Primary Process Fair

Whether people like it or not the 2008 Democratic Primary was fairly won by Barack Obama. A lot of Hillary Clinton's supporters say that the primary was stolen from her for the mere fact that Michigan and Florida's delegates only get a half vote. There are even those who say that it harkens back to slavery days when a black person was only considered to be a third the person of a white person. But that comparison grossly overstates what happened this year, and frankly, to this blogger anyways, is a way for some to bring race into the Democratic campaign.

The simple fact remains that Florida and Michigan violated the rules of the Democratic National Committee. The argument here is that the DNC is punishing the voters for the stupidity of the states policy makers. That may be true but on the Republican side both states lost half their delegates for the exact same reason and that has been completely forgotten. The simple reason? The Republican race was more or less over on Super Tuesday, the Democratic race was not settled until the last day of the Primary season. Back to the point, people say that the voters should not be penalized for something they had nothing to do with, and in fact they are not being penalized. Their vote does count, the only thing that has been penalized were the delegates. And let's face it even had all the delegates been counted, Barack Obama still would have won the nomination.

Another point is that this is all sexist towards women because the person losing out is Hillary Clinton. I completely disagree with this notion, because when all this started, even though Clinton did not take her name off the ballot in Michigan like all the other candidates, she did make the pledge not to campaign in either state and ONLY became concerned about the voter's voice when she realized she was about to lose the nomination to Obama.

Chew on this, in Michigan where she was the ONLY person on the ballot she recieved only 55% of the vote, second was uncommitted at 40%.

I will say this in closing. I cannot stand the delegate system, it is not a fair representation of the people of the United States. In 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote by over one million votes, but because George W. Bush won the states he needed (whether Florida was fairly counted or not) he got the required delegates. For whatever reason in the supposedly freest of nations, in the end it's the power players that make up the delegates who decide who our president is going to be and until that time that the delegate system is jettisoned from American politics we will never have what most around the world consider to be fair and free elections.