illusionofjoy | Obama deserves no votes from Michigan

Let's face facts: Barack Obama did not have to take his name off of the Michigan ballot. There was no rule stating that he or any other candidate had to do so in order to comply with the asinine decision of the DNC to punish that state (along with Flordia) for moving their primaries up ahead of schedule. An "uncommitted" vote is just that: uncommitted, and delegates should be seated at the convention as uncommitted. The fact that Barack Obama ran ads in Michigan encouraging people to vote "uncommitted" in lieu of voting for him is a fallacy; it does not mean that uncommitted votes are actually votes for Obama. What it does mean is that Obama once again tried to circumvent the rules and game the system to his advantage: saying that uncommitted on a ballot actually means Barack Obama is effectively the same as telling people in 2004 to vote for Bush if they actually wanted to vote for Kerry - it does not work that way!

Truthteller at No Quarter effectively sums up Obama's fantasy argument for stealing votes in Michigan:

Let us summarize Obama’s position: we must respect imaginary voters who would have or could have cast votes in Michigan and Florida, for if we do not respect these imaginary voters, we run the risk of disenfranchising voters who may or may not exist. It is a specious argument, especially as the Obama campaigns victories were in caucus states. Is not his delegate count predicated on the systematic disenfranchisement of voters who would have participated but could not have participated in caucus? What if those states held primaries? Should we reallocate the ballots with exit polls and with the primary results in Nebraska and Washington state? After all, the delegate count as a result of their caucuses do not reflect the desires of the primary voters in those two states.

Obama’s argument hinges on a series of hypotheticals, none of which can be substantiated with incontrovertible evidence. So now we are in the territory of known knowns (votes actually cast), known unknowns (we know people did not cast votes, but we do not know how many there are or why they chose not to participate), unknown knowns (we know write-in ballots exist in Michigan, but we do not know how the desires of those voters and unknown unknowns (the number of people who do not vote for whatever reason in any election). If the Committee restricts itself to evidence that can be viewed and analyzed, they will side with the Clinton campaign. If the Committee chooses to dwell on hypotheticals and on imaginary scenarios, they will side with Obama. Either we uphold democracy, or we undermine it in the name of Obama’s political fantasies.

Barack Obama: the George W. Bush of the left.