Obama supporters should want Florida and Michigan to count

Obama supporters, do you feel lucky? Well, do you?

On February 7, 2008, I started a petition demanding that the Democratic National Committee recognize the results of the primaries that were held in Michigan and Florida. At the time, I thought that this was a cause that all Democrats could rally behind, especially after the debacle of 2000.

I was wrong.

It appears that support for the petition is dependent upon the candidate that one favors. Hillary Clinton supporters want the votes from these states to be counted. Barack Obama supporters do not.

It shouldn’t be that way.

It’s true that counting the votes of these ‘renegade’ primaries would benefit Hillary Clinton, but anyone who thinks that’s why we should recognize the will of the people in these states is being incredibly shortsighted. Recent history and a quick look at a map of the Electoral College should tell anyone that.

The last two elections were incredibly close. Democrats won Michigan in 2000 and 2004, but (debatably) lost Florida and Ohio each time. A win in either of these states would have stopped the disastrous presidency of George W Bush.

If voters in Michigan and Florida are disenfranchised this primary season for a rules violation that was beyond their control, these two states will assuredly turn red this November.

Michigan and Florida Democrats will not forget how their party cast them aside and unfairly stripped them of all influence this year, especially when the rules that the DNC is currently hiding behind only called for a 50% reduction in delegates.

They also will not forget how Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina were permitted to break those same rules without penalty.

The DNC’s draconian punishment, a pathetic attempt to make an example of Michigan and Florida, has caused the voters of these states to be portrayed as rule breakers, as children who stole an Oreo from the cookie jar of democracy and must be given a time-out.

This treatment is both demeaning and insulting, and it is alienating Democratic voters in these states. Evidence of this has already been seen in Florida. According to a poll conducted by the Miami Herald in March, 25 percent of Florida Democrats will be less likely to support the party in the general election if Florida is shut out of the nomination process. This leaves a huge opening for the GOP in the fall.

The Republicans handled their primary scheduling dilemma correctly. Besides Florida and Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wyoming also held their contests in violation of Republican National Committee rules. But rather than curry favor with some states at the expense of others, the RNC followed their own rules and stripped them of half of their delegates.

The states were punished equally, and all of the primaries were considered relevant in determining who the Republican candidate for president would be. This will be a powerful argument that the GOP can use against the Democratic candidate in the general election when competing for votes in Florida and Michigan. It’s an argument that John McCain has already begun to deploy:



So I’ll ask the question of Obama supporters again: do you feel lucky? Should Obama get the party’s nomination with a 48-state strategy, do you think that he’ll be able to put Florida and Michigan in the win column, even as he blocked revotes those states? Do you think that the 2.3 million voters who participated in the rogue January primaries will just fall in line behind a candidate who doesn’t think that they should be counted, especially a state that had been wronged in the past? Well, do you?

I don’t.

If Florida and Michigan voters do not have a meaningful role to play in the selection of a presidential nominee now, while it still matters, don’t expect them to support the party in November.

Think about that the next time you feel compelled to wag your finger at them while shouting the DNC mantra “rules are rules”.

UPDATE 4/15: SusanUnPC of No Quarter makes the same argument about the Electoral College by citing a new Rasmussen poll.