The Democratic Party is now in a no-win situation. Unless it can find a way to decide its nominating contest before the convention or to get both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to agree on how to handle Michigan, Florida and the superdelegates, the eventual Democratic nominee could be facing accusation that he or she has disenfranchised voters.
A sense of what is about to come can best be understood by considering Michael Medved’s questioning of Michael Eric Dyson on Thursday’s Larry King Show (I just caught the show):
MEDVED: My quick question for Professor Dyson would be, will they allow the 336 delegates from Florida and Michigan to get a chance to vote at the Democratic convention? Or is Obama, of all people, going to disfranchise 1.6 million Democrats who actually went out and voted and voted for Hillary Clinton in a Florida primary?
DYSON: First of all, it’s not up to Senator Obama. He certainly wouldn’t Disenfranchise anybody. He doesn’t want to see a repeat of Florida. Number two, from the very beginning the Democratic Committee said to those states that if you go ahead of Super Tuesday, you will not be seated. That is not up to Senator Obama. Please don’t rest that on him.Senator Obama wants everybody to be counted and counted fairly. If you are not part of the political stakes out there, and you didn’t know that Michigan and Florida are going to be counted and therefore, you didn’t show up, that’s unfair to count them. I think Senator Obama understand that, and the American people get that very well, as well.
While Medved is a supporter of John McCain, his question more than echoes the argument being made by the Clinton camp. And it demonstrates that the Republicans already understand that a fight over Michigan and Florida would be a disaster for Obama. They will use the Democratic Party’s decision to stand by its earlier penalty against Florida and Michigan as part of an attack on Obama’s professed inclusiveness — how, after all, can he be the standard-bearer for enfranchisement, how can he claim to be above politics, how can he claim to want to bring everyone in when thousands of votes won’t count. That’s not my argument — the issue is far more complicated than that — it’s the one being laid out there by the Clintons and Medved, though not in so many words.
Both states pose significant problems. In Michigan, all of the candidates except for Clinton stayed off the ballot and avoided campaigning there, leaving Clinton to garner 60-plus percent of the vote (about a third of the electorate did not vote for her, despite her being the only name on the ballot). The Michigan voters who did vote have every right to want their votes to count toward selecting the candidate, but the large number of potential voters who stayed home also should have some say here — something that is impossible. A revote would be unfair to Clinton — the circumstances of the race have changed drastically since the Michigan primary. Holding a convention poses similar problems.
Florida is more complicated. The candidates were on the ballot and there was nominal campaigning, but to say that it was just like all of the rest of the primaries ignores reality. As in Michigan, there are significant numbers of voters who likely stayed home because they did not think their vote would have counted. These voters could have altered the outcome.
And both states are important to the Democrats’ chances of taking the White House.
Should a fight over the two states be averted, the party still has to be concerned with the superdelegates — a group empowered nearly three decades ago to maintain some insider control over the candidate-selection process. Two nasty possibilities exist — a tie decided by the superdelegates, giving the impression of a backroom deal; or the superdelegates overrule the voters’ decision.
The only way to avoid this is for one of the candidates to come as close as possible to wrapping up the nomination (unlikely) or for the superdelegates to agree to back the winner of the popular vote — which, given the volatility this year, seems unlikely and may not prevent the ugliness.
In the end, there are no easy choices, though McCain’s flipping and flopping should take some of the sting out of his attacks.
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Hank Kalet 