John Nichols: Michigan's Ominous Message for Hillary Clinton

[marmar]

from The Nation:



BLOG | Posted 01/15/2008 @ 10:59pm
Michigan's Ominous Message for Hillary Clinton



DETROIT -- The question in Tuesday's Michigan Democratic primary was not whether Hillary Clinton could beat anybody.

The question was whether Clinton could beat nobody.

As the only leading Democratic contender to keep her name on the ballot after Michigan officials moved their primary ahead of the opening date scheduled by the Democratic National Committee, Clinton was perfectly positioned. She had no serious opposition. She also had the strong support of top Michigan Democrats such as Governor Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.

Usually, a prominent presidential contender running a primary campaign without serious opposition and with strong in-state support from party leaders can count on winning 90 percent or more of the vote. That's how it went for George Bush when he was running without serious opposition in Republican primaries in 2004, and for Bill Clinton when he was essentially unopposed in the Democratic primaries in 1996.

But Hillary Clinton got nowhere near 90 percent of the vote in Tuesday's Michigan primary.

With most of the ballots counted, the New York senator was winning uninspiring 55 percent of the Democratic primary vote.

A remarkable 40 percent of Michiganders who participated in the primary voted for nobody, marking the "Uncommitted" option on their ballots. Another 4 percent backed Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who brought his anti-war, anti-corporate campaign to Michigan and made some inroads among Muslim voters in the Detroit area and liberals in Washtenaw County -- where he was taking almost 10 percent. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=271003

[MADem]

1. What a load of horseshit!!!

Especially when the other candidates specifically asked their supporters to vote for UNCOMMITTED...

A remarkable forty percent of Michiganders, apparently, supported either Obama or Edwards--that's what that number means.

Unless THE NATION avers that Michiganders are stupid, or uninformed, and didn't hear their favorites telling them to do that?

This is pretty lame, to suggest that anything less than ninty percent is a loss.

[Skink]

2. Dean missed the boat on this.

Disenfranchising an entire state. States should be allowed to have their primary whenever.

[mod mom]

4. I disagree. There is a lot of money and attention in play. I believe the Party has the right

to determine when primaries are held. That said, I do believe there should be some type of rotation so the same states are not given so much power.

[Larkspur]

5. It was not Dean who disenfranchised MI

MI Dem Party did by moving the date up against the warnings of the DNC.

The DNC has a committee that governs primaries and delegate credentials. Dean is not the DNC dictator. MI should have followed the agreements setup for 2008 primary. The primary system needs to be redone, but it was not going to get retooled for 2008. There wasn't time. Implementing the 50 State Strategy was more important.

[Skink]

6. Who moved it up the Romeney political machine in order to disenfranchise Dems?

[Strawman]

3. That's disingenuous, she's not an incumbent president

I'm not a HRC supporter (I voted for Kucinich) but a 90% standard for her in MI is ridiculous. I'm surprised Nichols would make such a stupid argument.

I don't know that you can read much of anything into the results of Michigan's Democratic primary. I had heard she needed 50% to claim a win. Not sure where that number came from either. Seems very arbitrary.

The fact is we didn't have a real Democratic primary and there wasn't a real Democratic campaign here. That might hurt the eventual nominee, but I don't know how much.

I think the best thing that came out of MI is how dumb McCain was here. If he is the nominee, his lack of concern for the auto industry's troubles makes him dead meat here.

[last1standing]

7. Complete crap.

I support Edwards and still say that this is nothing but propaganda. The Democratic primary in Michigan meant nothing regardless of outcome. I didn't even bother to vote because I knew that Clinton was bound to win and an uncommitted vote would not show support for my candidate.

Simply put, if Clinton is able to get the Michigan delegation seated at the convention, the uncommitted delegates will turn mostly to her as the political machine in this state is heavily in her favor and the "uncommitted" delegates will act as superdelegates free to support whomever they choose. If she doesn't get them seated then the vote is wasted anyway so why miss work or class to accomplish nothing?

As for blaming the DNC for this fiasco, think again. Michigan's repubs convinced our spineless Dems that moving the primary forward (against the wishes of both the DNC and RNC) would be a good idea but for some reason the RNC didn't follow through on their threat to disenfranchise the repub delegates after the Dems already had. You think perhaps there was some scheme there?