Dear Dr. Dean: Amputate, but don't deny or further delay the surgery on FL & MI delegations

Memorandum

To:	Howard B. Dean III, M.D. Chairman, Democratic National Committee
From:	William J. Dyer a/k/a "Beldar" Conservative Republican lawyer-blogger
Re:	Florida & Michigan delegations, 2008 Denver Democratic National Convention

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Doctors like getting advice from lawyers on non-legal matters about as much as doctors like being sued by lawyers on medico-legal matters. Add in that I'm a conservative Republican who holds you in laughably low regard and who's consistently mocked you since 2003, and this memo is almost certain to go straight to the bottom of your circular file.

But even a blind pig can occasionally find an acorn; even a Republican can occasionally see something about the Democratic Party that's obscure to a Democrat; and even a lawyer can occasionally persuade a doctor that his stubborn pride is about to result in an incredible injustice. (Okay, I made that last part up; it's actually never happened in the history of the world, at least in this particular quantum universe. But there's always a first time. Well, not always. But maybe.)

Although you've been reasonably successful in concealing it, you probably have a favorite between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. That would only be human, but it ought not matter for purposes of the discussion in this memo. Indeed, as one of your political opponents, I used to be convinced that the best thing for the GOP would be for the Dems to nominate Hillary. But I'm now persuaded that my party ought to be able to beat either of them. Or put another way, either Obama or Clinton would make an incredibly attractive target for my scorn and ridicule leading up to the 2008 election. Either as a voter or a blogger, I'm now mostly indifferent on the subject of who your party nominates.

*******

I'm about to assert a proposition that you may find hard to believe, suffering as you do from chronic Bush Derangement Syndrome and the sclerotic cerebral arteries that are too often characteristic of your original highly opinionated profession (and altogether too common in my own):

Completely apart from their own political preferences, Republicans — as Americans — might actually give a damn about whether your party disenfranchises 1.75 million Democratic primary voters from Florida and 600k Democratic primary voters from Michigan. In fact, many of us do. And as much as we might enjoy the continuing SNAFU within your party over your ham-handed, inflexible, and uninspired leadership on this issue, we actually share in your own party primary voters' interests that their votes count for something instead of for nothing.

Put bluntly: If you beat us next November, it would be better for the country, including us Republicans, that you have done so fair and square, against the nominee who is genuinely the preference of your party. And if we beat you next November, it's likewise better for the country, including us Republicans, that we have done so fair and square, against the nominee who is genuinely the preference of your party. Donkey or elephant, our new president will need all the political credibility he or she can muster in order to  succeed or fail on his/her own.

*******

Despite your own weird leftist leanings, I believe you actually have a strong moralistic core (albeit with a version of "morality" that varies considerably from my own). Before you became a politician, you often made recommendations to your patients and their families that they found unpleasant; occasionally, in emergencies, you were obliged to act even without their fully informed consent simply to save your patients' lives for long enough for them to climb the learning- and decision-making curves. On those occasions, you acted as a sort of trustee, certainly a fiduciary, of your patients' own interests.

And so too, now, due to your power and position as Chairman of the DNC, you're called upon to make recommendations and, if necessary to avoid calamity, even to act precipitously.

Here are the simple facts of this political emergency, which is as compelling and urgent as any medical emergency you ever faced in your training and career as a physician:

• If you capitulate totally to the Obama campaign, stick to your guns against Billary, and refuse to honor the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries in any manner, you run a serious risk of killing your patient.

• If you capitulate totally to the Clinton campaign, retroactively rescind all of the penalties threatened, and seat all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan as if those primaries were wholly legitimate, you run a serious risk of killing your patient.

• But: If you compromise — if you recognize that a lingering infection of illegitimacy must be excised decisively through amputation — your patient may yet live, and recover to the point that some time in 2009, regardless of how the November 2008 election came out, no one will be arguing with a straight face that your decision back in April 2008 was outcome-determinative.

Amputate now, rather than deny or even further delay the necessary surgery. Amputate now, so that your party's worst-afflicted limbs may have a little time to heal, and that the remaining primaries will remain meaningful (and indeed, possibly outcome determinative). Amputate now, lest your remaining choices, after more delay, all turn entirely unacceptable.

Indulge in the practical reality that for almost all of the Michigan voters, "uncommitted" or "Richardson" or "Biden" meant "anyone but Hillary." There's only one such candidate left, so give precisely one-half of the delegates generated by those votes to Obama (who wasn't on the ballot). Give Clinton exactly one-half of the delegates that would have been generated by the votes cast for her.

Do the same for Florida: Hillary gets half of her delegates, and Obama gets half of the delegates who'd have gone to him and the other candidates.

Meantime, irrespective of the delegate count, declare in your most solemn voice that every vote has been counted, and every vote counts — and that for purposes ever after of reporting and recording the popular vote from the Michigan and Florida Democratic primaries, every vote cast in them shall be deemed to count in full.

Therein lies the master component of the compromise, sir: For this declaration will enable Hillary to argue to the super-delegates, for what it's worth (and with obvious factual backup), that to the extent they consider popular vote totals in making their own decisions, they ought to consider every popular vote, including those from Michigan and Florida, which after all are large swing states likely to actually be in play in November 2008.

Net effects:

• The controversy will be over. Your party will have re-enfranchised its voters — entirely for purposes of the nonbinding popular vote, and fully half-way, exactly as the GOP did, for purposes of the resulting delegates — from Florida and Michigan. You don't have to admit that the GOP was smarter than you in the way it handled this from the outset, but you can still use the "parity with our opponents" argument to buttress your decision.

• Clinton won't be hurt as badly, and Obama won't be helped as much, in the pledged delegate count as if neither state's delegations were counted at all. But the net change won't be outcome determinative. Nor will it even change the current front-runner: Obama will still be ahead (for now) in both pledged delegates and popular votes, albeit by a smaller margin than if no delegates or popular votes from those two states were counted.

• Finally, besides giving the Clintonistas another talking point with the super-delegates, you clarify what Clinton must do, and what Obama must prevent her from doing, in the remaining primaries — in a fair way, and in time for it to matter.

Regarding that last crucial point: If — with the benefit of the undiluted popular vote counts from Florida and Michigan — Clinton can go on to gain a slight majority in the total popular votes after adding in the next (and final) 10 primaries, then her argument to persuade super-delegates to recognize her (arguably better) general election prospects becomes as clear-cut as it possibly can be.

If, by contrast, Obama hangs on to even a razor-thin popular vote majority (or even denies one to Clinton), as well as keeping his lead in pledged delegates, then Clinton's pitch to the super-delegates will almost certainly fail.

Given current polls and the cold, hard mathematics, Clinton has an uphill, but far from impossible, task in catching up on popular votes even with Florida and Michgan counting fully. The result would be far from pre-ordained. Rather, it should re-energize both campaigns, and the voters in all 10 remaining primary states!

And immediately, you're a hero. You've sliced through the Gordian knot. You've eliminated dispute over the past, and you've returned all the focus to the future — i.e., the remaining 10 primaries and, perhaps, the convention.

You won't have solved the potential problem of the super-delegates producing a different result than the pledged delegates alone would have produced. But that's a bigger, separate, and still hypothetical problem that you should be glad to kick down the road a few more months.

*******

After the election, regardless of its outcome, address the awful problem of the too-long primary race, too many debates that include too many pygmy candidates, and primary-date gun-jumping states by agreeing with your GOP counterpart to appoint a bipartisan commission (chaired by, say, Sam Nunn and Hailey Barbour) to propose new federal legislation that would be parallel and binding on all states. But for now:

Amputate. The gangrene is climbing up toward your party's vitals from two limbs whose effective use, even through a prosthetic, will be badly needed in the general election. Those limbs will need time to heal, and you can't risk waiting any longer.

Just find someone at The New Republic or Brookings to make this same proposal tomorrow, so that you don't have to credit me for the solution and you can save face. Don't worry: I won't sue.