' choice unite the party and begin preparing for the November general election against Bush III, aka John McCain.
