The 2008 Michigan Primary

I voted in the Michigan primary today, the one where the Democratic National Committee chose to strip the party here of all their delegates as punishment for having the temerity of moving the primary up to when it might actually be considered relevant. I can't remember when it used to be, it's been 4 years after all (DH thought it might not have been till after the actual conventions, but what would be the point in that?) but it used to be a lot later than "Super Tuesday" and therefore mostly irrelevant.

The democratic candidates were also "threatened" with some sort of reprisal if they kept their names on the ballot so Obama and Edwards took theirs' off which left Clinton running unopposed except against the little guys. I guess she wanted the "win" however it looked? Of course, other people might feel that it was good that she stood up to the big, bad DNC and stayed in. Uh uh. It's really hard to run against "Uncommitted". I sure haven't heard of any reprisal against her either, although she didn't get any delegates, just a "mandate". Politicians love mandates.

So the only primary really worth watching today was the republican one. The Republican National Committee also took umbrage at this afront to the "way things have been" and while none of the candidates dropped out, the RNC still took half their delegates away. What this means for the actual convention I can't really explain but I am sure some pundit will tell us at some point. However, as both committees seem determined to make Michigan a non-entity in this race I don't see myself spending much time looking it up.

But at least I voted. Which is more than I can say for a hell of a lot of registered voters in this state. I heard (via numerous pundits on tv) that many of them were democrats who didn't bother since the DNC essentially had made Michigan irrelevant again. So I suppose they thought if Michigan doesn't matter to the DNC, why should voting matter to them? If they had come out, I wonder if Uncommitted might have had a better chance? We'll never know.

Ah, and last time I checked, the pundits declared Romney the winner.