Track and Field Blogs - Marty Rosendahl

Usually I don't watch much tv. I'd typically rather read a book or something. But (from reading newspapers) I've been keeping up on politics. So today I got home from my run just as my wife was getting home - congratulations to her by the way, she just ran her first race, the 5k Race For The Cure in downtown Detroit. She captained a Starbucks team (she's a shift manager at a Starbucks here.) They had 21 people sign up to be a part of the team and even got a donation from Starbucks corporate HQ for it. But that was her first one. She said she'd never race, and the first thing she said when I saw here was "we want to join Team In Training and do the Chicago Marathon." My reply..."This Fall?!?!" Sounds like she's got the race number bug. So congratulations to her and to her Starbucks teammates as I'm sure it was probably the first race for a lot of them too.
Sorry, got off track. So she cleaned up and is currently taking a nap, and I was flipping through a little bit of tv looking to see if the NASCAR Nationwide series race was on because I want to see Joey Lagano's touring series debut. As I was flipping, I saw two things that made me think of something else. First, I saw one of those NBA commercials of two different guys on a split screen saying the same thing about the run through the playoffs to the NBA title. Kept flipping...then saw hearings from the democrat national committee meeting on whether or not to seat Florida and Michigan delegates at the national convention. Living in Michigan, this has been an issue that's been hard not to notice. So putting those two things together, I remembered a Saturday Night Live skit I saw with the actors that spoof Hillary and Obama, and they do the split screen thing and, well, this would be easier to just let you review it for yourself if you haven't already seen it...



Now that's good television. That amused me.

So watching these "proceedings" as the democrats decide whether or not to seat the delegates at the national convention, and if so, how many are apportioned to Hillary and Obama, I was reminded of how slippery those dang lawyers are. Senator Carl Levin (from Michigan) came on and forked-tongued to the committee about how the Democratic Party of Michigan, Obama's representatives, and Hillary's representatives all were agreed that all of the Michigan delegates should be seated at the national convention, and that since all were in agreement, it's the right thing to do. It sounded like a no-brainer. If everybody agreed (and is united) it's the right thing to do, then do it right? I mean, after all the talk about needing unity in the Democratic Party, here's something they've united on, is to seat the Michigan delegates.
But then I thought, so why wouldn't they in the first place? Oh yeah. They proposed to move the primary earlier at the 2004 convention, and were turned down, meaning the majority of democrats DISAGREED with the idea that Michigan should have an earlier primary (this is an oversimplification, but it captures the essence of what happened.) So Michigan decided, we're moving ours anyways. From the national offices, Michigan was told that if the primary were moved up, the delegates wouldn't be seated.

So let's review:

The rules were known ahead of time.
The consequences were known ahead of time.
Michigan did it anyways, and now there's a lawyer making it sound like everybody is united in agreement that all delegates should be seated.

These things aren't adding up to me. It's like watching the 3 year olds manipulate their parents at the grocery store. That goes something like this:

Mommy, I want the candy/cookies/etc. (tears and wailing ensue.)

If you be quiet you can have the candy. If you keep crying I'll give you a spanking.

No, I want the candy (more tears, louder crying.)

Ok, here's the candy. I love you.


I'm sorry, uniting behind something that's wrong doesn't make it right just because there's unity. I'll give you another example. A lynch mob. There's a unified group of people, but it doesn't make what they're doing the right thing.
I think the democratic party has a unique opportunity here to make the process of selecting their canditate drastically better here. I agree that there's room for changes, but I believe it can be done within the rules that are in place (remember that these rules are imposed by the democratic party themselves, not by the government.) You can't know the rules and consequences of breaking them, break them anyways, get punished, and then argue about why you shouldn't be punished because the rules "should have been changed anyways."
I think there's enough support to review the system they have in place and make wholesale changes. But I also think it's going to need grassroots support, otherwise we're going to see the forked-tongued lawyers get in and protect their own positions of power and whitle away the voices of people who want to be involved at a grassroots level.
I'm on the August 5 ballot for the elected position of precinct delegate. Precinct delegates are the people who help pick the candidate the party supports for governor, what the party rules are, etc. etc. It's as grassroots as it gets.
If you complain about politics, you should consider becoming a precinct delegate in your area. It's as simple as going to the county clerk's office and filling out a one page form. It doesn't cost anything, and you don't have to fill out campaign finance paperwork.
I'm running because it makes me sick that it's going to be McCain, Obama or Hillary. Have we really sunk this low?

Marty Rosendahl