The worst possible news for Barack Obama's stirring and improbable reach for the White House broke this week, and it had nothing to do with an incendiary preacher on the South Side of Chicago. Rather, the brewing disaster for the Senator's presidential hopes comes from his own tacticians - the very strategists who are urging him to run out the clock, take a knee at midfield, and snub voters in two of the nation's largest swing states.
It's hard to even write these words: the Democratic Party is actually on the verge of blocking the participation in this historic campaign of millions of voters in Florida and Michigan. Read that back slowly, would you? Under the leadership of Chairman Dean and with the complicity of Obama's top advisors, the Democratic Party is close to adopting a 48-state strategy that will undoubtedly depress turnout for Senator Obama or Senator Clinton (or both!) in the fall.
In the words of Casey Stengel: "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Some Obama supporters will predictably talk about rules and punishment like Republicans defending the Rockefeller drug laws, but it just doesn't wash. To win against John McCain in the fall takes a savvy electoral vote strategy, and we cannot afford to write off Florida or Michigan for even a second.
Further, if Obama does succeed in running out the clock - as his campaign is now clearly intent on doing - he guarantees that a certain portion of Democratic primary voters will never view his nomination as legitimate. He's giving ardent Clinton supporters an easy structural excuse to stay home. And he's playing directly into the hands of right-wing critics who will argue he's gotten a free pass on the back of fancy rhetoric, the moist media lovefest, and the clever exploitation of the Democrats' proportional delegate system. Craig Crawford has it right:
How amazing that Democrats have a frontrunner who is seemingly afraid to allow re-votes in Michigan and Florida. Or at least that is how Barack Obama is allowing it to appear.
Obama is all that stands in the way of letting voters try again in those battleground states. That’s probably a winning strategy for the party nomination. But the general election is another story.
And Jeralyn over at TalkLeft notes the rising anger over Obama's strange decision:
Barack Obama could care less about disenfranchising voters. That's his goal for Michigan and Florida and more than 2 million of the states' voters. Now, that's politics. And hardly the politics of hope or change.
So don't cheer the dough-headed decisions in Michigan and Florida, if you're an Obama backer. Obama needs those votes every bit as much as Clinton does, in my view. With proportional delegate apportionment, he'd get delegates in those states anyway - and just might get to 50 percent plus one for a true and valid nomination clincher. This way, he has to rely on superdelegates - and he leaves himself open to second-guessing as his poll numbers inevitably slip.
Right now, Team Obama seems very much like the underdog just "happy to be here" on Super Bowl Sunday - and it's a very bad turn for this race. By listening to consultants on Florida and Michigan, Barack Obama has made what is easily his worst tactical decision in an otherwise able campaign.
UPDATE: Chris Bowers, an Obama supporter, breaks it down - and argues that Michigan needs to vote. His take: Obama wants a floor fight in August in Denver.
