Donkeys Eating Their Own

The democratic primary is really deteriorating. Both sides were taking the high road early on, but as it gets down to the wire, winning the nomination has clearly become more important to both sides than winning the general election. The fight over what happens to the Michigan and Florida delegates makes this pretty clear.

First, I want to say that the DNC must be run by complete fucking idiots when the best way they can think of to punish politicians and political hacks is by taking away the vote of people in their party. How does that make sense?

Right now, even though Clinton has a slight lead in votes cast, Obama has the delegate lead. Since the delegates are assigned proportionally (and sometimes by a formula that takes into account how blue a country or congressional district has been recently) and there are some caucuses left (where Obama kicks her ass), it's hard to imagine how Clinton can take the lead in delegates. As you see more and more "establishment" super-delegates siding with Obama it makes it even less likely than Clinton can win at the convention.

OK, back to Michigan and Florida. Obviously, since he's in the lead Obama has nothing to gain by having those states re-vote and I'm sure that he can come up with lots of technical reasons why they shouldn't. But, it makes him look petty. Sure, in the beginning of February Clinton was more popular in those states, but Obama's campaign has clearly caught on since then and even if he still lost those states (and it's not guarantee that he would), he wouldn't lose by so much that it would cost him the nomination.

Clinton, on the other hand, should STFU about having the previous tallies count. Neither campaigned in Florida and Obama (and others) weren't even on the ballot in Michigan. There's no way in hell that those results should be considered a true reflection of the sentiments of the primary voters in those states. Did she do better then than she would now? Probably. But, we can't turn back the clock. If she wasn't so cocky about the election back then she could have fought the DNC to come up with another way to punish the state parties.

When the campaigns start bickering about technicalities in voting and who started this, the candidates look small. While McCain and his bodyguards are in Iraq, Obama and Clinton should be making a positive impression on voters with their economic plans, getting us out of Iraq, etc. But right now, they'd rather play petty politics. It's the democrats that will suffer for that.