Today has started out like every other day over the last week.  I turned the radio on then the television to take a quick look at the morning news and everyone who can hold a pencil or type with the one finger method was writing or pounding out numbers trying to determine who has the most delegates to have a chance to compete against John McCain for president.  I am not sure if this is a tragedy in the making or just entertaining.  The experts are looking at every possible outcome that can result from this exercise.

The conflict in the Democratic Party has been good for television and radio but what about our country and our people.  There is no doubt in my mind that some individuals and groups would like this trouble to become a racial issue or at least an issue about gender.  The problem started when the leaders of the Democratic Party decided that the Florida and Michigan delegates would not participate in choosing their parties nominee at the convention.  No one will ever have all the details and information that went into the decision that led to the people of Michigan and Florida having their votes cancelled.  The people have to wonder how a decision of this magnitude would be determined.

I could be wrong but it appears that several dozen Democratic leaders from Michigan and Florida made the decision to move their state primaries ahead on the calendar.  The states changed their primary dates in order to become more relevant in the total process for choosing a presidential Nominee for the Democratic Party.  Who really made this decision?  It appears the wrong people are paying for these mistakes unless the actual voters of Michigan and Florida communicated their support to the leaders of the Democratic Party that they wanted the primary dates changed. Were the people of these two states aware they would lose their rights to choose the presidential nominee?  One has to consider why the National Committee failed to punish those leaders that actually made the mistake for changing the primary dates.  It would have been reasonable for the National Committee to penalize the State Committees by holding back funding, suspending the state leaders without pay or at least take back their keys to the executive washroom?  I have a hard time understanding why the National Committee could not find other ways to penalize these two states. I doubt or at least I find it hard to believe that the people of Michigan or Florida understood that there would be a severe penalty for changing the primary dates. The real question we all should being asking is, does the crime fit the punishment?  The situation makes no sense. What harm does it do to change the primary dates? State leadership intended to do something positive for the people of Florida and Michigan. The Florida and Michigan leadership was trying to make the primary process meaningful for its people.  

I am not a conspiracy theorist with the exception of the John Kennedy assassination.  Why was it so important for these two major primaries to take place on a certain day of a certain month?  One has to consider why it was such an offense to change the primaries to some other time.  Important questions need to be discussed such as did changing these two primaries cause a conflict with the United Nation’s new cocktail party season.  One only has to think back to the Al Gore and George Bush fiasco where hand-to-hand combat and ultimately the Supreme Court decided the president of the United States.  I can clearly remember the mean spirited polarizing efforts of the democrats. They demanded the votes be counted until the candidate or let us say the right candidate won.  The democrats were not talking about the rightful winner but the right winner and that would have been Al Gore.  I certainly wanted a fair election.  Volunteers whose political affiliation was known by all became the focal point to maintain the appearance of a fair election. These volunteers stared for countless hours at chads. The subjective process of identifying a ‘‘hanging chad’’ had begun.  This process would repeat itself until the desired effect was found. This whole process was nothing short of crazy making.  The democrats were so obsessed with making sure every living person including my brother’s three dogs Rex, Ears and Barker had the privilege of voting in the 2000 election.  It was incredible given the amount of energy and political daring the Democrats invested in the FloridaState election.  When one examines the effort in 2000 to count every vote with the effort to eliminate every vote in 2008 one would have to think conspiracy.  Our country is now playing for much higher stakes.  We are at war. We are facing countries like North Korea and Iran who wants to harm us. We are facing an energy crisis as well as an economic crisis. Our national borders are almost nonexistent. We are unable to protect our ports of entry. I would think the Democrats and Republicans would want the inclusion of all of our people.  I have a very difficult time believing that the Democratic National Committee would disenfranchise millions of voters from having the opportunity to choose the next president of the United States but that is what is happing.  The country is broken up into blue and red states.  The Senate and Congress have split almost down the middle and look at all those two bodies of law makers have accomplished over the last year.  Yes, I am joking. When it comes to choosing a candidate, the Democrats are spilt down the center. We are divided as a people in more ways than we can count.  As mention earlier race is being interjected into the political process like never before.  The Obama people have called Geraldine Ferraro a racist because of statements she made about their popular presidential nominee.  This nominee collected 90 percent of the black vote from the state of Mississippi.  Yes, we are talking about Mondale's vice presidential running mate. Ferraro has always been a friend of minorities and the disabled community. Point is, we as a people are clearly divided.  We no longer seem divided by clubs, parties, teams, politics, gender, disability or culture. We seem divided by camps. The stakes are high. Are they so high that we cannot compete with each other in ways that are sensible, serious and honest? 

When I look at the Democratic leadership, I really have to wonder given the manner in which they have changed the rules.  I wonder about words like manipulation, conspiracy and control. The old book ‘‘Animal Farm’’ describes a group of farm animals who rebel against a cruel mean farmer and create a new life style or government.  The animals formed their own government giving all animals equality.  The animals wrote their laws on the barn wall.  The pigs began to pull away and take advantage of the other animals.  The pigs began living like the mean old farmer.  The pigs moved into the farmhouse breaking a key animal law.  When all the other animals ran to look at the laws on the barn wall they saw that the law-disallowing animals to live in the farmhouse was changed to read no animals can live in the farmhouse with the exception of pigs.  The words with the exception of pigs was dripping and still drying with red paint.  I hope there are no groups out there that are going to be upset with me because they think I am comparing pigs to some leaders.  I would never do that to those gentle creatures.