- Seat 100% of the Florida and Michigan delegations
- Reform the primary and caucus systems to reflect the "one person/one vote" principle, and
- Place Senator Clinton's name in nomination and conduct a roll call vote
The thought seems to be that if the DNC doesn't agree to these demands, Senator Clinton's supporters should either stay home or else vote for John McCain.
This puzzles me. For one thing, it's not likely that Senator Clinton herself would approve. Just this morning I and several hundred thousand of my closest friends got an email from her urging us in strong terms to do all we can to elect Barack Obama. Senator Clinton may have some legitimate gripes about the primary process. But given her differences with Senator McCain on any number of issues, and given the considerable similarity between her views and Senator Obama's, she would have to have mighty strong objections for it to make any sense to want her supporters to cast protest votes against the Democratic candidate. For my own part, I can't see that the objections could be nearly strong enough.
As we've been reminded countless times, her campaign agreed to the decision to exclude Florida and Michigan lo those many months ago. And while there might be a case for saying that the Florida delegation should be seated (the Democrats couldn't make the Republican legislature change the calendar even if they had wanted to), Michigan is another story. The one-person one vote business is at least partly a red herring, and the reasons aren't news. One person/one-vote is too broad to tell us what to do when states go against their party's own rules. In any case, there's nothing sacred about one person/one vote to begin with. Yes: it's easy to list despicable examples of disenfranchising people -- women, minorities, people who can't afford poll taxes -- but American democracy even at its best has never been one person/one vote all the way down, and has never counted all votes equally. Presidential elections are decided ultimately by the Electoral College, and as we all know, the outcome can differ from the popular vote. A vote for Senator in Montana counts for a lot more than a vote for Senator in California. Maybe presidential elections should be decided by simple majority vote, but there are interesting non-nasty arguments on the other side. Maybe we shouldn't have a Senate where each state, large or small, gets the same number of Senators. But there are reasons to the contrary that someone could be persuaded by without being a moral moron. For that matter, maybe every piece of legislation should be decided by direct democracy, but I 'd strongly consider emigrating to Antarctica if that happened. And when it comes to how political parties pick their candidates, it's really a long way from obvious that it should just be by popular vote. Someone could think that "party elders" have a special role to play without being a racist, sexist, elitist or anything else mean or miserable.
As for a roll call vote at the convention, I'm having a hard time understanding what good it would do. If Senator Clinton lost (my guess about the outcome), it seems at least as likely that it would just stir up more bad feelings as that it would help to get a Democrat in the White House. And if she were to win, then given the way things have developed, I'd expect a level of chaos that would make Will Roger's crack about not belonging to an organized political party seem way too mild.
Truth in advertising: I voted for Obama in the primary. But it wasn't a vote against Senator Clinton, and if she had ended up the winner, I could have lived with that very easily. She's a remarkably capable and talented individual. There's not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that she's up to the job. But I think the same of Senator Obama, and I had to pick.
Politics is messy business, and it can't just be a matter of principle. The trouble is familiar: there are too many plausible but conflicting principles. People can reasonably decide not to be Democrats, and Democrats can reasonably disagree about various issues while still being more like one another on the whole than they are like Republicans. There are no perfect candidates, no perfect processes, and no perfect rules. I'm one of those people who started out thinking rather well of McCain, but found that the more he said, the more I had to disagree with. Some of those disagreements are pretty profound. Given that Senator Clinton is to the left of Senator Obama on many issues, I find it bewildering that people who were enthusiastic about her could think that their values are best served by casting a protest vote for Senator McCain. Being a dog in a manger may make you feel better for a while, but if it works against a lot of things you really care about, it's better to lick your wounds and move on.
2 comments:
Well, someone who thought that party elders had a special role that supersedes the role of a normal everyday person would be by definition be practicing "elitism" would they not? Whether or not that's a bad thing or not is up for grabs, but it seems that one would be practicing a brand of elitism (in the most pejorative sense of their actions) in saying that a party elder's opinion is worth the same as tens of thousands of regular voters.
My take on the matter is that it never makes sense to vote against your interests out of "protest". I think you end up enabling those who want the exact opposite of what you want. Especially in the case of Clinton supporters. The differences between Obama and Clinton, as were played out over 20 something painstakingly similar debates, are more an issue of presentation than substance.
Hi Tim,
A thought: we routinely give tremendous weight to the opinions of one sort of party elder over thousands or even millions of ordinary folk. That's what happens every time a senator or member of the House votes. The folk had their say, of course, in electing the members of Congress, but we don't practice direct democracy. (Full disclosure: I think that California-style ballot initiatives are almost always a really bad idea.)
That said, I actually have no settled view about how parties should pick their candidates. I could be persuaded that "party elders" should have less say, or that they should have just the kind they have now. My only point was that there's quite a bit more room to argue here than at least some people seem to be acknowledging.
I hope summer is going well!
AS
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