Florida, Michigan, and the Bamboozled Democrats

Yesterday, the Rules and By-Laws Committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) made decisions on Florida and Michigan which would not exactly have made Solomon proud.

DECISON ONE-FLORIDA. The Rules Committee decided to let the Florida results stand but only give the Florida delegates half a vote. Given that Hillary won Florida's outlaw Democratic primary, she would have received 38 more delegates than Obama if all the delegates had received their full votes. But Hillary's representatives caved and eventually agreed to the Solomonic decision to split the Florida vote in half.

The Democrats were bamboozled every step of the way in Florida. The Republican legislature and governor in Florida moved the Florida primary into January specifically in order to mess up the Democratic primary calendar.

And they succeeded.

First, the Dems made everybody in Florida angry by forbidding the candidates to campaign and nullifying the results of the primary. Then, they spent five months weaseling around the issue, and finally came up with an unsatisfactory compromise.

And I can't understand why the Hillary people caved here either. Her and Obama were both on the ballot even though they didn't campaign. Hillary won handily in January and still would have won handily today. She should have gotten the full share of convention votes for her victory.

DECISION TWO--MICHIGAN. Instead, the Hillary people decided to take a stand in relation to Michigan. Why, I'm not sure. The Michigan Democratic Party originally screwed up the Democrats by insisting on holding a primary in January after they had already agreed to a Feb. 5 primary. When the DNC retaliated by ordering the candidates not to campaign in Michigan, Obama and Edwards also took their name off the ballot while Hillary left hers. As a result, Hillary got 55% of the vote and Obama got nothing.

At least officially.

What the Hillary people wanted was the full delegation seated and for her to get 55% and Obama nothing. But back to the real world. In fact, Obama would have gotten a high percentage of the vote in Michigan. In fact, Obama's people campaigned to get Michigan Democrats to vote "uncommitted" if they wanted Obama and 40% of the Michigan vote went to "uncommitted." In relation to Michigan, Hillary's people seem to be bamboozling themselves as much as the Michigan Democrats. The best decision probably would have been to give Hillary about 10 more delegates than Obama. That's what the Michigan Democrats proposed. But the DNC only gave Michigan delegates half a vote. So, she only got five.

I'll admit that Hillary has half a beef with the Michigan decision, but getting all of the Michigan delegates would have been grossly unfair to Obama. Ultimately, the DNC decision was closer to fairness than what Hillary wanted.

THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM. The problem right now is with all the Hillary supporters who were so energetically protesting the DNC decisions. Where the Obama campaign had all the energy through Feb., Obama seemed to lose steam as a result of the Jeremiah Wright, bitter white people, and Michael Pfleger controversies. More of the mojo now seems to be with the Hillary campaign and Hillary partisans have all the passion that the Obama people had six months ago.

But it's too late for Hillary. Obama built up an early lead in the caucus states when the Hillary people didn't have their eye on the ball. Likewise, Obama did well enough on Super Tuesday to maintain his lead and was then able to beat Hillary decisively in North Carolina when he really had to. That makes Obama the winner and Hillary still behind at the end of the day. That's fine with me.

The Democratic partisan in me is quite willing to support Obama. But the political analyst in me finally sees where the Obama/Hillary split is going to cause trouble because the unsatisfactory DNC decision is very likely to be the prelude to a very unsatisfactory VP decision. If Obama nominates Hillary, a lot of Obama supporters are going to be very unhappy. If Obama nominates anybody except Hillary, a lot of Hillary supporters are going to be very unhappy. Nobody's going to be satisfied.