Dawn of the Geeks

As you may or may not know Michigan and Florida have no delegates for the Democratic party. Why? Because they moved their primaries up a bit. Was that in violation of some law? No. It was in violation of some arbitrary rule set in place by the DNC.

What’s really stupid is that in Florida, the Democrats were forced to move up the primary date because of the Republicans. So Florida Democrats are being punished apparently for not having a Democrat majority in the state government.

Only Hillary Clinton has left her name on the ballot in those two states. The other candidates faithfully removed their names from the ballot. Apparently following some arbitrary rules is more important than having voters have their voice heard.

The RNC isn’t much better. They cut half of the delegates from Michigan. Although Michigan sent all their delegates anyway. How many end up counting is up in the air. But at least the Republicans didn’t completely punish the voters. Their voice is still heard, it’s just dampened a little bit.

What’s really odd to me is that Democrats don’t seem to have a problem with this. There’s a controversy brewing, not about how the DNC has denied a voice to two states, but that Hillary Clinton wants to have their voice heard.

Because Obama is a tool that didn’t care what two states said Democrats are accusing Hillary of “cheating.” He could have stood up to the DNC and left his name on the ballot like Hillary did but he CHOSE not to. Hillary values votes over stupid party rules and wants the delegates she won in Michigan and the delegates she’ll win in Florida to count. I think they should.

I don’t call that cheating. I call that not being a fascist. Both parties need to stop this nonsense and set a date range that a primary/caucus can fall on. Iowa had the first caucus January 3rd. As such any state should be able to have their primary between January 3rd and some time in June. I believe Montana is the last state on June 3rd.

Mandating that states cannot move their primary date up is ridiculous. The problem is that party leaders value “strategy” over people’s right to vote to elect their leaders. Because Hillary had the best chance in Michigan and Florida those two states would boost her. The DNC wanted to contain that boost by forcing her to get those wins on Super Tuesday. By doing that her win would be too late to encourage voters in other states.

I hope she gets those delegates. Shame on the DNC for playing stupid games. Shame on Obama and Edwards for playing with them.