Politics, III

My upper arm is killing me, and the bruise from the door Monday is coming in nicely. Added to that is a light rain and the fact that I'll probably be pulling another 11+ hour day in the office, so no riding. Not riding (2 days, will be three because of meetings tomorrow) makes me cranky, and being cranky and reading bad political coverage makes me rant.

I would expect that writers, even blog writers, from the Wall Street Journal, would take care to make sure they are accurate with the way they use their words. Then again, this post from the "Washington Wire" blog (March 18, 2008) seems to indicate otherwise. The post is about the possible future of the MI and FL revotes, with the main coverage being to claims from Harold Ikes that the Obama team is dragging their heels over MI and that FL would be able to run the revote if they really tried. At the end of the third paragraph it says: "Clinton won both primaries but the states were stripped of their convention votes after holding primaries earlier than the party allowed."

That statement is just wrong. The states were told, before they voted, that they would not have representation at the convention if they stuck to the early primary dates. Because of this all of the major Democratic candidates except Clinton took their names off of the MI ballot, and all candidates agreed to not campaign in FL. Clinton took 55% of the vote in a state (MI) where the other major contestant was "none of the above".

To say the states were stripped after the primary makes it sound like it was a surprise attack by the DNC. Now I have no dog in the fight and I think the DNC must do something to include the voters of MI and FL or risk losing support in the fall. My issue here is with writing that, either intentionally or not, will mislead readers who weren't paying attention months ago when the decision to strip the delegates first occurred. Sloppy reporting can never be tolerated.