It was 135 years ago today that Susan B. Anthony was found guilty of knowingly voting illegally in spite of the fact that she had been advised by Judge Seldon that the Fourteenth Amendment appeared to give all citizen’s the right to vote. This was also the position of the Radical Republicans. The Democratic Party was adamantly against the enfranchisement of African-Americans and women.
(See http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sbaaccount.html for more details of her trial.)
In honor of this anniversary I request that the Democratic Party review its use of disenfranchisement as punishment. While I strongly disagree with the position of some state laws that make it illegal for felons to vote, I can see the “logic” of holding individuals responsible for their own actions. However to disenfranchise half of the Democratic voters in Florida seems both hypocritical and ironic. I can’t help imagining Jeb Bush saying enviously, “I did everything I could to disenfranchise just 10% of Florida’s Democratic voters and now the Democratic Party has beaten my achievement by 5 times that amount.”
Naturally once the selection of the Democratic Party’s nominee got down to deciding the fate of the Michigan and Florida primaries it was a done deal. The DNC had to throw it to the candidate that followed their rules. All of the candidates who ceded to the Party’s demands to remove their name from the Michigan ballot contributed to the disenfranchisement of that state’s voters which of course included their own supporters. And therefore none of those candidates will make a suitable nominee for a Party who plans to campaign on a pro-voting rights platform.
As I have said many times before, if the presidential election is close I sincerely doubt that Obama has the political will or credibility to demand recounts or other measures to insure accurate results. Instead, like John Kerry and Al Gore before him, he will concede rather than look like a “sore loser”. Unlike Kerry and Gore his concession speech will be awesome, uplifting and reassuring. For those of us who actually believe that McCain would be an awful president, an amazing speech is not an adequate trade-off.