Do rules matter?

So what have we learned from the recent Democratic battle royal in Capital City?

For starters, if you break the rules, you have to pay a price. This could not be truer for the states of Florida and Michigan who had moved up their primaries, despite the fact that the rules for both the Democratic and Republican national committees forbid anyone to move their primaries before February 5. New Hampshire was the only exception for the Democrats.

Despite these rules, those two states moved their primaries up. The GOP penalized Michigan and Florida, along with Wyoming, New Hampshire and South Carolina by taking away one half of the delegates in that state. Obviously, there wasn’t a whole fallout about what the GOP handed down and no one seems to be surprised by the action. The Democrats, on the other hand, simply stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates…all of them, and the candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. The democratic leadership did this to send a message to other states thinking about moving their primaries up, in an attempt to gain control of the schedule again.

At the time these judgments were handed, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) was the “entitled” front-runner. No one foresaw (not even me) Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) going beyond giving Clinton a run for her money, let alone Obama putting his opponent in a situation where she needed a leap of faith to land the delegates needed. As a matter of fact, I went on the record as saying that the all-loving, all-diverse Democratic party would not pick a Black guy as their presidential nominee…because he was black. As proven last night, I was wrong, simple as that. However, as the junior senator from New York started slipping further and further behind, all of a sudden “she won Florida and Michigan and she should have those delegates.”

That was the subject of the recent meeting of the DNC rules committee in Washington at Marriott’s Wardman Park hotel. Should Hillary Clinton receive the delegates from those two states, despite the earlier agreement that the contests would not count? I say NO. One does not deserve the right to change the rules because they are losing.

The next question is whether or not the Democratic rules committee made the right choice in giving a proportionate amount of delegates to each candidate. I say YES. Even if the hammer from the committee had not come down so hard, Obama still would have picked up delegates, especially in Florida where he had his name on the ballot. For Clinton supporters to say that she deserves to have all of the delegates is selfish because the structure of the party’s primary is not winner takes all. The disappointment of those supporters at the committee’s decision is sorely misguided.

I believe that Obama erred in not having his name on the Michigan ballot, but at the same time I could not blame the campaign for not doing so because it wasn’t going to count. This is the classic example of hindsight being 20/20. However, in this situation, Clinton is still not deserving of all of the Michigan delegates because she did not win them all. A good number of them went to “uncommitted.” Had Michigan been in play and Obama’s name not been on the ballot, Clinton would have gotten to proportioned number of delegates owed to her, while Obama would have received none.

Another lesson that we can draw from this situation is that it pays to follow the rules. The Obama campaign honored the agreement that he would not campaign in Michigan and Florida. The party members in those states need to realize that there are consequences to rule breaking. If Democratic Party members in the Sunshine State and the Great Lakes state should be mad at anyone, they should be mad at those involved in pushing for their respective primary elections to be earlier. The primary schedule is planned out for each cycle. While both states have very good arguments in regards to their diversity being a good measure for the primary process, those arguments should have been argued during the meetings in which the election schedule is set.

The bottom line in this exercise is that based on the reactions to the committee’s decision, the Democratic Party is far from united. DNC chairman Howard Dean for months has been trying to spin something that is impossible, portraying a party that is visibly divided as united. Each time a reporter would ask him about the division within the party, Dean would try his best to turn it into a criticism of presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Dean’s spin has not worked, and McCain is sitting back and watching the madness like the rest of us.

A recent Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” segment where Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers had a disagreement, the Arizona Sentor, who was making a guest appearance, told them, “That’s right, argue amongst yourselves.” That is in essence what McCain is doing, letting the democrats argue among themselves while he is touring the country getting his message out.

So what will the future hold for the Democrats? I could not tell you if I wanted to, because I don’t know the answer to that. But from the look of things, I think a strong group of party members are not happy with who can now be called the presumptive nominee.

kennyburns@marylandpolitics.us