In an article for The Hill, Byron York points out what I've been saying for months now, that Hillary Clinton may (D-NY) yet win the popular vote for the Democratic nomination. He even doesn't count Michigan in his thinking. I count Michigan, but give the "uncommitted" votes to Barack Obama (D-IL). Byron wonders why some Democrats don't seem to care about this.
It just doesn’t make sense to me that some Democrats would rather not count the votes of fellow Democrats in two rather large, and extremely important, states.
This is the party that went bonkers over 537 votes in Florida in 2000, and now they want to ignore 1.7 million Democrats in the same state, plus 600,000 in Michigan?
That, combined with the recent lawsuit by Florida Democrats to have their delegates seated in full at the convention spell troubling times ahead for the DNC.
It's going to be hard to convince the Hillary supporters to join Obamamania if she's won the popular vote. It will be even harder if the status of Florida and Michigan are still up in the air, or decided in Hillary's favor. Then we have a nominee who's not really the nominee:
What is at stake is Obama’s standing as the clear, unquestioned leader of the party.
When the winner is the guy who didn’t get the most popular votes, some people won’t be happy — just ask all those Democrats who sported “Re-Defeat Bush” stickers on their cars in 2004.
This nomination process has caused a rather large rift in the Democratic party. One that is not likely to be healed soon. What will happen if Florida and Michigan are not seated, or are seated in a way that leaves no one from those states happy? What will happen if Hillary wins the popular vote, but loses the nomination? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I know that Democrats don't get over it quickly when they feel they've been shafted in an election.
And this lawsuit opens the door for a real 2000 type scenario. It's now worthwhile considering the small, but very real possibility that Democrats from Florida or Michigan may go to court to challenge the nominee selected by the party at the convention. If Obama is nominated and Florida and Michigan delegates are not seated fully, when a full seating could change the nomination, things could get ugly.
The good news for the Democrats is that the scenario that I've just painted is extremely unlikely.
About as likely as the U.S. Supreme Court intervening in an election and ordering a state to certify its election results over the protests of the state's own Supreme Court.
Oh, but that already happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment