Sow, Reap

Florida election mayhem for 2008
How the home of hanging chads, Katherine Harris and butterfly ballots is shaking up the Democratic primary

Last summer, the Democratic National Committee, in the name of regional, racial and ethnic diversity, anointed four small states for special treatment in picking a nominee by barring all other states from holding caucuses or primaries in January 2008. According to the DNC calendar, the presidential race would begin with the Iowa caucuses as it has for three decades (Jan. 14), continue with the newly upgraded Nevada caucuses (Jan. 19), the traditional New Hampshire primary (Jan. 22), and then go to the South Carolina primary (Jan. 29), which had been moved up in 2004 to add a state with a heavy African-American vote to the mix.

The new schedule had major flaws --- an earlier than ever starting date and the unnecessary insertion of Nevada (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's home state) ahead of New Hampshire, a state that zealously guards its first-in-the-nation primary. But it did give the presidential candidates a chance to prove their mettle in four diverse and affordable states before being confronted with Super Dooper Party Pooper Tuesday on Feb. 5, when nearly half the voters in the nation (including those in California, New York and Illinois) are slated to cast primary ballots.

....But everything changed when Florida moved its primary as part of an overall electoral reform bill, which won unanimous Democratic support in the legislature because it also eliminated touch-screen voting. A binding Jan. 29 Florida primary is an explicit violation of DNC rules and should automatically trigger sanctions that would take away half the state's convention delegates and penalize candidates for campaigning there. That is the theory anyway -- and the DNC, from chairman Howard Dean on down, will continue to publicly cling to this position until the party's Rules Committee takes up the Florida mess at its late August meeting.

The practical problem is that no political party in its right mind wants to penalize Florida, one of the must-win states for both parties in the 2008 election. Imagine TV cameras at a Democratic Convention panning the empty seats in the Florida delegation. If a Republican-dominated state like Utah or even Texas violated the DNC rules, it is a safe bet that they would be enforced to the hilt. But Florida is different, and it is the state that proves that, as a Democratic Party insider put it, "the emperor has no clothes."

But the circus is always fun to watch.

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Dun duh duh...