Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Gametime: The Invisible Primary #1 -- MI

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Welcome back to PNN -- The Political News Network! I hope you enjoyed this post by Jason about Michigan.

Not to belabor an earlier point, but because the Democrats don't believe in Democracy, the DNC refused to accept any votes in Michigan's primary. However, the Republicans proved how open they are to challenges by allowing Michigan's votes to count in their Convention delegation.

On the Democratic side, Senator Clinton faced token opposition (the only opposition the "winner" of the New Hampshire Primary likes), and Governor Romney (R-MA), son of Governor Romney (R-MI) won.

Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee finished a distant second and third. Here are the results.

Next up: South Carolina and Nevada!

8 comments:

  1. ahem... and the coverage of this nonprimary from the leftist perspective is where?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jason, I have to wonder what will happen in November here. Were I a democrat or a Democrat voter in this place I'd be pretty pissed off at the party now. It's also interesting that Romney mostly kept to Detroit which has long been a Dem stronghold. People here are suspicious of Romney just coming to the "aid of his home state" at this time, and also about what he says. He keeps talking about "bringing jobs back to Michigan" but the fact of the matter is these jobs that are gone aren't coming back. At least McCain had the honesty to say we needed to create more education programs and retrain people. I think that there's no coverage of the non-primary from a leftist standpoint because it is a non-primary. It's really not particularly meaningful that Hillary won the non-primary. I think she rigged NH. The question is why did they decide to be so undemocratic? Will they be changing their name to the fascist party? If they get into the white house does that mean we become the PR-USA? Ha! There's a comical idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JSF, thanks for remembering me :) I must applaud your evenhandedness. When you feel that the democratic party needs to be kept in line and on message about an issue that is important to you (let's just say Israel for example), you pine for the good old days of Tamany Hall thuggery to keep the rabble in line. Yet when it serves your partisan purposes, that thuggery becomes them not believing in democracy! I think that with the degree at which you change your tune on issues like this, you should throw your support behind a candidate who does the same. You know, that plastic dude Romney.

    And it's not like the republicans didn't punish Michigan, but the party of supposed tough guys only stripped this state of half their delegates. That sounds to me like coddling terror.

    But seriously, did you happen to catch the fact that uncommitted came in a very close second to Hillary? And uncommitted beat Duncan Hunter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves. The Constitution gives the power to regulate elections and the election process to the States under the provisions of

    Article 1 Section 4, Clause 1

    The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

    Amendment 10

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


    In U. S. v. CLASSIC, 313 U.S. 299 (1941), Justice Stone writing for the majority extended these provisions to cover primary elections,

    Unless the constitutional protection of the integrity of 'elections' extends to primary elections, Congress is left powerless to effect the constitutional purpose, and the popular choice of representatives is stripped of its constitutional protection save only as Congress, by taking over the control of state elections, may exclude from them the influence of the state primaries. Such an expedient would end that state autonomy with respect to elections which the Constitution contemplated that Congress should be free to leave undisturbed, subject only to such minimum regulation as it should find necessary to insure the freedom [313 U.S. 299, 320] and integrity of the choice. Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness. The words of 2 and 4 of Article I, read in the sense which is plainly permissible and in the light of the constitutional purpose, require us to hold that a primary election which involves a necessary step in the choice of candidates for election as representatives in Congress, and which in the circumstances of this case controls that choice, is an election within the meaning of the constitutional provision and is subject to congressional regulation as to the manner of holding it.

    Footnote omitted

    Given this ruling I would argue that the Democractic National Committee had no right to strip the State of Michigan of its delegates because, my stripping them the DNC has illegally abrogated and denied the Citizens of Michigan their right to choose a candidate under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 and the Tenth Amendment.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Malcot, JSF and I have been providing left/right coverage of the primaries and my original comment was because I didn't see a link to my coverage which I either missed on first read or it was quickly corrected. While I'm no fan of Hillary, I sure do get a kick out of the levels of irrational hate that she gets from folks on the right. She's a sleazy politician's politician, not the second coming of Vladimir freakin' Lenin for cryin' out loud!

    I see that national parties bullying their state organizations as being rather undemocratic as well and further reason we should do away with these institutions that continue to poison our democracy. The whole partisan system we have is beyond repair.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jason,

    That's a tactic I learned from those days -- always move the bar. But remember, the image of Pelosi's Democrats are supposed to be "more open," Hey, someone has to hold them to the same standerds they hold Republicans.

    By the way, did you hear how there might actually be a Recount of the NH Democratic Primary?

    On towards South carolina (part 1) and Nevada caucuses!

    ReplyDelete
  7. JSF, I heard that Dennis Kucinich is the one pushing for a NH recount. I would think that your being on the same side of an issue as the most leftist of the democrats must make you feel about as uneasy as I do whenever bin Laden or unpronounceable Iranian dude says something about Bush that I happen to agree with.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jason,

    But it will knock Senator Clinton off her pedastel. I don't mind building coalitions with almost anyone to make sure she doesn't get back into the White House.

    If you can't knock her off in the Democratic Primaries, it is going to make it harder to keep her away from the White House.

    ReplyDelete

Welcome to the Valley! Please comment about the post and keep to the subject.

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