The delegate count is beginning to slowly build up for Obama with the magic number clearly in sight for him. Although I don’t particularly care for him I nonetheless am beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. Why? Because I live in Florida and if Obama has enough votes without Florida then Clinton can’t drag this state into a controversial fight for the Democratic nomination.
After the last two elections there were people who absolutely hated my state. Yet to those of us living here it seemed extremely unfair. That whole business of hanging shads and miscounted votes happened in South Florida. Everybody knows that Palm Beach and Miami are partly populated with Yankees; retired New Yorkers, Bostonians and other northerners. It is also a haven for immigrants, legal and otherwise, who may not have a good handle on the English language. But it definitely isn’t representative of the rest of the state.
Nonetheless, Democrats blamed Gore’s loss on Florida, regardless of where in the state you lived. And their anger and bitterness ran so deep that when my state was hit with three consecutive hurricanes in 2004 causing terrible devastation across the state they blamed it on God punishing Floridians for the past elections. Excuse me? You try being huddled in a bathtub for hours on end while not one, not two but three hurricanes come tearing across your front door. There is nothing as unnerving as to suddenly lose power right after your local weatherman announces that the eye of the hurricane was over your hometown. Then as friends and neighbors are cleaning up and making repairs to be told by some scathing Democrats that you deserved it.
They were still angry at us in the 2004 election where Florida was one of the main reasons the Democrats lost, again. If this state is that important to the Democrats you would think they might be a bit nicer to us. But noooooo. After the ’04 loss many of them couldn’t stop saying how stupid we were to vote for Bush again plus to have a Bush as governor, too. I still don’t quite get that strategy. If you want someone on your side you probably shouldn’t call them stupid.
Now here we are in the middle of election season and my state is again in the middle of the debate because Florida leaders moved up the primary date against the party’s rules. The National Republican leaders said they would only count half of the Republican delegates while the Democratic leaders said that they won’t count any of the Democratic Florida’s votes. Even though over 1.5 million Floridians voted for a Democratic candidate they were told that not one of their votes count.
OK, that makes sense. You have a state that has been pivotal in losing the past two elections and you tell them that for this primary their votes don’t even count. I can’t help but think that the National Democratic Committee is still punishing Floridians because of the past two elections. Call it revenge for 2000 and payback for 2004 but I just call it very nearsighted. They will need these votes come November, yet why should the voters turn out for them since the leadership has said they don’t count now in the primaries.
Florida appears to at least have avoided being dragged into an internal party fight for their candidate. Obama Democrats continue to say Florida doesn’t count whereas Hillary’s team wants to count her votes from this state. There were definite signs that the two Democrat groups were going to once again fight over votes from Florida. But as I said up front, luckily it appears that Barack is now in such a commanding lead that even with our votes Hillary still won’t catch up to him. Whew. I feel almost as relieved as I do when a hurricane heading my way turns course at the last minute and goes out to sea. Yet even though we may have missed this one who knows what might churn up come November? I guess we Floridians will just have to hunker down and wait and see what roll we might end up playing this fall. But if we don’t vote for the Democrat’s candidate and they lose for a third time, just call it payback for counting us out in the primary….
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