Monumental Incompetence

You have to hand it to the state of Florida and its Democratic Party: When something is just too darned difficult for them, like, say, holding an unscheduled election, they just admit it. There's something to be said for knowing one's limitations, as Clint Eastwood's character pointed out in Magnum Force.

Over the past five years, at least 16 congressional districts around the country had unexpected vacancies for various reasons, and four more have special elections coming up. In several cases, the member of Congress representing the district died. In others, the lawmaker resigned to take another job, or was headed to prison.

In every instance, the state managed to conduct an election to fill the House vacancy. In fact, most even held primaries before the general election. Except for the few contests that happened to coincide with regularly scheduled elections, new balloting was organized and conducted. Democracy went on.

Apparently things are different in Florida -- more challenging, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The two major political parties set rules for the 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses, establishing windows during which states could hold their contests. In their infinite wisdom, the parties allowed, by prearrangement, a few states to vote before their window opened.

Florida and Michigan weren't granted exceptions, but they decided to jump the line and hold their primaries early, in a game of political chicken with the national parties. The parties, as it turned out, didn't blink.

The most powerful sanction allowed under Republican Party rules is for a state to lose half of its delegates. Because there is no provision for the Republican National Committee to change those rules during an election cycle, that punishment stands. The Democratic National Committee's rules called for all delegates selected in violation of party rules to be disallowed, which was done.

To the credit of Michigan's Democrats, once their bluff was called, they began cobbling together a plan to hold a do-over primary, financed by private contributions, on June 3. Michigan is facing an economic crisis as acute as any in the country. Nevertheless, at the time of publication, key state leaders had not abandoned efforts to give their state's Democrats a voice at their party's national convention and in what remains a very competitive presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, unlike California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia -- states that have held hurry-up special elections in recent years because of House vacancies -- Florida can't seem to find a way to conduct a statewide election between now and the scheduled end of the nomination season. That is in early June, 70-odd days from today and about half a year after Florida knew it needed a Plan B if it didn't want its Democratic delegation to be shut out of the national convention.

Florida Democrats lamely blame their Republican governor and GOP-controlled state Legislature for this mess, but to most observers their opposition to the nonsanctioned January date seemed to be posturing more than anything else, and it still doesn't explain why nothing constructive has happened since then. What we've seen is a monumental failure of leadership on the part of state Democratic Chairman Karen Thurman and other party officials. For those who don't buy the incompetence argument, the alternative view is that the state party officials simply capitulated to the Obama campaign, which didn't want a revote lest it give Hillary Rodham Clinton a chance to close the delegate gap. Either way, Florida's Democratic voters deserve better than what they've gotten.

Florida could have opted for an ordinary primary, a caucus, a "firehouse" primary, or even a vote-by-mail primary. Instead, the Sunshine State decided to punt. Barack Obama, who lost both Florida and Michigan, has chimed in to suggest that he and Clinton just split the states' delegates down the middle, an idea that raises the question of why we bother to hold elections at all.

It is truly astonishing that a state and one of its major parties have opted to declare the political equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, claiming they are incapable of fulfilling their electoral and democratic obligations. And the rest of us got so worked up over the infamous "butterfly ballot." Harrumph!