The plan to hold a second primary in an effort to seat the state's delegates at August convention fell apart on Monday, after party leaders expressed concerns about the proposal, which would have involved a mostly mail-in effort.
The state party considered it, because the Democratic National Committee is refusing to award delegates based on Florida's January 29th primary, in which Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Senator Barack Obama.
The DNC stripped Florida of its delegates because party rules didn't allow the state to vote before February 5th.
This leaves Florida three choices.
#1-Seat the delegates according to the the primary they have already had, which the Obama camp does not want because due to the DNC telling the Democratic voters that no delegates would be seated if they moved their primary ahead, against the Democratic National Committee's rules, thousands upon thousands of voters didn't bother going to the polls.
#2- Seat half the delegates as punishment for not obeying the rules, which leaves the same complaints from the Obama camp for the same reason.
#3- Seat no delegates from the Florida primary at the Democratic National Convention, as was originally stated to be the penalty for Florida moving their primary ahead of schedule, which would disenfranchise all of the Florida Democratic supporters.
This can all be traced back to Howard Dean, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, taking the hard line and threatening to state of Florida, telling them if they held their primary before the acceptable date, he would not allow any delegates to be seated as punishment. (Same thing as Michigan)
That hard line (right or wrong) has put the Democratic party in this hole they cannot seem to dig themselves out of.
No matter what the DNC decides to do now, without holding another do-over primary, at least half of the Democratic voters will feel disenfranchised and if no delegates from Florida are seated... ALL of them will feel that way and will, indeed, BE disenfranchised.
I wrote about this back in August of 2007 when the DNC first declared they would not honor the Florida voters if Florida held their primaries early and I asked if the DNC would hand Florida over to the Republicans.
The DNC has some decisions to make, since the new primary date has been signed into law, the DNC and Dean are going to have to make a decision on whether they are willing to simply hand Florida over to the Republicans on a silver platter.
Principle is a great thing, but when your principle means biting your nose off to spite your face, perhaps you need to pick your battles a little more wisely.
Taking a stand is one thing, doing it without thinking ahead to what the ramifications would be, is simple stupidity and Dean showed a complete lack of vision in not understanding the obvious.
That was written back in August and unless Dean is a complete idiot, he had to know that this day would come and all this fuss could have been avoided.
Because of that stupidity, many in Florida, now that the news has come out that Florida will no have another primary, will rightfully feel their party has cast them aside.
The choice now is, do you cast half the voters aside or throw them all out?
The AP is now reporting.
While the decision by Florida Democrats left the state's 210 delegates in limbo, Democrats in Michigan moved closer to holding another contest on June 3. Legislative leaders reviewed a measure Monday that would set up a privately funded, state-administered do-over primary, The Associated Press learned.
Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Karen L. Thurman sent a letter announcing the decision.
"A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the party were to pay for it," Thurman said. "... This doesn't mean that Democrats are giving up on Florida voters. It means that a solution will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April."
HEH.
.