Is Obama's idea of party unity in FL, purging -without binging?; Miami-Dade Dems

As is so often the case in South Florida the year 2008, in order to get some interesting Florida political news (rumors?) about what's going on, I had to avoid today's Herald and Sun-Sentinel and go Back to the Future.
Or, as in this case, failing to have a flux capacitor of my own, going back to the Hallandale Beach Blog email inbox from Friday.

Friday morning, shortly before Noon, John Kennedy of the Orlando Sentinel's always informative Central Florida Political Pulse wrote, per a warning from Florida superdelegate Jon Ausman about a possible portent of things to come in the Sunshine State, now that Senator Obama is the party's nominee.

In case you've forgotten, Ausman was the first Florida non-politician to speak at last Saturday's DNC Rules & Bylaws kangaroo court of an inquisition.
In my opinion, watching the proceedings on C-SPAN rather than Obama-leaning MSNBC, Ausman spoke FAR TOO MUCH about the princely entitlements of the superdelegates, and how the rules of the party's charter prevent anyone -well, not then currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue- from preventing that crew of self-serving super heroes from having a vote on the convention floor, even if their own state is shut-out from participating.

Well, that is unless an individual superdelegate has been convicted of something serious like, you know, sedition or assassination or something other-worldly. (Then he only has a half-vote.)
It seemed a wee bit too precious and self-indulgent for a guy who should've taken the offensive by talking from the p.o.v. of the Florida vox populi that turned out in record numbers just five months ago.
Remember them and their intentions?

On the other hand, unlike most Florida Dem party leaders and pols, like House Minority Leader Dan Gelber and Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller, Ausman was publicly encouraging a public discussion among Florida Democrats of what the logical consequences would be of moving the FL Primary, so that there'd be no room for excuses or recriminations in the future.
You know, our reality the past few months?

Here's the true proof of that: personal attacks against Ausman by the get-along gang across the state that brooks no disagreement, in a September 14th post in The Buzz, the excellent politics blog of the St. Pete Times: http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2007/09/ausman-stikes-b.html

A different approach was that of FlaPolitics http://www.flapolitics.com/ supporting Ausman's call for double-dipping: from August 31, 2007
http://www.flapolitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2066
"What’s important here is the concept of the possibility of Florida getting a double dip at selecting the next Democratic nominee. I don’t know about you, but I like it."

If Ausman's current allegation is true, it's about what I expected from Team Obama, frankly, which just makes it the latest in a series of reasons why I couldn't possibly vote for him when I had the chance to in January.
And why, five months hence, I won't vote for him in the general election, despite my particular disagreements with Senator McCain on aspects of his public policy.
No Kool-Aid for me, thanks, I'm a Coke Classic guy.

Future posts here as well as over at South Beach Hoosier will not only discuss McCain and Obama's relative merits on policy issues, but observations from my own extensive political campaign background -which I've hinted at here and there in the past, but otherwise kept under wraps-and how political lessons learned then, might just apply here as well.

I suspect that many of you who read this post fairly regularly will be quite surprised in the future by my observations on local Dade County Democratic Party politics and local media circa 1976 and 1984.

Ruminations and observations on prominent Dems like Dade Dem chair Mike Abrams, George DePontis, Seth Gordon, Alfredo Duran, State Senator Jack Gordon -the anti-Geller from my own p.o.v.- as well as the old Dade County Democratic Party HQ at the McAllister Hotel (built in 1913) in downtown Miami on Biscayne Boulevard, between N.E. 1st Street and N.E. 2nd Street.

For photos of the once grand hotel, including back before Bayfront Park existed, see http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/image/77141162 and http://scholar.library.miami.edu/miamidigital/search/allGalleryPages.php?IDtitle=1171&objNo=000028&seqNo=0001&IDmainrecord=338

Before we made the move in 1976 from The McAllister to the Dade County Carter-Mondale campaign HQ in my hometown of North Miami Beach, on NE 167th Street and NE 6th Avenue, behind the inviting smells of the Krispy Kreme, for a number of months, due to a serious lack of storage space, most of the party's files, docs, and ephemera were stored in my bedroom closet for safekeeping.

This included the party's institutional memory, including lots of archival letters and photos from Dem VIPs from the deep and recent past, including George McGovern letters to longtime friend and fellow South Dakotan and Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, back when he was the Dade party chair.

When Robbie, the man now known to most South Floridians for being the JR in JRS, ran for governor of South Dakota in 1956, whom do you suppose was his campaign manager but a young and earnest George McGovern!

Trust me, I'll be a lot more honest and self-effacing in those posts and observations at South Beach Hoosier and here, than the semi-rants I occasionally read over at the Miami-Dade Dems site, http://miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com/
I'll admit to feeling a case of envy for the technology they have now, which folks at party HQ back then would've killed for.

On the other hand, I also think that Mike Abram's wonderful British-born sister-in-law, Teresa Abrams -wife of David Abrams and Mom of Ian- our enthusiastic office manager and head honcho at Dem HQ and then campaign office, could have, along with the help of my then-high school self, written circles around the dismal output I see these days at M-DD, since they seem to mistake anger for prose and passion, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'll also endeavor to write a bit about what I witnessed first-hand in early 2000 while living in Arlington of the media's great love affair with McCain.
I'll spotlight a huge McCain "Straight Talk Express" event in Old Town Alexandria, where I also spent quite some time sitting and talking to a very charming woman, who turned out to be John McCain's sister-in-law, the wife of his brother.

Some pundit on TV recently said -I forget whom- that the three greatest love affairs ever were between:
1.) Abelard and Heloise
2.) Romeo and Juliet, and
3.) the American press corps and John McCain in 2000.

The latter's more accurate than you think, especially when nationally known print and TV reporters are bringing their kids with them to cover McCain rallies.
Not their teenage kids, their little kids!
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Florida Democrats Fret About Fate Of Obama Delegates
Think the Florida Democratic primary fight is over?
Think again. There's apparently only been a pause while state party activists look for a new battlefield.
They may have found one Friday.Tallahassee activist Jon Ausman is sending out e-mail warnings that the Barack Obama campaign is considering replacing some or all of the 67 Florida delegates already selected to represent the campaign at the party's national convention in Denver.

To read the rest of the post, go to http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2008/06/florida-democra.html

Be sure to read the comments below it, as Brenna James throws cold water on the notion that the trip and associated costs to Denver for the National Convention are "free" as stated by the Obama Corps of Keystone Kops.


The Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog has this take on Ausman's warning: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/06/activist-warns.html

Also see Democratic Convention Watch at http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/ for convention news and and the Palm Beach Post's Michael C. Bender on the role of $$$ in potential FL unity. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2008/06/07/m1a_obama_0608.html


As for national polls which show Senator Obama defeating Senator McCain, and which many Obama supporters place great stock in, consider this:
"President Johnson could win more than 65 per cent of the votes at his party's National Convention, easily turning back the combined forces of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene J. McCarthy, a survey by The New York Times indicated today..."

The date? March 24, 1968.

Real life always gets in the way of destiny.
Especially political destiny.
Just ask former Virginia Senator George Allen.

He was THE man whom many of the sharpest and most experienced political folks I ever met and trusted in Washington thought would be standing exactly where John McCain is right now.