Let Your Voice Be Heard! There will be a Young Voters Forum with the Democratic Primary Candidates in the 34th State House District (Flint) and the 51st State House District (Grand Blanc, Fenton, Linden) at UM-Flint in the Michigan Rooms on Wed. 7/30 from 6-8pm.  The Event is being co-sponsored by the Genesee County Young Democrats and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.  Candidates will answer questions and respond to the issues that are important to young voters.

Check out our blog for more information!

http://gcydonline.blogspot.com/...

I started to draft a comment in response to Kagro X's diary, but this is too long for a comment, and frankly, responding to Kagro's diary is too important (I say self-importantly) to bury in a comment.

Please bear with me through the the discussion of legal theory I begin with.  I promise it will all come back to Kagro's point about Ickes and why it is terribly misguided (and needs to be clearly refuted).

With all respect -- and I am a huge fan of Kagro X's marvelous work on this blog -- his post reflects a law student's understanding of law and equity, not a lawyer's.  Harold Ickes' argument is wrong and does not pass muster as legal analysis, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  More after the jump...

I was away from the site most of the day and so couldn't participate in what looks like interesting discussions begun as and after the RBC votes came in.  Guessing others may have been in similar situations, I'm posting this diary to put my own views on today's activities on the record and allow other latecomers to have their say in a setting where it stands at least some chance of being read.

First, Kagro X was mostly right today, except when he said that Harold Ickes was right.

Second, Hillary's disruptive and angry supporters at the RBC meeting put Obama in a position to end this soon, but he will have to throw a hard pucnh: call on her to reject and denounce the sort of support we say today.  Hillary can't hide from the need to take a stand, then.

Third: Obama can pull the final rug out from under Hillary once he has enough superdelegates in hand by giving her what she wants once it no longer matters, thus upholding the "cheaters never prosper" principle.

General Wesley Clark, speaking on behalf of Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign is passionate in his insistence that every vote be counted including those in the wayward Florida and Michigan primaries which broke party rules.
General Clark may be right that the voters of Florida and Michigan are being unfairly punished for the failures of their State Party leaders. However there is another group of voters in Florida and Michigan for whom this election can never be made right - those who didn't show up because they were told their votes would not count. And there is no way to know how the primaries in Florida and Michigan would have turned out if those states had obeyed the rules and held a real primary. There is no way to know how many more voters would have turned out and for whom they would have voted. Those absent voters can never be fairly represented.

Bottom line, the Florida and Michigan primaries are so tainted that there is no way to include their results in the selection of the Democratic candidate in the coming election.  

This is a reposting of this diary.  I wrote it a few days ago, and not many people read it.  With all of the talk of Michigan and Florida this week, I felt it was important to repost.  Also Mr. Super has a great post called Florida & Michigan Timeline - How we got here.  You should check it out.

First of all, let me say that I love Michigan, I was born here, I live here, I wish we were having better economic times, but I really love Michigan.  That said...HELL NO our delegates shouldn't be seated.  Michigan has a history of messing up primaries, our delegates always get seated, and we NEVER LEARN!

Follow me and I'll explain why.....  

Hey all.

JK and I launched MichiganDecides.com today.  In it, you'll be able to read information about the history of Michigan's troubled primary, and the options available to the Rules and Bylaws committee to fix the problem.

Most importantly, you can vote on what you think the best solution should be!

First of all, let me say that I love Michigan, I was born here, I wish we were having better economic times, but I really love Michigan.  That said...HELL NO our delegates shouldn't be seated.  Michigan has a history of messing up primaries, our delegates always get seated, and we NEVER LEARN!

Follow me and I'll explain why.....

In explaining his candidate's most recent Faux Pas (Re: Assassination), Terry McAuliffe brought up RFK Junior's response.  Kennedy's statement:

"It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June.  I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband’s 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June.  I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense."

I understand, in light of his pledged support for Clinton, that RFK Jr. must remain consistent.  However, he also says:

"The candidate’s going to emerge within the next two weeks, and the party will get behind them."

And just who might that candidate be, Bobby J?  I hope Obama can put a hand of friendship out to the Clinton campaign when he offers RFK Jr. the v.presidential spot on the ticket.  Obama/Kennedy anyone?

IN OTHER NEWS:

McAuliffe also gave some more of the fuzzy math saying, "Our candidate has won more votes."  Oh really?  Look below the break for analysis.

Democratic Delegates from tunesmith on Vimeo.

Since Hillary Clinton has made it clear she plans to take the Democratic party's presidential nomination fight all the way to the convention, which would greatly increase the chances of the Democrats' defeat in November, it has become increasingly urgent for the uncommitted superdelegates to speak up now.  Yesterday Arianna Huffington made her reasoned plea to "Start Yelling at the Superdelegates to Stand Up". But even more important to me, Rachel Maddow -- one of the most, if not the most, savvy political commentators out there -- has made a superb case for why the superdelegates need to end the madness now.  This diary is a call to kossacks to contact the uncommitted superdelegates -- and the members of the DNC Rules Committee to boot -- to urge them to do the right thing for the sake of the Democratic party. More on Maddow's sage words below.

Like all the contenders, Hillary Clinton signed a pledge to not campaign or participate in the Michigan primary. Edwards and Obama lived up to that pledge, and had their names removed from the ballot, as did Richardson and Biden. Clinton did not; she left her name on the ballot, and thereby participated in the primary. The fact that she now wants credit for the votes she received is clear proof that she participated.

For violating her pledge to the DNC and participating in the primary, Hillary should be exempt from representation in the Michigan delegation.

When the parties meet on the 31st to straighten this out, all the candidates who pulled out of the primary, including Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and Biden, should receive an equal number of delegates. The others should get none.

This will solve two issues:
1 - Michigan will have a delegation to seat
2 - The parties that violated the rules will be punished

Hillary Clinton has now resorted to the only path left for her hopes of nomination: using political blackmail to force the Rules Committee on May 31 to reverse the rules of this nomination contest and to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates as if there was nothing wrong with their primaries.

We are now hearing talk of "negotiation" on this issue from the Obama camp and Hillary is actively ginning up "outrage" in Florida in an attempt to take her case to the convention if she doesn't get exactly what she wants.

Mr. Obama, if you wish to be an effective President, start now, DO NOT APPEASE HILLARY CLINTON.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked when it comes to seating the Michigan delegates based on the January 15th primary is that, for all practical and legal purposes, Michigan did not have a January 15th primary.  The entire act which created the January 15th primary date was struck down as unconstitutional, thereby retroactively voiding the primary to begin with (it essentially "never happened".)  It is therefore illogical and unethical for the Clinton campaign, or anyone else, to treat the votes cast on that day with any more reverence or validity as an online voter preference poll.  

Let's take a trip down memory lane and see how this all went down.

So now the DNC's punishment of Florida and Michigan for flouting party rules on the scheduling of their primaries is, according to Senator Clinton, somehow akin to the situation in Zimbabwe.

Wow.

I'm not sure there is anyone who shouldn't be gravely insulted by that comparison.

With all the ink that's been spilled over the question of how Michigan and Florida will be represented at the Democratic convention, with a much-anticipated meeting of the Democratic rules committee at the end of this month to consider this question, and with another round of speculation in the last day or so about whether Hillary would "carry the fight to the convention" over Michigan and Florida, I'm surprised that I haven't seen anywhere anyone trying to answer the following basic question:

If Michigan and Florida had voted when they were supposed to according to DNC rules, and if both candidates had campaigned there, what would have been the result?

Of course, the true answer to this question is an unknowable counter-factual. But, as any economist or social scientist could tell you, economists and social scientists answer such questions all the time, often on the basis of considerably less data than exists in this case.

Hillary's audacious not-seating-Florida-and-Michigan-is-the-moral-equivalent-of-slavery argument today may be her last chance to win the nomination: but not for the reason that people think.  I believe that it is aimed at the superdelegates, but not in an attempt to make them think that she should be considered the moral winner on the primary race because by her calculations she won the popular vote.

No, I think she wants them to think that she should win because she'd be the better candidate, and she'd be the better candidate because Obama is weak -- too weak to negotiate with hostile foreign governments and terrorists.

How best to make this point to them?

How about: by acting like an unreasonable negotiating partner and watching him cave in?

Her winning strategy is to show him up as a punk.

If that's true, then by giving too much to Hillary on this issue, Obama falls into her trap.

Hillary Clinton's claim that she is more worthy of the Democratic Nomination because she has the most popular votes is absurd.  

Hillary Clinton and her cohorts are trying to tell us that the popular vote is the best measure of the will of the rank and file of the Democratic Party. There are two basic problems with using the popular vote a metric of party support.

First, the primary in Michigan was a half baked mess that shouldn’t count for anything. If the same procedures were used in some foreign country no one would consider it a fair election.  Hillary beat uncommitted and picked up over 300,000 votes. So what? Obama and Edwards were not even on the ballot and the DNC, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards had all agreed that the primary would not count. No reasoning person could conclude that the MI primary was an accurate measure of the will of the voters in MI. But Hillary wants to count it as such. That’s absurd. If you give Obama credit for just 60% of the uncommitted vote in Michigan, then Hillary loses her popular vote advantage.  

Of course FL had similar issues though not as flagrant and given the current delegate counts not as significant.

For reason two make the flip.

I just want to get this on the record while it still matters a little bit. I have a dissenting view of the Florida and Michigan dilemma. As much I like Barack Obama, I want Hillary to lose far more than I want him to win. Not because I hate her. Because I believe that her brand of politics, and her allegiance economically to the so called Washington consensus, is bad for the Democratic party, and most importantly the country and the world.

But as badly as I want, and have wanted for years, for the Clinton machine, and the DLC bloc in general to be extirpated from the Democratic party, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't express my views now, while the Florida and Michigan primaries are still a point of contention.