Clinton In, 5 Dems Out of Mich. Primary

Well, I mean, primaries are nowhere in the Constitution. They are inventions of the political parties and as the national party in in charge of the nominating convention they can really do what they want. They set clear guidelines beforehand stating that states should not jump forward in a certain date. It's their prerogative how to address it when states disregard the warning.

Who mentioned the Constitution?

I'm not saying that this illegal, unconstitutional or against the rules. It is clearly kosher there. What I am saying is that the Democratic party may not be doing itself a favor by disenfranchising voters of key swing states so early on.

If Michigan and Florida both stick to their guns and run with the early primaries and the Democrats exclude their delegates or don't even show up on the ballot, what kinda message is that sending to your potential voters?

State primaries are BS from the start. I really don't care about the Michigan or Florida primaries because I'm from Connecticut and I feel almost entirely excluded from the selection process.

If the Democrats really wanted to show they cared democracy and about everyone in their party they'd have a nationwide ballot. If no candidates received a majority then, there could be a runoff for the top two candidates or some other system like a single transferable vote* system ensuring that everyone belonging to the Democratic party has an equal vote for who becomes the party's presidential candidate.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote

The electoral college could use some (massive) reworking too.

How are they going to blame the Republicans and President Bush this time?

They already have. In Florida, they blamed the state republicans for moving the primary election early.

Which begs the question - if it is the Republicans fault - why are they punishing their people?

Are the people being punished?

Not allowing them to participate seems like a punishment to me.

But is that a punishment to the citizens or to the interests of the state as a whole? I think there's a difference in this case. You can also say the the citizens should have contacted their representatives and governors and nipped this thing at the start (and didn't).

Honestly I doubt most citizens have no clue as to the process of how the date get selected. It logistics most don't think about.

Accepting the claim this is the Republicans fault appealing to representatives and the Governor probably wouldn't of done much good (at least in FL) since the Republicans are in control of both branches. I really don't what the local Democrats role was in selecting the date, but if they were locked out - why does the DNC want to freeze them out for Republican action (of course maybe Democrats are more culpable than is being reported).

If the FL dems want to foot the bill for a primary after Feb. 5 I'm sure the national organization would help fundraise for it. But all I hear is @!$%#ing from the few residents who raise the issue and nobody suggesting anything that might be attractive to the DNC.

Wait, I'm pretty sure it's not in constitution. The Democratic party could rework its selection process and structure on its own, as its own independent organization. Still, you're right that it would be hard to change.

The electoral college needs to be changed through constitutional amendments, which will probably be much more difficult.

There is no way every state can get a meet and greet with all of the candidates.

And why not? They sure start the campaign early enough to hit every state.

Schwab

New Hampshire has a state law that sets the date of it's primary two weeks before any other state's. It has nothing to do with the DNC for us. The power to determine election times is not mentioned in the powers of Congress, SC or Executive. So, in order to take that power away from New Hampshire it would require an amendment.

ah well, NH could amend the state law themselves then.

F1_error

And why not? They sure start the campaign early enough to hit every state

And they spend most of their time going to meetings with interest groups across the country and to town halls in NH and Iowa. Every New Hampshire citizen, if he or she wishes can go to an event and speak directly to a candidate. There are fewer than one million people of voting age in this state, most aren't inclined to meet with a candidate (I've walked past and declined to shake the hand of a few candidates with a smirk and a salute/wave, was a gadfly to others and even saw a few get kicked out for distributing literature in the wrong place at fairs and other public events and those aren't even the places where you can really talk to them), but we're still talking about no fewer than 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the USA, as opposed to campaigns that are merely two to three times longer.

Schwab

ah well, NH could amend the state law themselves then.

Have you ever heard of any elected officials or citizens refusing a hand out or any type of thing that brings money into their state that is also popular*? Most people here think like to think we're more capable of interviewing candidates than other states' citizens and consider it our right, so, no, we will never do it ourselves. The real racket here is between the candidates and the citizen's of NH and Iowa, a candidate has almost no chance if he or she doesn't say how important NH and Iowa are and how he or she supports it. So a change cannot happen without congress.

*We had a one term, stupid ass of a governor here recently who declined federal funds for either health care or education, didn't want us to "get hooked on tax dollars." Needless to say, he was voted out two years after he was voted in.

If the democrats abandon state primaries entirely and have a national ballot like I suggested far above, they might not need to do anything to NH's law. I don't really know though. I just think it's more likely than having a constitutional amendment that tells a party how it can pick it's candidates.

This is the real difficulty of parties that are almost branches of government themselves.

I would personally like the parties to be able to do whatever the hell they please. But when there are only two which work together to squash any mutual rival, then it is only fitting that they should become actual legal institutions so that they can have some oversight.

The DNC or RNC shouldn't have the power to tell one state that it gets more influence in the primary than another and I have lost some respect for the candidates who are boycotting Michigan.

Primaries are a function of political parties, the DNC hosts the national convention and has had rules in place that any that jump a certain timetable will be denied delegates to their convention. The states that jumped knew this ahead of time but did it anyway because they wanted to draw attention to themselves.

The primary system is kind of @!$%#ed, yes, but the blame here lies with the local parties that thought they could flaunt previous rules laid down by the national party.

Nobody took your weapons during any previous Democratic presidency. Why do you think that's what'll happen?

True, with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Paranoia.