Dangerous Ideas

Do John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden prefer white voters? Maybe that’s an unfair question, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I read that John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden pulled out of the Michigan primary because Michigan dared to move their primary into January. The Democratic Party has followed this up by deciding that Michigan voters shouldn’t matter:

Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.

In spite of the vote, some party leaders and officials said they believed the delegates would eventually be seated at the convention.

Michigan, with 156 delegates, has scheduled a Jan. 15 primary. Democratic Party rules prohibit states other than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina from holding nominating contests before Feb. 5. Florida was hit with a similar penalty in August for scheduling a Jan. 29 primary.

The bit about Michigan maybe getting their votes back later sounds good except that Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Biden aren’t even on the ballot, so Michigan voters will have fewer checkboxes than voters in most other states. Something similar has happened to Florida for pushing up their primary, too.

Why is it so important to preserve the historical role of Iowa and New Hampshire as the first in the nation caucus and primary respectively? According to Wikipedia, Iowa only about 4 percent of the population includes people of color, and New Hampshire is even more unbalanced at only about 3 percent people of color. This compares with Michigan where about 17 percent of the population are people of color and Florida at about 19 percent. True, the Democrats have allowed Nevada (same neighborhood of POC as MI and FL) and South Carolina (which has even more POC at about 31 percent) to move their primaries forward. But, of course, following IA and NH.

I can understand the Dems wanting to try to keep states in line, but is disenfranchising voters really the right way to do it? Especially since both MI and FL have much more diverse populations than the favored states of NH and IA?

I’m mad not just because the candidates have pulled out, but because they aren’t fighting for the voting rights of Michiganders and Floridians and pointing out the obvious racism inherent in the system. And people wonder why people are drawn to 3rd parties. Argh!

Maybe a national primary would introduce issues of its own, but the current system just sucks. If we had to have some smaller states go first to give them more attention, why shouldn’t we put states like South Carolina, New Mexico, and Hawaii first in line? Hawaii’s population is about 59 percent POC and, heck, it was a sovereign nation not that long ago!