By Kevin Zwick
Staff Writer
The Democratic Florida Primary was held on January 29th 2008, despite the Democratic National Committee’s sanctions against the primary, which suspended the Florida delegates from participating in the Democratic nomination race. Hillary Clinton won the primary, and is now going to make an appeal to the Democratic National Committee to allow the suspended delegates.
Since Florida went against Democratic National Committee primary regulations and moved their primary before the February 5th, “Super Tuesday,” DNC chairman Howard Dean penalized the state by discounting its delegates. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards had agreed early in the campaign season not to campaign for the Florida primary in compliance with the DNC regulations.
Now, Clinton is trying to rewrite the rules by fighting to validate the 210 “phantom delegates.” The Obama camp is claiming that Clinton is trying to make the delegates legitimate in order to make up for her South Carolina loss. On MSNBC, Clinton said that all of the states are important, regardless of the DNC regulations. Clinton had 50% of the votes and Obama had 33%, but that does not mean Clinton had a blowout victory. The Democratic primaries are not winner-take-all primaries like the Republican primaries; Democratic primaries are based on votes and the delegates are split between candidates depending on the number of votes they received.
In the long run, the talk about how Florida doesn’t matter will hurt the Democratic Party in the General Election. If the Democratic voters of Florida feel that they are not worthy, they will not vote or they might vote for the Republicans, especially if McCain is the Republican Presidential candidate, with his ability to draw over Moderate Democrats and Independents.