Democratic Marginalization
One of the big issues currently on the Democratic Campaign trail is weather or not the votes in the Florida and Michigan state primaries should be counted towards the presidential nomination. Right now there is a lot of press going back and forth on the issue. Some people don’t want them to count because the votes were not taken seriously, and in Michigan’s case, Senator Obama was not even on the ballot. The other side of the ticket is that we shouldn’t disenfranchise Florida and Michigan voters by not counting them.
My take on the whole thing is that they shouldn’t be counted, and the Democratic National Convention should be willing to take all the flack that would entail. The truth of the matter is that primary “elections” are not a democratic process. They are an organized event by a political party to give people the illusion of free chioce about Presidential Candidates. Especially in the DNC, where there are “super delegates” that can vote either way when the convention rolls around. The fact of the matter is that while the representatives that we “voted” for should vote the way they promised, there is not a rule against voting the other way. They can vote however they want.
The real issue with Florida and Michigan is the “disenfranchising” that is going on. The truth of the matter is that they were discounted long before the primaries started, because the party didn’t like the states rescheduling their primaries. In other words, over a silly political reason, two entire states lost the opportunity to have a say in the democratic candidate. But where was the upheval then? We casually passed it off, saying “it’s their fault for moving their primaries up.” Now that the results of those primaries might actually be important, the democratic party is starting to care about how they might be disenfranchising these voters and wants to make good.
This should give all you democrats out there something to think about. In the mind of the democratic party, it’s ok to marginalize you and ignore your rights on a whim, but if it turns out that you are actually important then they’ll act like they never did anything wrong. I think the democratic party did something wrong, and now they should take the heat for it.
Posted: April 29th, 2008 under Politica.