DC Reflections

Dear Howard Dean: Act now to honor voters' desires, protect primary fairness

The following is an open letter to Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I hope all readers of this post contact him and the other officials mentioned in this letter. Just click on the links. And as always -- agree or disagree -- blog comments are welcome.

Dear Mr. Dean:

I'm writing you today to request that you more aggressively assert control over your party's primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton so that you honor voters' desires and protect the fairness and integrity of the primary process. You are on the verge of causing voters across the United States to lose faith in the legitimacy of the Democratic primary process -- showing us that your party does not care how we vote or what we think. You are on the verge of causing a backlash against your party unlike anything we've seen in the modern era.

But you have the ability to stop this from happening. Specifically, it's time for you to take your head out of the sand, gather the Democratic party's most respected elders, exert your collective influence, and announce that you are taking the following actions:

Stop candidates from trying to steal the already earned (pledged) delegates of their opponents. All primary and caucus delegates won by a candidate are delegates earned fairly. Many reports have made it clear that one candidate is trying to convince such pledged delegates to vote against the person he's pledged to. There are laws against and punishment for grand larceny in the real world. Apply such a system to your primary. Your silence on this issue is unconscionable.

Make the superdelegates support the will of the voters. Announce that your office has contacted every single superdelegate and informed them all that you and the party demand that they cast their votes for any candidate if he or she enters the convention with a lead in regular delegates won (the only thing that should count anyway), especially if that candidate also has the lead in the popular vote and the number of states won. A superdelegate who fails to do so should be removed from the convention. The superdelegates, according to the latest story in The Washington Post today, clearly believe they have the powers of a dictator -- and one that needs to pay no attention to the millions and millions of people who got involved in the Democratic primary ... including some of us who did so for the first time.

Said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury: "If the pledged-delegate total is within 100 votes or whatever, I don't think there's a great deal of significance in that. I just believe that the determining factor for superdelegates shouldn't be, 'Well, 49 percent voted for Hillary and 51 percent voted for Obama, and that decides it for us.' Sorry, but that's not how it works."

"Sorry, but that's not how it works"? Who does Mr. Bradbury think he is? It doesn't matter whether a candidate wins by 2 percent, 20 percent -- or one vote. I ask you to admonish him immediately for making such an insulting comment. It is exactly that kind of arrogance and disrespect for voters that will unleash itself against Democrats.

In the same Post story, New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman confirms the superdelegate superiority complex -- while also inadvertently making the point the rest of the nation now sees as a self-evident truth:

"If superdelegates were just intended to automatically vote for the preference someone else expressed, there wouldn't be any purpose."

Announce that this will be the last convention that includes superdelegates. The superdelegate system is immoral, un-democratic an anti-American -- end it. Admit the party is correcting a long-overdue mistake by doing away with the presence of party insiders who have the ability to help a candidate steal an election away from voters.

Definitively state that delegates from Michigan and Florida will not be seated, period, and there will be no "do-over" primaries in those states at a later date. Both states knowingly, willingly and enthusiastically chose to move up the dates of their primaries -- even though doing so was strictly against the rules. It's like both states robbed a bank right in front of a police officer and yet are somehow outraged that they got arrested and convicted.

Voters in those states could have made more of an effort to stop the effort to move their respective primaries, and, failing that, can exact a price on those officials by removing them from office. Meanwhile, sticking your head in the sand while one candidate seeks to seat delegates in Michigan, where she was the only one of the remaining contenders not to remove her name from the ballot, and Florida, where neither candidate campaigned, is, again, unconscionable on your part.

It's time for you to stand up and be counted, Mr. Dean. It's time for you to quit your fence sitting and start aggressively doing your job as leader of the Democratic party. Considering the outrage that so many Democrats felt after Gore lost to Bush, and the unfairness your own presidential campaign experienced as a result of an audio glitch, it is absolutely your moral obligation to intervene. It's time for you to act to honor voters' desires and protected the fairness of your primary.

If not, all current supporters of either current Democratic candidate should commit to voting for the Republican nominee this November. Far better for voters to sacrifice one election in order to regain control of the party than to forever know that the Democratic primary is an illegitimate process and that our votes in 2012 and beyond absolutely do no matter.

      

"Mac is back!" -- but which one is the question

Technical problems delayed this post ...

Somebody snuck into the political morgue tonight and cut the toe tag off Republican John McCain's campaign in New Hampshire. "Mac is back!", his supporters chanted.

The question, though, is which McCain is back. Is the independent, truth-speaking maverick not afraid to oppose President Bush ... or the guy who started backing away from his own views as he got closer to announcing a presidential run? While Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani have flip-flopped so much they're making Sen. John Kerry look consistent, McCain too started backtracking -- especially in coddling up to the far evangelical right whose views he used to say he did not share.

Somehow, though, he overcame an internal staff battle, his own firm convictions on Iraq and immigration, and a string of political obituaries. Tonight, he sounded more like the old John McCain. The McCain independents and moderates on both sides of the aisle can get excited about supporting.

"Tonight, we showed 'em what a comeback looks like," he said, in the gentle, humble manner that perhaps comes from having been held prisoner in Vietnam. "When pundits declared us finished, I told 'em I was going to New Hampshire!"

He spoke about sound fiscal policy, government playing a smaller but more capable role in solving some problems where it has a role, and other issues that once made him the best and most honorable GOP candidate in the field.

"I didn't go to Washington to go along to get along," he said.

Then he opened his heart.

"I've served my country imperfectly for many years, but have loved her without reservation every day of my life."

That's the McCain I remember and admire, and I hope that's the Mac that's back.

A great man's dream comes true -- in Iowa of all places

I have been extremely reluctant to write about politics in this blog. I am new here and not looking to lose friends and antagonize people. A bilingual French media outlet in Paris, France 24, however, has asked me to write commentary on the presidential election. And now I've got the fever. The editor said he found my views to be independent and colorful.

I hope they also prove thoughtful. I may not be able to pull my punches sometimes (my apologies in advance to Mrs. Clinton and almost all of the Republicans), but I hope the occasional political missives here provide a forum for thoughtful discussion -- not point scoring.

My hope is to provide a different look at the issues of the day. Agree or disagree, I hope you'll respond by making comments on the blog. Most of DC Reflections will continue to be the old-fashioned newspaper column I enjoy writing, but I can not avoid the influence of politics in this town. I may opine about the presidential race, Congress, the D.C. City Council, and maybe a state government or two. But I won't write about politics a lot -- and if you, gentle readers, find no value in this discourse, it won't be long-lived at all.

Following is the gist of my first piece for France 24. I'll borrow from it to get me started on my first two pieces.

A great man's dream coming true -- in Iowa of all places ... King's shadow stretches across Hawkeye state

Political pundits were right when they said voters giving the nod to Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama did so because they wanted change -- but they missed the most important point Thursday night.

Forget Huckabee. His campaign is going to be irrelevant a month from now and, even if he somehow wins his party's nomination, there's no way he would win a general election because his extremely socially conservative (evangelical) views are too far out of step with mainstream America. Clinton can't win a national election either because she is too socially and fiscally liberal for the majority of Americans -- people who also see right through her phony, calculated personality-of-the-week persona.

That brings us back to Obama, a man whose views I mostly disagree with but who made me go to bed Thursday night proud to be an American.

As a progressive-minded but politically independent Southerner (I moved here from Atlanta seven  months ago), I dreamed of the day that my country would more closely resemble the nation Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned when he spoke of the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners sitting down together at the table of brotherhood. While America in the past 50 years has made painfully small but consistent strides in opening the full array of her opportunities to people of all backgrounds, I was stunned to see people of Lily white Iowa put the country on its back for a giant leap.

Though only 2.3 percent of Iowa's population is black, Iowans turned out in droves to support a man with a father from Kenya. Obama's win speaks volumes for progress in America.

Yes, in Lily white Iowa of all places.

Long before the Thursday caucus, I wanted to believe my fellow Americans wouldn't deny Obama their vote for less than honorable reasons. I wanted to believe we had reached a point in which, again in King's words, people would judge Obama not based on the color of his skin but the content of his character. Vote against him because of his policy views, fair enough, but not because of his pigmentation.

If Iowans did right by America that night, Obama did them right by delivering one of the best victory speeches I've ever heard. He spoke with confidence and candor, and with both humility and the pinch of hubris anyone seeking the nation's highest office needs. He honored other uphill battles this country has won, from the American Revolution to World War II and the Civil Rights movement. If Democrats across the country go on to make him their nominee, he said he would do his absolute best to prove worthy of their confidence.

His speech was so good I almost forgot how much we disagree.

Something else about his speech struck me, too. Like a lot of people in in this country, I still wasn't quite sure what I thought about Obama before the caucus win. He seemed like a genuine, stand-up guy, and I'm all for anyone not named Bush or Clinton making his or her way on to the national political scene. In the back of my mind, though, I wondered: Does this guy have the gravitas to be president of the United States?

Thursday night, for the first time, I thought the man looked "presidential". He had an aura about him on that podium that said to me, "I may be young. I may not have spent my entire life in politics. But I can do this job. I am up to the task. And I can honor this office."

I suspected a great many people from Alaska to Alabama found themselves thinking the same thing in that moment.

Regardless of my political differences with Obama and his supporters, and I may well go vote for him in the Democratic primary as I have no party, I'm glad he won in Iowa -- and I'm damn proud to be associated with the Americans who turned out in his favor.