sic semper tyrannis

Via Hotline, this abdication of responsibility to the Democratic voters of Michigan by Senator Carl Levin:

Senator Levin doesn’t see at this time a practical and fair way to hold a “do-over” election in Michigan given the immense financial and logistical hurdles, and in any event believes that a change in course would require acceptance by both candidates.

Where is Democratic governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm on this apparently insurmountable task? Probably busy making up excuses as to why having a do-over primary is in the “too hard”category.

If it is too hard to run a primary between now and, say, June, how is it we should trust Democrats to run the Executive Branch? Gov. Crist in Florida doesn’t seem to have such problems. But then, he’s a Repbulican.

Eleanor Clift of Newsweek writes about the coming struggle for the Democratic nomination. Her analysis is about what you might expect from Newsweek: boring, but with little flashes of taking liberties with the facts.

Firstly, there are those pesky polls. From a liberal’s perspective, of course one would expect that nasty old white guy John McCain to go down in flames. So Clift quotes the most skewed polling data she can find. She writes: “This week’s general-election matchups with John McCain have Obama up by 12 points and Clinton up by 6.”

Hmm. Don’t know which liberal wish-fulfillment center she gets her data from. RealClearPolitics shows the aggregated poll numbers as Obama up by 5.6 and Clinton by 0.5 points. And note well that many of the polls that contributed to this aggregate were taken well before the start of St. Barack of Obama’s decline just prior to and after Super Tuesday II.

Time will tell, of course, but I believe that Obamamania will not wear well with many voters who actually think about what they want in their next president. Eleanor writes that what the Donks may very well do in the event of a deadlock is turn to the tanned, rested, and ready…drum roll please…”winner” of the 2000 election…Albert…Gore…Junior. Give it up; put your hands together for Tree Boy Al.

What Clift writes about Big Al is standard lefty nonsense:

It was only because of a fluke at the Supreme Court that he was denied his turn at the wheel.

In other words, the lefty urban legend of how George Bush “stole” the 2000 election. By using the Electoral College, that cad! As for Florida, perhaps Eleanor could have done some fact-checking first. From that rabidly right-wing outfit (sorry, couldn’t find the html tag for sarcasm), CNN, this synopsis of the Florida recounts, with the headline that says it all: Florida recount study: Bush still wins.

From CNN:

A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

That is not a fluke. That is the hard evidence of actual ballots. Al Gore lost Florida, and hence the election, because he got fewer votes than George Bush. Don’t blame hanging chads or the Supreme Court. Blame the dumb and dumber ballot design by Palm Beach County; blame Ralph Nader, who probably siphoned off far more votes from Gore than Bush, and had those votes gone to Big Al, well, then we’d probably be just ending up 8 years of Goredom.

But, under the rules, Bush won. Gore lost. After eight years, deal with it and stop whining. But, despite all this, Eleanor does have some wisdom in her article about the exceptionally large turnouts in Donk primaries. That wisdom? Many of those bright shiny college students waiting in the cold for a glimpse of St. Barack of Obama will very likely not bother to vote in November:

The good news for Democrats is that the excitement of two historic candidates generated hundreds of thousands of new voters; the bad news is half of them won’t show up in November.

If the nominee is Hillary, it’s likely that not even a third of them will show. One may hope…

Ah, the Sunshine State. Home to lots and lots of retired New Yorkers in the south; crackers in the Pandhandle; Midwesterners on the Gulf coast. And, now the linchpin for the Democratic nomination. The question of the hour for Democrats is what to do about primary results in Florida (Hillary won handily) and Michigan (Hillary won, but no one else was on the ballot).

The basics of the story are that both states defied the Democratic Party by moving their primaries up in the calendar. Not exactly a heinous offense, but the DNC stripped both states of its delegates to the nominating convention. Hence the voters in both states would not have a voice in the selection of the Democratic nominee.

Now let me state this up front: that’s entirely up to the Democratic Party. There is no constitutional right to vote for one’s preference within a political party. Parties, in fact, are not mentioned in the Constitution. Well and good, but what that’s smell wafting by? Why, it’s the smell of hypocrisy. The Dems are quick to claim that they represent vox populi, the little people, so to speak. Unless those little people don’t follow DNC rules. Why then, crush them like the ungrateful bugs they are…

So, what’s to be done? Since it now appears to matter a great deal who gets those delegates, the obvious conclusion is to have a do-over. Obvious, but wrong for Florida. In the Sunshine State, Hillary won almost 50% of the total vote, with 33% going to Obama, and 14% to Edwards (results here). Neither Hillary nor Obama campaigned in Florida, and Edwards, of course, has since left the race.

The most that Obama and his supporters might claim is that he could have done better than 33% had he campaigned there. Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. Spoken like a true lawyer. And if pigs could fly we’d need really sturdy umbrellas to keep the pig fecal matter off our shoulders. But  regardless, the Florida contest, unlike Michigan’s, was as fair as can be.

Sure, Obama might argue that he might have done better had he been allowed to campaign. But Hillary could make the same claim, and, demographically, Florida looks a lot more like Hillary country than Obama country (she’d do better among both the geezers in the South and the rednecks in the Panhandle). Would the Edwards voters have gone for Obama over Hillary were Pretty Hair not in the contest? Could be. So what?  John Edwards was in the contest.

Edwards, and the other usual suspects (including Dennis Aliens-probed-me Kucinich and Mike Gravel) were also on the ballot in the other early primaries. Like virtually any real-world event, there are many, many variables that lead to a certain result.  And, in politics, thousands of “what-ifs.”  All of which become footnotes after the fact.  That’s the way the caucus crumbles, Barack Baby.

What does fairness dictate the Democrats do? Since both candidates competed under equal conditions, count Florida’s primary and seat their delegation and stop whining. Given the inherent unfairness of the Michigan result, have a do-over in Michigan.