“Time of death for the do-over Michigan primary? Call it at about 11 a.m. today.”
Here are the Messiah’s reasons:
The proposal in play for a June 3 primary would unconstitutionally disqualify voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary in January, which unlike the Democratic primary, officially counted.
The plan would never win approval in time from the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, the memo says. There’s no way an election can be fairly and adequately prepared in time.
And the idea that private donors, or the campaigns themselves, would pay for the primary could be legally problematic. “It is therefore well within the realm of possibility that such a case will be made, subjecting the party and its candidates to potential liability,” the memo says.
The Clinton campaign is accusing Obama of being the lone roadblock to a re-vote. “On February 8, 2008, Barack Obama stood in the aisle of his airplane and told reporters that he would be ‘fine’ with a new primary in Michigan if it could be done in a way that gave him and Senator Clinton time to make their respective cases and the DNC signed off. Since then, such a plan has garnered broad support from top Michigan lawmakers and the DNC has given its blessing,” the Clinton camp said in a memo. “So Barack Obama is on board, right? Guess again. It turns out that his comments about being fine with a re-vote if the above conditions were met were just words.”
Let’s not forget that Barack knows his way around a ballot:
The day after New Year’s 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city’s South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
March 19, 2008 - 04:03 PM on March 19th, 2008
As you are a Republican, I can tell you are all tears after the Michigan Democratic Party screwed themselves over.
March 19, 2008 - 04:26 PM on March 19th, 2008
“As you are a Republican, I can tell you are all tears after the Michigan Democratic Party screwed themselves over.”
This statement seems to indicate that you’re all butthurt over realizing that your party can’t even run itself let alone the country.
March 19, 2008 - 05:57 PM on March 19th, 2008
I have been posting about this since it became an issue last fall. I noted then that I agreed with both parties decision to move the primary up, in fact, you and I spoke about it. I do think that Dean created a mess by not splitting the delegates at the onset, just as the republicans did.