Friday, January 25, 2008

DemoMockracy

You know that the Democrats are overconfident when they pull the plug on a primary in a blue state that turned purple and now is really red, for all practical purposes. Personally, I hate this "red state, "blue state" and the newly-coined "purple state"—not quite republican or democratic—designation, but since I'm metaphorically challenged today, I'll use the lexicon most familiar. Because Michigan moved its primary from March something to January 15th, the National Democratic Party invoked some arcane rule about giving Iowa, New Hampshire precedence, ( and apparently Nevada too.) So it was a square-off between the national party, led by the feisty Howard Dean, and the state party. The state party lost the battle (and the war), and therefore, like refusing to cross a picket line, almost all the democratic candidates opted off of the primary ballot. You could for Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, who had already withdrawn from the race, or be "Undecided": if you dare wrote someone in, your ballot was thrown out. The Republicans, to their credit, didn't pull the same shenanigans, so they had the full list of candidates. So, since the Michigan primary is an open primary, Democrats, such as myself, went to play in the Republican sandbox. Unfortunately, many did so in a nefarious way. Most Democrats I know voted for Mitt Romney in order to split up the primaries between Republican candidates, and thus make it a more arduous task for a Republican candidate to win, and then begin the presidential campaign as the party's nominee. I, instead, voted my conscience.

So why this Democratic hubris? Does the national party think that Michigan doesn't count? That its citizens will overlook the fact that we were basically disenfranchised? Presently, there is a lawsuit being filed against the national party, alleging "taxation without representation," basically that voters who wanted to cast votes for Obama or Edwards were thwarted by the party's Machiavellian antics. Although litigation is not always the best means to pursue political equity, in this case it's merited.

I have one word for Howard Dean: Ohio.

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