Slashdot Mirror
For Democrats, Florida Primary May Not Count
be951 writes "Democratic party leaders are seriously considering making the Florida primary 'nonbinding', meaning they could ignore the actual vote by Florida democrats and allow party leaders to decide how Florida's more than 200 delegates are divided up among the candidates. 'I think it's much higher than 50-50 that we will make Jan. 29 a nonbinding' election, said Jon Ausman, a veteran Democratic organizer in Tallahassee and member of the Democratic National Committee. This is in response to Florida's move to an earlier presidential preference primary, which scrambled the primary calendar carefully worked out by the two national parties."
The older I get, and the more I learn about US politics, the more the picture becomes clear:
The primary problem is the parties.
The USA has 3 major control structures in the culture: businesses, religions, and government. Each entity within these categories are major hierarchies with internal rules, norm, and oversight (when it works).
The two prevailing political parties are not really in any of these 3 categories, but are (arguably) the most influential and powerful organizations in the society. They literally control the actions and votes of public, elected officials, under threat of reduced support. Now it would seem that they are brazenly making explicit the ability to alter the election process. This level of power in the society is far beyond any other organization.
Having private organizations, without oversight that can manipulate and control elected officials is a very bad thing, and mostly what screws the "democracy" ideals that this country was designed to protect and promulgate. At this point USA has 2 socially-endorsed groups that enforce (as much as they can) one particular world-view onto member politicians with the intent of collecting revenue and support(votes). These two groups are warring over attention of the population but NEITHER ONE really is looking out for preserving the democratic ideals. It is like a poker game, all either one has to do is beat the other party to win, not really play a great game (represent the people). Both parties just private organizations looking to expand their power to promote their view of how the society should be structured.
People don't need them both the voters or (more importantly) the elected officials.
Imagine a world where your senator voted for what your STATE really wanted, and not for what their party line said they should. Imagine a president who made decisions for what was really best for the county, and not for how to get his party's line promoted.
Perhaps this will bring about some long-needed reform of the primary system- rather than have this leapfrog phenomenon, just have 10 primaries for each of 5 months, randomizing which states are in which of the 5 groups every cycle. Start it the 3 week of Jan, we'd be done by May. Simple and fair.
Sig cannot be found.
I grew up in Florida and the Primary is a big deal. Every republican you meet is a registered Democrate and does there damndest to nominate the biggest fuck tard they can find for any elected position. Been going on for years.
..which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably designed for cooling the blood-T P
I like the idea of making the primaries go one at a time in order from most to least % (of total elegable pop, not just regestered voters) turnout in the last election
It really has more to do with representation between the states, but the national parties have their self-interest as the driving force for keeping the primaries spread out.
Once a larger state like Florida decides (which may represent a total of 27 seats in the electoral college) it pretty much forces a decision for the national party to pick that candidate. This is pretty much the reason why New Hampshire (with its 4 seats) always wants to go first, because if they didn't, their state's opinion on the candidate choice would never matter, and their opinions on issues would never have a national stage. At least with an early primary, all the national news focuses on that one state's opinions for the day.
If all the big states went first, what will happen is that the candidates will swing in and in a matter of days we will know who the public will be voting on in November for parties A and B. That would leave basically leave 9 or so months between knowing the candidate and voting for the candidate, which is more than enough time for the public to become bored with both of them (yes, two, sorry). The national parties rely on keeping their candidate interesting so that in the final days they can pick up the few fabled swing voters... but those same people become disgusted the more negative campaigning they witness.
The national party is more worried about keeping the interest up, because if the public gets tired of A vs B, then candidate C gets to creep in as the spoiler (see Ross Perot in 1992). The way that US politics is currently split between the two major parties (49%-49% at the moment) means that neither party can afford any variable that may cut in and tilt the balance towards the other... hense the national party is more than willing to suspend the state's democractic choice in favor of a national victory.
It's easy to poke fun at the Democrats on this (and I'm not claiming that's what you're doing), but the facts are much more prosaic. When the Republican controlled Florida state legislature and the Republican Florida governor first considered moving the primaries up to make their state more relevant (and, hence, other states less relevant) there was talk that both the RNC and the DNC might not support this, but that the RNC probably would feel compelled to since it was done primarily by Republicans.
Now that it appears to have moved beyond the consideration phase, the Democratic party is considering not having it count. IIRC, there is precedence for this. Also, for the record, (well) before the Florida legislature started considering this, both the RNC and DNC had a policy against such an early primary. The RNC is bending (i.e., breaking) that policy (I assume), and the DNC has not yet said if they will or not. For the record, if it was a Democratic legislature instead of a Republican legislature, I am quite certain that all roles would be reversed (including the early waffling).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The Democratic Party is a private organization. (The same for any political party, it's not just the DNC) It should be up to them to determine -- by their own means and at their own expense -- who their candidate is that they want to promote in the General Election.
Why does the state fund an election cycle which benefits nobody but the political parties?
Why should the state be able to, as it does in many states, tell the Democratic party that "Your sworn enemies, the Republicans, get to vote in determining who you will put up against them in the election"?
Political parties should be able to determine their candidate in whatever fashion they so choose -- intraparty elections, interparty elections, closed-door back-room top-secret stategy-meeting decisions, randomly chosen powerball winner, whatever they want . The only people who really should have any say are the members of the political party in question (and even then, in accordance with their own organization charter, etc., etc.)
But certainly this is not a matter that the government should be involved in at all.
Even George Washington warned against the formation of political parties.
The formation of parties is inevitable. Washington's mistake was thinking that he could simply ignore them. That's why the US Constitution doesn't even mention parties. Which is directly responsible for our incredibly screwed up primary election system, and the monopolization of power by the two leading parties.
What happened to Howard Dean was a travesty. The party insiders didn't want an outsider taking the reigns that they thought were "due" to one of them. So, in the span of about 2 weeks Howard Dean went from front-runner to raving madman based on a scream originally only heard by him and a soundguy (because of the raving Dems screaming in support of him). Charles Schumer worked his same "insiders are due" magic on Paul Hackett. Hackett was the Iraq vet in position to take the senatorial nomination in Ohio (?), but since the local insider Representative was "due," good old Chuck called around and told donors to stiff Hackett. Same thing happened after the resounding victory of Dean's 50-state strategy. Rather than pouring money into incumbent campaigns to give the Hillary's of the party untouchable 20-point victories, Dean as party chair decided to spread the wealth around. It worked, but immediately after the results started rolling Chuck Schumer and some of his insider buddies stood up before the mikes in a rehearsed press conference and actually tried to take credit! They even tried to blame Dean for not using up every dime of his available campaign funds! I'm a hard-core Dem, but I will NOT vote for Hillary or Edwards in 2008 regardless of who they're up against. We need some fresh blood in Washington and more politicians not primarily concerned with their own reelections.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
As for not liking generalizations, I suppose we can assume that in 'general' slashdotters hate to be generalized.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.