Sunday, August 24, 2008

Term Limits

So Florida and Michigan were fully reinstated back into the Democratic Convention beginning next week and the Republicans are expected to follow suit. Their delegates will have full voting rights that were denied to them at the beginning of the year because of breaking the party rules.
I'm sure I could make a case for the ineptitude of the current system to begin with, that is, having early primaries in some states that effectively send the latter states into relative voting oblivion. Why even bother in Indiana when Iowa and New Hampshire have already made their voices heard months in advance, giving the media a chance to squash whatever chances the candidate had that was truly popular in your state (i.e. Rudy Giuliani's Florida disaster)? 
But now that Michigan and Florida are back in after being black-sheeped most of the year, what message does that send? That there are no consequences? Sure, with the inclusion of these two states, we might be talking Clinton v Romney instead of Obama v McCain, which would have been completely counter-productive to what the national parties had designed, that is, disallowing that an early primary affect the race on a national level, but who's counting?
It's all pretty bad, and I fear that if nothing changes, it will set a bad precedent for 2012. I mean 2011. 
Because that is when we will really being voting in newer, earlier primaries.
It's been a long year.

2 comments:

Viv said...

and I TOTALLY AGREE. I mean, why give us back our delegates when our primary ballot only had Hillary? (that's what I heard...I had the non-partisan ballot)

And poor, dumb, arrogant Giuliani.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of why it happened, the fact that it could have changed the election to Clinton vs. Romney, in hypothetical terms, simply makes me more content with the way things turn out. With that said, I don't think that this would necessarily be an issue in the next election if Obama wins because it would have no consequence on him going for his second term nor would it matter since he probably wouldn't allow it. It wouldn't be a fully open election anyway.