Just another WordPress weblog
I’ve always said politics is the art of the possible and what seems implausible today becomes reality tomorrow.
Don’t look now but guess who the insurgent is now: none other than Hillary Clinton.
Yep. Once the experienced, establishment candidate Hillary has now become the tough and feisty insurgent candidate fighting against the parade of establishment endorsements in support Barack Obama.
Wow- how quickly things have changed.
“To punish the voters of Michigan & Florida by sending a message to never again mess with DNC rules is petty and downright anti-democratic.”
Conversations regarding the Democratic nomination for President are happening everywhere – cocktail parties, weddings, water-coolers, keurig machines and even in S. California’s notoriously apolitical bars and lounges. We know life has changed in S. Cal if political conversations enter into the scripts of “The Real Housewives of OC.” Don’t hold your breath but progress is being made. Such conversations were previously limited to political operatives and political junkies in Sacramento or inside the DC beltway.
Democrats are not only divided on Clinton vs. Obama but also on another question: how to count the votes and delegates in Michigan & Florida. I get the feeling that the Obama campaign wants the controversy around these two crucial states to recede into the woodwork while the Clinton campaign wants the opposite. Who’s right?
Before taking on that issue I’ll tell you who was wrong. Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Howard Dean. Brief primer on the presidential nominating process: The political parties are allowed to set their own rules for how delegates are apportioned to select their presidential nominees. The DNC stripped both states of their delegates for holding the primaries too early, and all Democratic candidates – including Clinton and Obama – agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama’s name wasn’t even on the Michigan ballot. Hillary Clinton won both primary contests, but so far no delegates have been awarded. Rules are rules , Dean says, sounding like an elementary school principal. Problem is that Dean’s “rules are rules” lecture punishes the most the people who had nothing with this political disaster: the voters. Yeah, those annoying people who are told every vote matters. You think having their vote counted means something to the people of Florida?
I couldn’t believe that my home state of Michigan, a swing, bellwether state will have no voice in selecting the Democratic nominee for president. When I told my wife in January that Howard Dean & the DNC are punishing Michigan & Florida voters due to actions taken by state party politicians she was beside herself. She said to these are very important states with substantial, diverse populations. Yep.
Most the blame for this disaster must fall on DNC Chair Howard Dean. Yeah, MI & Florida pols thumbed their noses at “the rules” but taking away the rights of voters in those states is a punishment that does not fit the crime.
“The rules were set a year and a half ago,” Dean has said. “Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn’t need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states.”
I have friends who tell me “Dean is right. A rule is a rule. They violated the DNC rule and they deserve to be punished.”
The problem is that the “they” in this instance happen to be state politicians, not the voters. I believe Dean should have done more to avert this debacle in the first place. Second, I think Dean calculated that someone would walk away with the nomination, at least by “super Tuesday” and thus the disenfranchisement of Michigan & Florida voters would only make headlines in the fringe blogs. What a miscalculation.
The Clinton campaign has the superior argument – and the candidate herself has said that it would be a “grave disservice to the voters of Florida and Michigan to adopt any process that would disenfranchise anyone.” She’s right and the fact she won both primaries and is considered stronger in both states makes it easier for her to take the position. The Obama campaign has naturally walked a finer rhetorical line that trends to the “rules are rules” argument. “I think it’s important to make sure that people of Michigan and Florida feel as if they’re part of this process and that they’re heard. And we’ve just decided that we’re going to play by whatever the rules the DNC has set forth,” said Senator Obama on ABC News. “That’s what we’ve done from the start.”
That’s a dangerous place for the Senator from Illinois to be on the issue – he may be winning a short-term tactical victory but what happens in November if these voters remain disenfranchised? To be fair, if Senator Obama had won Michigan and Florida and was considered stronger politically in these states his rhetoric would be closer to Hillary’s.
Others have weighed in. Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler said something must be done, “the rules be damned,” to seat delegates from states Democrats have to and can win in the general election. “We’re going to forfeit those two big states? What kind of fools would we be,” Fowler said. Well, Don, it sure wouldn’t be the first time Democrats wounds were self-inflicted wounds.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who has endorsed Senator Clinton, said on March 30: “It’s a disgrace that the Obama forces say, `Well, he’s won the popular vote so he should be the nominee.’ Senator Clinton’s going to eat into the popular vote. If Michigan and Florida actually voted again, Senator Clinton would come out on top of the popular vote.”
Michigan & Florida voters deserve a lot better than then “rule is a rule argument.”
It’s a national problem now that Dean needs to fix.
On March 13, the US Senate wisely rejected, by a 71-29 vote, an amendment by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint that would have imposed a 1-year, temporary moratorium on congressional-directed funding, better known as earmarks. The term “earmark” has been trashed in the mainstream media as wasteful, pork-barrel spending by self-serving members of Congress.
This was a good thing, right? Stop members of Congress from wasteful spending that only benefits lobbyists and nefarious special interests. This will for sure clean up Washington and solve our fiscal woes. Republican Presidential nominee John McCain was the first to support an election-year moratorium on earmarks followed, abruptly, by Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton. Senators Clinton and Obama had the audacity in previous years to fight for federal money to bring back to their home states but made a shrewd political calculation that they should stop seeking money for their home states to be competitive in the race to the White House. The three presidential contenders left the campaign trail to be in the Senate Chambers on March 13 to join the crusade stop budgetary pork and revive the flailing US economy. And surely the best way to do that is to prevent Congress from spending money in local communities that will help provide clean water, improve infrastructure, bolster crime prevention efforts or provide a boost in areas hit hard by job losses or home foreclosures.
The truth is that this was a feel-good amendment with lots of political hype designed to engender even more populist opposition to an institution that has even lower approval ratings than President Bush. Senator DeMint was fortunate to get 29 votes – I suspect that many of the 29 Senators who voted to support the election-year earmark moratorium did so because a) they felt they had to politically even though they do not support the merits of the “moratorium movement”; b) they knew the amendment would fail so voting against it was a symbolic gesture of solidarity to the three presidential candidates.
Congress does a lot of dumb things, including spending money on questionable projects. However, the amendment received a well deserved bipartisan repudiation by more than 2/3 of the Senate.
For 15 years, I have worked as a proud advocate in support of congressional earmarks ranging from humanitarian relief to the people of Armenia to funding for Internet safety education to help solve the program on on-line exploitation of children by predators. I support full disclosure and public debate on all earmarks – including the funding requests I support. Any funding requests should be defensible in the court of public opinion.
The amendment was trumpeted as doing to many things including “cleaning up Washington”, “imposing fiscal discipline” and “defending our constitution”. Some have even argued, and this is laughable, that such an amendment would not cede greater authority to agency bureaucrats. This shows alarming naiveté about how our discretionary tax dollars are allocated.
Here’s a summary of why I oppose a ban on earmarking:
* It won’t do anything for fiscal discipline. “Earmarks” amount to only about 1 percent of a $3 trillion annual federal budget
* Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution provides Congress the authority to appropriate money – NOT unelected DC bureaucrats.
* California pays more in taxes than it gets back so it would be against our state’s interest to surrender our ability to try to get a fair shake. Why would we want to further punish Californians?
* Discretionary Federal money WILL STILL BE SPENT – the question is whether we want elected officials with the constitutional authority to have at least some say in project spending or do we believe that all of that power should be handed over to Washington bureaucrats?
* California, a donor state, would be on the short end of the stick and have its hands tied in trying to secure federal money for projects such as having safe drinking water for millions of residents.
* The process does need to be improved and there are better solutions. Congress needs to make all project funding requests fully transparent to prevent funding of congressionally-directed projects with suspect merit. This can be done without making adopting harmful changes as proposed by Senator DeMint.
* It will cede greater authority to agency bureaucrats. Eliminating a member of Congress’ ability to direct project funding will tilt the balance of power on all line-time spending to agency bureaucrats. Where would the check and balance be?
Last year, Congressional earmarks comprised $15 billion, about 1% of total federal budget. This amount would pay for about 2 months of the Iraq war.
The Ranking Republican Member of the Senate Budget Committee, who represents that conventional, pro-pork-barrel spending live free or die state of New Hampshire, had the following to say about the push to impose a temporary moratorium on earmarks:
“The irony is that it saves absolutely no money — none, zero — because it doesn’t reduce the [budget] baseline. It’s just such a crock. This is such political hype,” said Senate Budget ranking member Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Well said.
Jemal Public Affairs helped launch the Technology Leadership Political Action Committee. You can visit its Events page to view photos from the Feb. 22 kick-off event.
You are currently browsing the Jemal Public Affairs weblog archives for the month March, 2008.
