Apropos En Passant

In 1968 Eugene McCarthy shocked incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, not by winning the popular vote (he lost 49% to 42%), but by netting 20 of the 24 delegates. Robert Kennedy immediately announced his candidacy and LBJ dropped out of the race three weeks later. Only 13 states held primaries in 1968. By the convention, McCarthy led the popular vote. Hubert Humphrey, who did not participate in the primaries, won the nomination on the first ballot by winning the most delegates.

Shall we consider all voters in 1968 to have been "disenfranchised"? How could they have had a convention with 37 states not having voted, whereas we, according to Clinton logic, cannot possibly do without two?

The historical speciousness of the Clinton argument is stunning, even while she throws out historical references to support her argument for extending the campaign into June (those were specious too, by the way). There is no provision for parties in the Constitution, much less primary voting; hence there cannot be any constitutional disenfranchisement from primaries. The parties could throw darts if they wanted to in order to select a candidate. The White Supremacist Party could conceivably dismiss the votes of blacks. Any party, by definition, has a vested interest in absolute control over how its candidate is selected.

For that reason the Democratic Party must sanction Florida and Michigan for violating its rules. They may decide that 100% exclusion is, shall we say, impolitic considering the importance of those two states for the general election (would we be having this discussion if the two states were South Dakota and Montana, "Red States" with a total of six electors? Would Hillary be so adamant that every vote must count? Of course they would still be "swing states" in her reasoning . . . ). But to not impose fairly severe penalties is to invite future chaos. States will be leapfrogging into 2009 to position themselves for the 2012 election.

Hey, that's only next year! But then, Hillary has already begun running for 2012.

This entry was posted on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 11:42 and is filed under .

• Michael Norton's blog
• Login or register to post comments