DNC inaction shouldn't penalize Michigan and Florida voters

I've read a lot of comments recently from people who think the voters of Florida and Michigan should just accept their fate, blame their state democratic party, and get over it. I disagree. The inequities of the state primary schedule is a storm that's been brewing for a long, long time. States have been trying to get a more fair and equitable primary schedule in place for decades, and the Democratic National Committee has chosen to ignore the issue.

In July of 2006, USA Today reported:

Mich., N.H. spar over primary schedule change

For decades, New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary has played an unusually influential role in choosing which presidential candidates win their parties' nomination.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan thinks it's time to change that. He wants to give other states — such as his own — an earlier voice in the presidential selection process.

Levin and others who favor change say small, largely white New Hampshire isn't representative enough of the Democratic Party or the nation as a whole to rate the enormous attention it gets from candidates. For example, blacks make up 12.3% of the nation's population but only 0.8% of New Hampshire's population, Census Bureau data show.

Levin's crusade, a source of deep irritation for New Hampshire Democrats, is gaining traction this year as the Democratic National Committee mulls a proposal to add a state caucus between Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus in mid-January 2008 and the New Hampshire primary in late January.

Last May, the Washington Post had this quote:

"The parties have lost control of the calendar" said John Weaver, the chief strategist for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "And not necessarily to the benefit of the American people."

And it's true. Why should certain states always be the ones that "matter"? Look at how much attention is payed to the voters of Iowa and Hampshire. I mean no disrespect to them, but do these states represent the diversity of the American people? Other states have cried out for attention from presidential candidates for years, but if the those states' primaries are not one of the first, what incentive do the candidates have to spend their precious time and money traveling across the country to spend time there?

This is an issue that Howard Dean and the DNC knew about. It is unconscionable that they now penalize the voters of Michigan and Florida for the national party's lack of action to fix a broken system. In 1998, the New York Times ran an editorial entitled "A Primary Political Problem," and closed with this statement:

[I]t is obvious that only a guarantee that all states will get a decent chance to influence the nominating process is going to end the present destructive trend.

But instead the trend continues ....

photo CNN

The longer this goes on, the stronger we become

I've started avoiding certain blogs that I used to visit. Their appeal used to be that I could hear so many dissenting voices, and being an open-minded person I always felt I learned a lot from listening to those who hold views different from my own. But there's a certain element, and it is on both sides of the democratic race, that has just gotten downright childish. What do you say about a level of discourse that basically amounts to nothing more than namecalling ("Shillary" and "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" for example)?

Well, as annoying as they are, I think those folks are an extremely vocal minority. The rest of the democratic voters are watching this primary unfold with fascination, and it is making us as a stronger nation for our self-examination. As Ellen Goodman writes today in the Boston Globe:

For openers, it's the "embeds" - the traveling press who look as weary as the candidates - and the party honchos who want it over. Two-thirds of the polled Democrats think it should go on.

A good part of the energy and excitement of this campaign comes - still - from having a woman and an African-American on the ballot. So far, Clinton and Obama have brought more voters to the polls than any primary campaign in recent memory.

A full 59 percent of the Ohio voters were women this year, up seven points from 2004. In Texas they were 57 percent, up four points. Obama engages younger voters. In Ohio alone there was a 10 percent increase in the under-30 vote compared with 2000. If it's good for Ohio, why not Pennsylvania? Indiana?

We've put to rest the question of whether a woman is tough enough to be commander in chief. Clinton has been the tough guy in the race. Win, lose or draw, she has rewritten the common wisdom.

It's also put to rest the question of whether white Americans would vote for an African-American. In the whitest of states, such as Iowa and Vermont, Obama left the bias about bias in tatters.

So to any Democrat in high gloom over an extended fight, take a deep breath. Then watch a rerun of the designated opponent, John McCain, giving his joyless victory speech on Tuesday night. There are many things worse than an extended race between history or herstory. You could, for example, get a Rose Garden endorsement from George W. Bush.

If you can stay awake to watch "the maverick," have at it. I lost interest in this snooze fest fairly quickly in ...