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Flinn's Journal
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| Now that Michigan GOP primary winner Mitt Romney has dropped out of the Presidential race and Democrats are considering holding a re-vote in Michigan which the national party will recognize because of the tight race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, was the early Michigan Presidential primary worth holding? |
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I HAVE SEVERED MY TIES WITH FLINTTALK.COM BECAUSE TROLLS CANNOT BE CONTROLLED ON THIS BOARD. |
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Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:09 pm |
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Dave Starr
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| NO. The Michigan Dems are considering a "caucus" in March to allocate delegates. Sounds like they'll totally ignore the Primary. Anyway, it doesn't matter; the "super delegates" will decide who gets nominated. |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:56 pm |
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last time here
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what a fine mess!!!  |
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Thu Feb 07, 2008 7:08 pm |
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00SL2
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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/NEWS15/802070434
Deja vote? Dems could do it again in Michigan
February 7, 2008
By DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Interest in giving Michigan Democrats a second chance to pick a presidential nominee -- one that would be counted -- increased Wednesday after the Super Tuesday primaries failed to establish a clear front-runner between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The tight race makes Michigan's 156 delegates -- blacklisted by the Democratic National Committee because the state's Jan. 15 primary violated party rules -- potentially more important and the prospect of holding another nominating event, likely a caucus, more attractive.
State Sen. Tupac Hunter, D-Detroit, one of Obama's top backers in Michigan, said Wednesday that he's keenly interested in the idea. Obama removed his name from the Jan. 15 ballot, while Clinton left hers. None of the major candidates at the time campaigned in the state.
"We don't want to go into the convention with Michigan and Florida hanging in the balance," Hunter said. "I think we need to settle it."
Florida Democrats, who also lost their delegates for the same violation of national party rules, are in a similar position. If the nomination isn't decided by the end of primary season in early June, the question of recognizing Michigan and Florida delegates could result in a nasty, unpredictable fight at the August convention in Denver.
The prospect of a train wreck over the bonafides of the Michigan and Florida delegations at a convention is enough to make even the Clinton campaign consider a do-over election, said East Lansing-based Democratic consultant Mark Grebner.
For Obama and DNC officials, who want to avoid conflict at the convention if at all possible, the idea is alluring, Grebner said.
"It could be done," he said.
Still, the potential pitfalls are legion. Many voters would resent being told their first vote didn't count, please try again. Practical considerations, like setting up hundreds of polling stations and poll workers, abound; a reasonably well-organized caucus could cost $1 million or more. Who would pay for it?
And, then, the Clinton-Obama race might be over by the time Michigan got around to holding a caucus -- allowing the bad memory of the tumult associated with the Democratic primary to be flamed by a more spectacular screwup in a hastily convened second-chance election. No one in a position to make a new Michigan election happen was jumping on board Wednesday.
Clinton, the only top-tier candidate who allowed her name to appear on the Michigan ballot, won the election with 55% of the vote. Forty-percent of Democratic voters marked their ballots "uncommitted."
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, one of the key backers of the Jan. 15 primary and a Clinton supporter, still considers the primary a success and is committed to making sure the results count, spokeswoman Liz Boyd said.
"We want to make sure those votes are counted and the will of the voters respected," Boyd said. "We want those delegates seated."
U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Democratic Party insider Debbie Dingell, who led efforts to create the primary, also said their focus remained on reversing the DNC decision to deny recognition to Michigan's delegates.
Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer did not return Free Press phone calls Wednesday but told the Associated Press: "Everybody involved, the candidates, the DNC and we, need to remain open-minded. So if someone comes up with a creative way that meets everyone's interests, we can do that" and get the delegates seated.
Brewer has not announced the delegate counts from the Jan. 15 election, but Clinton presumably would be entitled to more than half of the 128 delegates chosen based on the primary's results.
Contact DAWSON BELL at 313-222-6604 or dbell@freepress.com.
Links referenced within this article
dbell@freepress.com
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/NEWS15/mailto:dbell@freepress.com
Find this article at:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/NEWS15/802070434
___________________________________________________________________
Monday, February 4, 2008
Special Letter
Clinton doesn't deserve Michigan delegates
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is in the fight of her life to be the Democratic nominee. This doesn't give her the right to the 156 Michigan delegates that have been stripped due Michigan's violation of national party rules ("Clinton: Count Mich. delegates," Jan. 26).
Michigan and Florida violated party laws and deserve to be punished.
There is no question that presidential primary schedules must change in 2012. The suggestion to regionalize and rotate states during primaries is prudent and logical.
But Michigan and Florida did not have to break party rules and violate the civil rights of their residents to help our nation achieve this just and worthy goal.
Michigan did not have a real Democratic primary. No Democratic candidate, including Clinton, campaigned in our state.
In fact, 40 percent of the less than 20 percent of Michiganians who even cast votes in the primary voted uncommitted because Clinton wasn't their choice.
Should the Democratic National Party not hold firm to their edict that Michigan and Florida delegates will not be seated, they better be ready for the backlash of Democrats who vote Republican or not at all.
--Marcie Lipsitt Franklin
Find this article at:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080204/OPINION01/802040328
© Copyright 2008 The Detroit News. All rights reserved. |
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Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:59 pm |
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twotap
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Hillary's Fraud Squad
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, February 06, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Politics: Even before polls opened Tuesday, Hillary Clinton was all but calling electoral fraud, pre-emptively urging supporters to report irregularities. Ironically, the only campaign committing them was her own.
Which was evident enough when daughter Chelsea Clinton was caught trying to campaign at a Connecticut polling place.
TV cameras in tow, she brought goodies to poll workers like some teacher's pet. Nice as it sounds, it actually was illegal. Connecticut law prohibits campaign representatives from appearing within 75 feet of a polling place on primary day.
Security guards kicked her out, and the media tried to paper it over, quoting campaign workers of questionable partiality as saying they didn't think it was a problem. But that's to misunderstand the role Clinton's daughter has played in this political cycle.
Chelsea has acted as a photo-op mannequin for her mother's campaign, presumably to lure the youth vote from rival Barack Obama. Her one moment in the sun has been to tell a 9-year-old reporting for Scholastic News Service that she never talks to the media.
She shows up all over the country to pose for photos but to take no questions. That's her campaign role, and the Connecticut photo stop was part of it. Which is kind of ironic. Of all the major campaigns, the only one that told its own supporters to be on the lookout for polling-place irregularities was Clinton's.
Even before there was any such evidence of that, the campaign urged all Hillary supporters to be vigilant for signs of fraud and to duly report them — to Clinton's own campaign instead actual electoral authorities.
"Hillary Clinton today encouraged voters to visit her campaign Web site to report any and all voting irregularities," said a Clinton campaign news release on her site on Feb. 5. No other candidate had issued such a warning.
Like anything else the Clintons do, this was a setup to make the results debatable. Clinton's internal polls reportedly were suggesting that her campaign wasn't likely to do all that well — as Tuesday's results later showed.
It's a loser's tactic and, combined with a Clintonian willingness to violate electoral norms, it doesn't paint a pretty picture. It's part of a larger picture of a willingness to cut corners on elections as long as it serves the senator's purpose.
If Hillary is so concerned about electoral law irregularities, the first place she ought to go looking for them is in her own campaign.
Why is everyone trying to deny the queen her birthright?
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:41 am |
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andi03
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OOOHHH, I am furious about this. I have written to everyone BUT Mrs. Granholm, no one listens!!! I will be writing a lonnnng letter to the editor!!! _)&)(&%(*%^
Andi |
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Build a bridge and get over it! |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:54 am |
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Dave Starr
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| Things should get VEEERRRY interesting for the dems by convention time. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:49 am |
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twotap
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Can Mrs. Clinton Lose?
By PEGGY NOONAN
February 8, 2008
If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, "I concede" and go on vacation at a friend's house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait?
Is it possible she could be so normal? Politicians lose battles, it's part of what they do, win and lose. But she does not know how to lose. Can she lose with grace? But she does grace the way George W. Bush does nuance.
She often talks about how tough she is. She has fought "the Republican attack machine" that has tried to "stop" her, "end" her, and she knows "how to fight them." She is preoccupied to an unusual degree with toughness. A man so preoccupied would seem weak. But a woman obsessed with how tough she is just may be lethal.
Does her sense of toughness mean that every battle in which she engages must be fought tooth and claw, door to door? Can she recognize the line between burly combat and destructive, never-say-die warfare? I wonder if she is thinking: What will it mean if I win ugly? What if I lose ugly? What will be the implications for my future, the party's future? What will black America, having seen what we did in South Carolina, think forever of me and the party if I do low things to stop this guy on the way to victory? Can I stop, see the lay of the land, imitate grace, withdraw, wait, come back with a roar down the road? Life is long. I am not old. Or is that a reverie she could never have? What does it mean if she could never have it?
We know she is smart. Is she wise? If it comes to it, down the road, can she give a nice speech, thank her supporters, wish Barack Obama well, and vow to campaign for him?
It either gets very ugly now, or we will see unanticipated--and I suspect professionally saving--grace.
I ruminate in this way because something is happening. Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It's not one big primary, it's a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she's funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn't have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he's played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.
The day she admitted she'd written herself a check for $5 million, Obama's people crowed they'd just raised $3 million. But then his staff is happy. They're all getting paid.
Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched. Prince Yusupov served him cupcakes laced with cyanide, emptied a revolver, clubbed him, tied him up and threw him in a frozen river. When he floated to the surface they found he'd tried to claw his way from under the ice. That is how reporters see Hillary.
And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:11 am |
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last time here
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i'll say one thing about her. she can handle
any man she runs up against!!!! |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:13 am |
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twotap
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If she got up against me I would run too. 
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:41 am |
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Public D
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I think the short answer to Gary's original question is 'yes, it was worth it.' Granted, it is a crazy mess. That can't be denied. However, if the goal was/is to focus the Presidential debate squarely on the economic issues faced by states like Michigan, I really do think it worked. If you look at the timeline over just the last several weeks, without digging out all the specific dates, you'd find that the national discourse and real world reactions/events went something like this:
- housing is becoming more of an issue, but not 'the' issue
- the Michigan Primary is held
- housing, fair trade, unemployment, manufacturing, the odds of recession are finally addressed by the national media and the candidates
- the stock market covers its ears, freaks out, plummets
- more talk of recession & economy as a whole
- wall street whines loud enough for the fed to take emergency action & cuts interest rates, thinking that encouraging America to borrow even more will save us from having borrowed too much already.
- the market continues downward
- the fed plays its only card once again, still thinking we can loan ourselves into prosperity even though there's nothing left to loan and no one left to be enticed to get or give a loan
- the market continues downward
- Bush & Congress tell us to save more, while creating a stimulus package aimed at encouraging us to spend more. ?? Most know that the $300 will (and should) go to paying off credit card debt, mortgages, etc. – not more Hummers & iPods
- the market continues downward
- the media is bored with talking about economics and falls back in love with horse races and delegate counts
- skipping ahead: Michigan's delegates, & ECONOMY, still need to be addressed
Now we all know that the housing collapse and a zillion other factors were already at play before this last fed/stimulus/etc. blitz. But Michigan's non-primary primary did change the national debate just prior to much of this recent attention and ensuing action. Whether or not it was the right action is debatable, but I really do think moving the primary had the affect it was designed to have. And may do so again at just the right time - the beginning of the head-to-head national campaign agenda-setting between the nominees coming out of their conventions.
So all of the nonsense and headaches may have been, and may again, be worth it.
There's no getting around the fact that fixing this tangled mess of an economy is going to produce its share of frustrations, and this may just have to be one of them. |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:29 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
more Hummers & iPods
And our latest the Nintendo Wii. quote]we can loan ourselves into prosperity[/quote]
Ya i know you libs think we can Tax our way to prosperity.
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:11 pm |
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Public D
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Never said anything about taxes, Ms. Coulter. But good luck ushering in prosperity for all with tax
cuts
for the ultra rich. If you don't mind my asking, why are you against a more equitable tax system? The only people I can think of who have reason to take issue with fair taxes are those who benefit from the current stilted system. Also, do you think it's fair that American corporations and wealthy individuals get to hide their taxable wealth offshore, in the Cayman Islands or where ever, so that average Americans without access to this selfish luxury have to make up the difference? And what about the fact that the corporate tax rate is about half of what it was during the 1950s – the era most conservatives arouse themselves into believing was the golden age of American prosperity? Don't tell me: logic, facts and history don't matter as much as faithfully reading from the party cue cards, right? Gotta love Republican 'thinking.' Rugged individuals indeed.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/ |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:26 pm |
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twotap
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quote:
tax cuts for the ultra rich
Jezz talk about reading from cue cards I think San Fran Nan Pelosi has joined the forum.
Not to worry though you got your dems running both the house and senate and soon to have a good old Tax and spend lib in the whitehouse. Your future is rosy indeed.
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:40 pm |
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last time here
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D, he ain't gonna consider facts.
he's fed fox'd facts every day by burpin' limbaugh. |
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Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:17 pm |
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