The Democratic Delegate Game

[POLITICAL/ENVIRONMENTAL NOTE: Today is the final day to protest the"Berlin Wall" the Homeland Security Department intends to build on the border between Texas and Mexico. Cowtown Pattie has issued a plea for anyone who can or will to help with the protest. You will find the details at Pattie's blog, Texas Trifles.]

[HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: Late yesterday, I discovered in my junk mail folder a trove of unread, blog-related email dating back to January. I don't know how they got there, and I apologize for not responding. I will catch up with each of you as fast as I have time for.]

When Crabby Old Lady was a little girl, she and her playmates amused themselves with multitudes of games. Before they began each one, they established the rules by which they would play.

In Mother May I, you had to go back to the beginning if you took a step before asking, “Mother, may I?” In hopscotch, if a token landed on a line, you lost a turn. In croquet, God help anyone who got caught surreptitiously moving a ball or nudging it through a wicket.

In these games, Crabby and her friends learned life lessons about playing by the rules, the consequences of cheating and how to win fair and square. They also learned that there is always someone in the crowd who won’t play by the rules and ruins the game.

In politics, a game in which players have been known, in some countries, to kill for the win, some of the rules are made to be deliberately squishy so that they can “legally” be bent when the race is tight. And so we have, in United States presidential elections, the phenomenon of delegates.

Each of the two major parties controls its own delegate rules. This year, only the Democratic Party delegates are in contention and depending on how those rules come to be bent, it is possible that the nominee will be decided by an elite group of about 800 super-delegates, party officials and former elected officials who may vote for any candidate they individually choose. Even those who have already pledged their vote to a particular candidate are free to change their minds.

To make the game more complicated, the committed (also called pledged) delegates, those who represent the voice of the voters in state primaries, are allocated by different rules in each state including proportional to the vote, winner take all or whether the vote is through ballot or caucus or a combination of both. In some states – but only some - the committed delegates are required by law to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, but only on the first ballot should the selection go to the convention.

As difficult as all that is to sort out, there is a new twist this year. In an effort to gain greater media attention, Michigan and Florida moved up the date of their primaries. This enraged the Democratic Party leadership who announced that the delegates from those two states would not be counted in the final tally, effectively disenfranchising those voters.

Not fair, you may say, and you would be correct. But the fact is, the party has the right to make their own rules in regard to their own delegates just as Crabby and her friends had the right to control the rules of their games and once a game has begun, the rules may not be broken.

The final two Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are in a tight race now, so some people want to reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegates. But according to the lessons Crabby learned playing hopscotch and Mother May I, this is a travesty of game justice.

As anyone could guess since she won both states, Senator Clinton demanded that the Florida and Michigan delegates be counted. This is patently wrong. The vote was unfair in both states because

1. Barack Obama’s name was not on the ballot in Michigan
2. Barack Obama, knowing the Florida delegates would not be seated, did not campaign there

In Crabby Old Lady’s childhood world, Senator Clinton would have been shouted down when she tried to change the rules in the middle of the game and if she didn’t back off, she would have been thrown out. (In either case, Crabby's nemesis, big, mean Brenda who angered easily, would probably have given Clinton a bloody nose just for emphasis.)

The positions of those who have a stake in this year’s nomination game are changing fast. At first, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said that rules are rules and the two states’ delegates would not be seated.

Senator Clinton countered with the idea of do-over primaries in Florida and Michigan, but the states cannot afford to pay for new elections and the Democratic National Committee would rather not, although it may, ante up money already allocated for the national campaign.

On Wednesday, Dean waffled a bit in saying that the Committee would consider proposals from the states to seat delegates, but he also said,

"The Democratic Nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules, and out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

Huffington Post, 6 March 2008

Late Thursday, Senator Clinton said she would accept a primary do-over, but not a caucus do-over. Barack Obama’s campaign has said he will participate in any do-overs, but the decision to hold them is up to the Democratic National Party and the two states.

"We're going to abide by their rules as they exist now and whatever happens in the future," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Wednesday.

Huffington Post, 6 March 2008

By the time you read this, positions may have changed. Crabby is hard-pressed to keep up with the latest yes-I-wills, no-we-won'ts in this crucial battle.

In a contest as close as this one, every state’s delegates are potential gold to the candidates. But even if they stick with the rules set up before the primaries, there remains the squishiness of the delegate pledge rules.

If only the Democratic Party elite had played hopscotch with Crabby and her friends - they understood how games are supposed to be played (and they never heard of do-overs).

[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Rabon Saip tells us how he came to understand at least one of the consequences of Wartime.]