Balkinization: Being rewarded for bad behavior

Being rewarded for bad behavior

Sandy Levinson

Unless Barack Obama wins both Texas and Ohio (and adds Pennsylvania a couple of weeks later for good measure), the race will go on, and the controversy about counting delegates from Florida and Michigan will become ever more heated. The Clinton position that the results of the primaries held there in January, in patent defiance of the Democratic National Committee, should be honored, is preposterous. The candidates had pledged to honor the ban by not campaigning there. Obama wasn't even on the ballot in one of those states and certainly didn't campaign. But if Clinton and Obama remain more-or-less tied after the next string of primaries, there will, I suspect, be great pressure to rehold the primaries in a context where both candidates can campaign. This appears fair on the surface, but there is a real paradox in adopting this solution.

The paradox is similar, in its own way, to that facing the country in the aftermath of the Civil War, where the former Confederates states were actually rewarded with greater representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College because former slaves, who had been counted only as 3/5 of persons for purposes of computing representation, now were counted in full. If, however, they could not vote or otherwise participate in politics, the real winners were the unreformed Southern whites, as proved true following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Confederate sympatheizers were, in a very real way, rewarded for attempting to tear the Union asunder, with terrible consequences for the next century of American politics.

So what is the connection with Florida and Michigan? It is this: Both of those states selfishly tried to break the queue in the belief that that would heighten their influence in picking the nominee. The same belief led to the cluster of states joined together in Super Tuesday, all of whom apparently believed that that would be the last day of the campaign. They were, of course, mistaken; for the first time in at least two decades, the Texas primary turns out to be significant, and Ohio is getting the same attention at the primary stage that it is used to getting at the national election. But if Obama is not the decisive winner by April (there is no plausible argument that Hillary would be the decisive winner), then to allow Florida and Michigan to revote would be to give them exactly what they wanted: disproportionate influence in selecting the nominee, with attendant pandering to the parochial interests of these two states.

I suspect that both Clinton and Obama will, should the context warrant it, agree to a revote. If Clinton holds to the "let's count the delegates from the illegitimate January primaries" and superdelegates provide the margin of support in what would undoubtedly be a vicious floor fight, the Democratic Party could indeed find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of a monumental victory, as many Obama supporters would (properly) view his defeat under such circumstances as theft of what he earned fair and square. So the best solution from the Democratic Party's perspective would be the revote. Who would really be upset if such a solution ended up rewarding the miscreants who are responsible for creating this awkward situation in the first place?

Posted 1:43 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]

Comments:

I agree. Michigan and Florida have been acting selfishly. Plus they run those obnoxious commercials. Michigan is all, like, look at me—I am so business friendly. Florida is, I’m so warm and sunny, everybody love me. Do they even think about how that makes the other states feel? What kind of example are they setting for the younger states, like Hawaii and Alaska? This is simply unacceptable behavior and I am glad someone has finally had the courage to call them on it.

# posted by

mls : 6:46 AM

A few points.

Others may correct me on this, but, according to several sources (a current good posting is at Open Left ), Obama has opened up a large lead in pledged delegates, is closing the gap in superdelegates, and is very likely to continue winning more pledged delegates in the upcoming primaries and caucuses to the point where the controversy over Michigan and Florida delegates will become moot.

Secondly, IIRC, the reason that the Michigan and Florida dates were moved up for Democrats was not due to their efforts, but due to those of their Republican controlled legislatures (who would be the true miscreants in your example). Therefore, the Democratic voters in those states would at best be rewarded for the bad behavior of the other party; kind of like how I as a voter, who do not think that the current stimulus bill is a good one, will still be rewarded by a $1200 check from the government (that I will likely have to cash to pay bills anyway, because I am currently unemployed--even though I believe that extending unemployment benefits would have been better as an aid package, and not just for my own benefit).

# posted by

Fraud Guy : 6:54 AM

Sorry for the bad embedded link; if it is copied and pasted, eliminating the blogger portion will still get you there.

# posted by

Fraud Guy : 6:55 AM

Long after the primary, Florida is still a source of dispute. One camp believes that we should "count every vote," while the other thinks that the outcome should be decided by the rules agreed to in advance.

# posted by

HowardGilbert : 7:34 AM

A problem with a "do-over" is avoiding stepping on the "doo-doo" responsible for the "do-over" in the first place. Sometimes a "second opinion" leads to a third, ....

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 8:03 AM

I do not know about Michigan, but I doubt Florida's GOP legislature is going to waste state money for a Dem do over primary.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 9:08 AM

Re: Florida's HB 537

It's not clear that "the republicans did this."

Final Florida House vote: 118-0

Developing: Clinton aides threatened lawsuit over Texas caucuses, officials say

# posted by

manonfyre : 10:36 AM

HowardGilbert:

Long after the primary, Florida is still a source of dispute. One camp believes that we should "count every vote," while the other thinks that the outcome should be decided by the rules agreed to in advance.

You seem to think there's an unavoidable inconsistency there.

I'd note that it was the Republican legislators in Florida in 2000 that threatened to pass a law allocating the electoral college members to the Dubya camp ex post facto if the courts should have the temerity to actually count all the votes and they came out the wrong way.

Pretending that the Democrats wanted "new" rules for counting is disingenuous. People (and the courts) were just trying to do the best that they could given the admittedly vague but otherwise quite defencible "clear intent of the voter", a standard that served (and serves) for many other states as well.

Cheers,

# posted by

Arne Langsetmo : 12:40 PM

manonfyre,

Thank you for that correction; 118-0 + 2 absent on final house vote.

# posted by

Fraud Guy : 12:47 PM

If the "reward" for trying to jump to the front of the line is being forced to the end of the line, that's not much of a reward. In future cycles, any state which thinks there's advantage in voting last could simply schedule that in the first place.

Also, there's a simple punishment that will strongly dissuade such behavior in the future without completely disenfranchising voters: ban the super-delegates of both states from the convention. Hell - ban them from all future conventions. Since they are the very people who broke the rules, they are properly the ones who should suffer most.

# posted by

x-y-no : 1:42 PM

Quoting final vote totals tells us a remarkably small amount about what actually went on before the vote; there are so many dynamics of power involved and so much telegraphing that the actual vote totals, just like NARAL scorecards and the like, have to be taken with a sizable grain of salt.

See for example here and better yet here.

I would be quite interested, actually, to read decent journalism (pro or not) going into the dynamics of why those contests stayed moved up even after the DNC ruling. And, hell, I'm Canadian, I got no monkey in this fight.

# posted by

Harlequin : 1:48 PM

Professor Levinson is dead wrong because he is ignoring the injustice that started this process-- that Iowa and New Hampshire, two tiny unrepresentative states, get to go first every time and always eliminate candidates, denying those of us in California and other big states from being able to vote for the candidate of our choice. And that's especially bad because California and the other big states should carry the most weight in the process-- more people live here and are affected by governmental decisions, we pay more in taxes to fund the government, and we have the most electoral votes.

So instead of California's needs and the other big states' needs being tended to (especially those that are not swing states in the general election), we get stupid policies like ethanol subsidies to bribe Iowa voters.

Florida and Michigan thus don't DESERVE any punishment, because what they did was attempt to break the monopoly of Iowa and New Hampshire on going first. And that was the right thing to do.

Now, the question of seating the delegates is a separate question-- I can certainly see holding Hillary to her promises that the primaries wouldn't count. But in terms of whether Florida and Michigan deserve punishment, no, they do not. They deserve a reward.

# posted by

Dilan : 6:17 PM

Florida and Michigan thus don't DESERVE any punishment, because what they did was attempt to break the monopoly of Iowa and New Hampshire on going first. And that was the right thing to do.

Okay, but what is the national party's legal obligation to the states regarding the primaries? If the party says "don't do X or you'll be disqualified" and a state does X, why should anyone be surprised or upset if that state is disqualified? Furthermore, does the honorable intent of the state excuse it from the rule?

# posted by

PMS_CC : 7:56 PM

PMS:

No, it doesn't. But only because of the issue of fairness to the candidates. In terms of fairness to the party, the party got what it deserved and, if it wants to avoid this situation in the future, get rid of Iowa and New Hampshire's first in the nation status.

# posted by

Dilan : 10:06 PM

While Michigan and Florida's actions were self-interested, they were also praiseworthy. The Iowa/New Hampshire process is an awful way to select presidential candidates, and the states it disempowers are right to vigorously contest it.

I don't favor seating the delegates because the candidates agreed to the rules and Senator Clinton is engaged in a transparently cynical attempts to manipulate the process to her own advantage. That said, the party was wrong to negate their votes in the first place.

# posted by

ADamiani : 12:28 PM

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# posted by

Unknown : 2:31 PM