To Seat or Not to Seat (Updated)

That is the question that the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee are trying to decide in an all-day meeting today:

WASHINGTON – Supporters for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton staked out competing positions Saturday as Democrats searched for a compromise to seat disputed convention delegations from Florida and Michigan and clear the way for a smooth end to the marathon struggle for the presidential nomination.

In the opening hours of a daylong meeting of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, Clinton’s designated spokeswoman urged the panel to grant a full vote for each of Florida’s 211 disputed delegates.

“In life you don’t get everything you want. I want it all,” Florida state Sen. Arthenia Joyner said with a smile.

But moments later, Obama’s campaign called for half-votes for each of the 211. Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida said that marked an “extraordinary concession, in order to promote reconciliation with Florida’s voters.”

As of this writing the matter has not been resolved.

As James Joyner noted this morning the Obama campaign’s proposal is actually quite generous under the circumstances but I’m afraid that the ship for “a smooth end” to the primary process sailed some time ago. Resentments have already had several months more to stew and, in an election that will in all likelihood hinge on small percentages one way or the other, that could make the difference between defeat and victory in November.

Democratic (with a small “d”) and fair are not synonymous. If the committee were to refuse to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates it would not be democratic since the voters in Michigan and Florida would have been disenfranchised, a bitter pill for a party that has been insisting that every vote should be counted for the last eight years, but it would be fair. The state parties knew what the rules were before they elected to break them. If the committee elects to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates and honor their votes it would be democratic but not fair (to the other 48 states and, presumably, Sen. Obama) and the DNC would have surrendered its control over the party primary process. A compromise—something in between—will be neither democratic nor fair but if it can be made to appear so perhaps no one will notice.

Much of the pain could have been avoided if the Rules and Bylaws Committee had made their ruling months ago. I suspect that they hoped that the voters would make that painful necessity irrelevant just as the superdelegates have. The strategy of addressing a problem by hoping it will go away does not seem to have worked out too well. I think we can tentatively conclude that our political process does not cultivate courageous decision makers.

When all of the hubbub has passed and the November election is over I expect that the DNC will look long and hard at the rules that put them into the position in which they find themselves and make some changes. Basically, they can take more control over the primary process or they can relinquish it all together. I see no way that the status quo, with some states holding primaries and some caucuses and some states, e.g. Texas, holding both can remotely be called fair. If the outcome is of a primary would be the same as for a caucus, why not have all primaries or all caucuses? If the outcome is different, doesn’t that produce the possibility that caucuses produce a candidate that would never have been produced by primaries and might fair less well in the general election?

But I also see no way that centralizing more control in the DNC can remotely be considered democratic.

Ideally the process should be both democratic and fair. Or look that way.

I guess the democratic process is like making law or sausage (as Bismarck noted). If you like them, you shouldn’t watch them being made.

Update

Apparently the committee has decided to give the Michigan and Florida delegates a half-vote. That’s a compromise but IMO it’s neither fair nor democratic. Will the DNC succeed in making it seem fair and democratic? My guess would be yes but I’m more than ordinarily cynical about such things.