Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Here's an idea on Michigan and Florida

Reading this, I was struck by the following phrase:
...Speaker Willie Brown's remarks about the Florida and Michigan delegations: let them be seated, but not give them votes for president.
I don't think this is wise in and of itself, but there's a kernel of truth to it. It seems like what Florida and Michigan want more than anything else is to have some influence in the process. Of course, they forfeited that influence during a stupid move to try to gain more influence early on in the process, but they keep insisting that they just want to have some measure of influence, so here's my idea: seat the full Florida and Michigan delegations, but since they were elected in sham elections their votes during the first ballot of the convention do not count. On any subsequent ballots they get full participation. This makes sense to me--they would have their delegations seated and could claim to still have an impact if the process moves beyond a first ballot, but they aren't being treated as though normal, fair elections were held in their states. That's the best compromise I can think of right now.
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The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.