From Dana Milbank’s coverage of yesterday’s food fight and disenfranchisement festival:
The chaos and vitriol seemed to confirm Democrats’ fears that they might blow an election that should otherwise be an easy victory for them. Nor did the compromise fit well with the Democrats’ oft-voiced commitment to voting rights. They decided they would give Florida and Michigan half of their voting rights — one of the more arbitrary compromises since the 1787 decision that a slave should count as three-fifths of a person — and voted to award Obama 59 Michigan delegates, each with half a vote, even though his name wasn’t even on the ballot in the state.
Gold-colored ropes (along with some hired DNC muscle) kept the public and the press at a distance from the committee members. “We are strong enough to struggle and disagree and to even be angry and disappointed and still come together at the end of the day and be united,” Dean told his troops. But not this day.
Jon Ausman, representing Florida, likened the disenfranchisement of Florida to the election of 1876, in which “the Republicans stole three electoral votes from Florida and made Rutherford [B. Hayes] president instead of Tilden.” . . .
Only Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan had an irrefutable point. “We’ve got a totally irrational system of nominating our president,” he said.
