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Whose Nominee Is It, Anyway?Why Florida and Michigan don't mind being disenfranchised.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 6:59 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

On its "Make It Count, Florida" Web site, the Florida Democratic Party acknowledges the irrelevance of actual convention delegates to the nominating process by stating,

Don't let anybody call this vote a "beauty contest" or a "straw poll." On January 29, 2008, there will be a fair and open election in Florida, which will provide for maximum voter participation. The nation will be paying attention, and Florida Democrats will have a major impact in determining who the next President of the United States of America will be.

In other words … they're all beauty contests now! They're all straw polls! And we'll be having ours while it still matters!

There remains one interesting variable. The top three Democratic candidates have pledged not to campaign in Florida or Michigan, and in Michigan Barack Obama and John Edwards have yanked their names off the ballot. (Hillary Clinton has not.) Consequently, political reporters will probably downplay the significance of these contests relative to the other primaries. Florida and Michigan are counting on this snub mattering less than the general impression these states' results create in reporters' minds when combined with the prevailing electoral trend. It's all about contributing to the gestalt! (On the Republican side, all the candidates will campaign in the semidisenfranchised states.)

It is widely assumed that whoever the putative Democratic and Republican nominees turn out to be, they will re-seat the prodigal delegates at the conventions after those delegates have already been neutered with respect to the main business at hand, i.e., choosing the nominee. Attending the conventions turns out to be the only thing delegates care about. They may not mind their disenfranchisement, but they would resent missing the excitement of the parties and the balloon drop and, most important of all, the sightings of the famous political reporters and TV talking heads who actually get to choose the party nominees based on their collective notion of political momentum. They are the momentucrats who preside over our momentucracy.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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