Readers may remember that on Wednesday, well before Mark Schmitt got the credit (*sigh*, so typical. The guy always gets the credit), The Confluence presented the plan to seat the MI and FL delegates in Look, It’s Very Simple. (There was a followup with A Modest Proposal) The plan was, have both candidates agree to waive the rules and seat the Florida delegates or have the holdout pay for a mail-in primary. For Michigan, the current results would be thrown out, because not all candidate names were on the ballot, and a mail-in primary would be conducted. This was a win-win for both candidates. Hillary gets her delegates, the voters of CA, NY, NJ, OH, TX etc, get their critical mass, Floridians get their votes counted and since Barry will not win Florida anyway, he gets their good will in the unlikely event that he is the nominee. In Michigan, Hillary gets the goodwill of Edwards and Obama supporters by requesting a re-do and Barry has an opportunity to win this state legitimately through a primary, not a caucus.
But it seems that Barry is a little hesitant about this. No doubt, the angel on his left shoulder, Donna Brazile, is urging him to let the RULZ dictate and Howard Dean, who has forgotten his role as the head of the Democratic National Committee, is dithering as well in order to continue his experimentation with the 50 State Strategy. (Um, Howard, that would mean that Obama would have to win at least *some* of those big, Democratic states, like MINE.)
Well, it isn’t looking good for Barry. Passing up his chance to be magnanimous and to unite the voters in November, Barry has decided to go with the self-interest of having the perception of an artificially inflated vote count. James Carville spoke on Clinton’s behalf yesterday and went one further. If Obama insists on a re-do in Florida, thereby becoming the only candidate in primary history to lose the same state twice, Hillary has backers who would offer to foot the bill up to $15M. It’s a little like Sam-I-Am, chasing the hapless seussian around with a plate of Green Eggs and Ham. “Would you eat them on a train, would you eat them on a plane? Would you eat them here or there? Would you eat them anywhere?” So far, Obama is resisting with “Sam, let me be!”
He doesn’t want to be VP. He doesn’t want want to waive the RULZ. He’d rather piss off the voters in Florida. And I’ve heard that there is a new twist to this. Apparently, Gov. Crist in Florida can decertify the Democratic party in Florida if its delegates aren’t seated and the name of our nominee can be left off the ballot in November. (Thanks Boston Boomer for the reference) Obama’s in a tight spot alright. Too bad he isn’t listening to the better angels of his nature and taking the sure thing, even if it results in what could be a temporary loss of frontrunner status. Under these circumstances, it would be stupid for Carville and buddies to not milk the story of Obama, The Great Disenfranchiser, for all it’s worth.
With political acumen like this, he’d be a lousy president.
Filed under: Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: Donna Brazile, Florida, Howard Dean, James Carville, Michigan, primaries |
The Confluence 
“With political acumen like this, he’d be a lousy president.”
Yep.
He claims that he’ll surround himself with a good team if he’s elected President. Let’s hope that if he does become President that he’ll boot this one because they aren’t doing him a heck of a lot of good lately.
Well, Brazille aside, the rest of the country think the Florida and MI votes should count, especially if it puts Hillary at the top of the ticket.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=ebf5f50f-4dfd-4bc4-b001-588c5ec796cc
TS2: I did not see that in the link. How do I find the FL, MI info?
but for the last few days a graphic appears in the middle of your first entry. It says “Power-Samatha Power”
click right for smart menu”
Nothing I do can make it go away. It blocks part of your post, so I cannot read all of it.
Is this just happening to me?
I am obsessed with this voters compilation provided by George Mason U:
http://elections.gmu.edu/Voter_Turnout_2008_Primaries.htm
A couple of things jump out immediately:
1- Caucuses are a putrid farce and should be banned forever. Some gems: NE turnout 1%, KS 1.9%, ID 2.9%, CO 5.5%
2- The delegate apportionment was thought out by somebody who hates Democrats.
Check this: It takes 664 Dem voters in AK to make 1 pledged delegate but it takes close to 12,000 Dem voters in CA to make 1 pledged delegate. So 1 Dem in AK=18 Dems in CA. Brilliant!
Which one of those states is the one we care about and we need badly? And which one is absolutely meaningless and we will lose big in the GE?
This party is ruled by f#*@ing idiots!!!
Why oh why am I doing this to myself?
caseyOR: No, it seems to be happening to others as well (at least me). I believe Rdaughter is working on it.
Upstate: Riverdaughter *has* worked on it and can’t make it go away for some reason. I’m not sure where it’s coming from and there is no menu that I can use to make it go away. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.
rdaughter: no, I cannot help. As my wife puts it, I am a technopeasant.
rdaughter: no, I cannot help you. As my wife puts it, I am a technopeasant.
I’ve tried to take it out using Firebug but once I refresh the page, it pops right back up. Very annoying.
Here’s a reference to the possibility of removing the Democratic candidate from the FLA ballot.
Republican House rules chairman David Rivera said he likes the idea of a mail election if the Democrats pay for it. Meantime, he has asked the House elections committee to research a bill that would ban the Democratic nominee from the Florida ballot in November if the national party refuses to seat the state’s delegates.
http://www.bradenton.com/local/story/453454.html
I’d like to know how Dean and Brazile would defend that to the rest of the party after a loss in November!
Here’s the Marc Schmitt reference, btw.
I think Marc miscalculates a bit. MI is more like OH than WI. Ans Hillary DOES win caucuses that are “more like primaries” (NM).
Note, WY gives added support for the caucus effect (as evident in WA and TX). The SUSA poll gives Hillary a 45 point margin (vs McCain) among D’s; Obama has a 42 point margin, with one more percent undecided — a virtual tie. He cranked about a 20 point margin over Hillary in the caucus, though.
riverdaughter,
I think we have been cursed by that awful “witch monster,” Samantha Power. I don’t care. Your writing is worth overlooking the graphic. In the end, Hillary will win the nomination, and Power will be gritting her teeth and cursing ineffectually.
Riverdaughter,
The annoying graphics appears on the ‘source code’ for you main page. If you bring up the view/source and then search for: “Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts”, you’ll find it.
But can you change the sourcecode, or is it done through wordpress?
ghost2: I tracked down the source of the problem (no pun intended) and made it go away. Refresh the page and ta-da!
Ghost2: BTW, your solution was the first one I tried but it didn’t work. It’s an insideious “feature” of the WordPress editor to pop up the smart menu whenever a proper noun is highlighted for a link. Take out the link or expand the link with the proper noun to several other words and voile! problem gone.
riverdaughter– Thank goodness. At last we are rid of the reminder of that awful women! Good work.
Just in case we missed the memo, Rush Limbaugh recently spelled it all out for us. After observing that “aging makes men look more authoritative, accomplished and distinguished,” he registered his own distaste about the prospect of having to watch Clinton shrivel up in the White House. “Will America want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” he asked.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-bennetts9mar09,0,4082018,print.story
I really don’t know what else to say right now because I’ve been angered for months about the MI and FL delegates. But it’s good to see that Obama is now in the uncomfortable position of having to reject the idea of a re-do in MI and FL unless it is a caucus. I think he’s trying to postpone this for as long as possible at least until PA. A Clinton win in MI and FL before PA would destroy him. He’s going to win MS then he’ll go after Clinton with a series of attacks in the next seven weeks to try and make PA as narrow of a loss as possible. Whatever happens he is now the candidate who is willing to disenfranchise voters to win the delegate count even though most voters believe the candidate with the popular vote should win the nomination. Angalchel explains it very well as she usually does.
Obama should be ashamed of himself. We’ve all caught on that he can only win small caucuses in Republican states. They try to make a Wyoming caucus with fewer than 10,000 people look just as important as a primary in OH and more important than the FL primary where millions of people voted. His campaign is such a sham and thank goodness Clinton didn’t let him get away with it. If she had followed the advice of Jonathan Alter and the other pundits and left the race before TX and OH Obama would’ve gotten away with winning the nomination without even coming close to winning the popular vote.
Riverdaughter:
As a first here on The Confluence, I demand a recall of your link du jour, although I am personally a big fan of the “New Digby”.
Why you ask.
Some bloggers have mentioned James Walcott’s latest post and I just came around to reading it. Yaowza!!! It is a doozy!
With elegance and wit, he takes the poor souls destroyed by the cruelty of vile Hillary to the woodshed. Forget it, he invents the woodshed.
It’s a real smorgasbord of crushed souls; from some Dailykooks’ blogger to some deranged readers of the equally deranged Andrew Sullivan, without skipping Jon Chait.
I really haven’t seen so much beatings since Mel Gibson got hold of Jesus!
It’s a MUST-MUST-READ.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2008/03/look-i-understa.html
I really think Florida should use the nuclear option here concerning the delegates. I may not like it but lets face it Dean, Brazille and the other committee members are absolute idiots for their actions. I don’t know who could blame Florida if they decertify the democratic party. It is their own damned fault. The Florida primary was done in accordance with Florida’s election laws. The law is the law. The democratic party is not above the law. If they wanted to do something they have the opportunity to sink a ton of cash into Florida and get some democrats elected there. Then, they could just change the laws.
As for Obama, I think he knows he doesn’t stand much of a chance to win in November; however, I am beginning to think that his goal wasn’t ever to win the nomination but to prevent Hillary from winning the presidency. That way, in 2012 he’d have a clear path to the white house. Now that the nomination is within his grasp he still knows his chances at beating McCain in the fall are slim so he is angling this to where he can blame Hillary for his losing in the fall. I think he is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. I am also getting the funny feeling that the DNC is motivated to keep Hillary from winning as well. It seems that all of these people have self interests that preclude Hillary from winning. It isn’t all just because they are incompetent.
gregoryp: I think you’re on to something with the DNC being in on it from the start. They’re up to something and have been for some time now. They don’t want Hillary to succeed and are trying their best to scuttle her chances. But more than that, they are giving the party a really bad name. It just looks disorganized and destructive. Howard Dean needs to be reined in ASAP and Donna needs to be told to stuff a sock in it. We are going to lose this if Dean doesn’t drop his obvious advocacy for Obama in the face of what appears to be overwhelming odds against him.
On the other hand, this gives Hillary a chance to look like a leader and a uniter. And the Obamaphiles are going to take their keyboards and go home.
Gregoryp: I think Obama really does believe he can win. I agree that Obama started off as a long shot against Clinton. He probably wanted to make a name for himself so that he could come back in 2012 or 2016 and actually be an experienced candidate who is qualified for president. I don’t think anyone expected Obamamania to get this big among white youths and progressives including Obama himself. I started sensing it in late November though I thought nothing of it back then. A friend of mine who is the stereotypical white male graduate student blogger started proudly wearing his Obama tshirt, went anti-Hillary, and gushed about Obama’s memoirs. Blech. I just didn’t expect this type of worshipping to become so widespread.
But now that it has gotten this far I’m sure all of this cult-like worshipping has gone to Obama’s head. I can just see it. The guy is more arrogant than ever. The presidency is so close he can taste it and he’ll stop at nothing to first win the noimination then win the general. As Anglachel says in her posting, Obama probably thinks that Clinton supporters will just fall in line and vote for him in November. He’s said before that he believes he can win her supporters but she can’t win his. I don’t know if he still believes this but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does.
I also believe that the DNC and many of the Democratic establishment decided to abandon Hillary a long time ago. Dean, Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Donna Brazille….I’ll never look at these people the same way again. I never liked any of these people that much but I just can’t believe that they could hate Hillary so much that they would actually put our party through this in order to ensure Hillary doesn’t get the nomination. Hillary is a fighter. I’ve always known this but I my respect for her has only grown in the last three months. I can’t imagine anyone man or woman having to go through this ordeal and still win. It’s amazing. We should all be lucky to have her as our leader when all of this is over.
DV: I started to sense Obama mania before YearlyKos in August and indeed, when I went to register for a breakout session, Obama’s was the only one with no more room.
But as for Howard, Donna, Kennedy and Kerry, it is like a perfect storm. Each one of them has a reason for wanting to take out Clinton and I doubt that any of them are personal. For Howard it is the ideology of People Powered Politics and the 50 state strategy (not a good year to experiment, Howard). For Donna, I hate to say it but I think it is the AA aspect of it. For Kennedy, a chance to live vicariously through a political neophyte who will need him to move legislation forward. For Kerry, he’s bought the rightwing spin that nothing unites the Republicans like Hillary hate. He’s afraid we can’t afford to take a risk on a woman, especially *this* woman. (Kerry always did strike me as somewhat pedantic.)
Couple that with Jim Dean’s DFA mobilizing for Obama and there you have it. Motive and the organization to carry it out. Forget what the rest of us want.
They are going to pay for bringing this disaster upon us if they don’t pressure Obama to accept a deal.
I have felt for a long time that the DNC was annointing Obama and trying to get rid of Hillary. I started to get angry about it a couple of months ago, and now I’m determined that they aren’t going to get away with it.
I think Hillary is going to win this thing and be a great President. I can’t believe I’m saying that, because at the beginning, I had the same reaction a lot of people did–that we’ve had two dynasties controlling the WH. But now I think it would be really scary if Obama were President and even more scary if McCain is elected. Hillary will do a good job and we need that right now. This country is in bad shape and we can’t allow things to get even worse.
Disenfranchised voter, I also find if very hard to believe yet here we are. Frankly, it seems like the DNC is playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. From everything that I know about the law, admittedly it isn’t much, the DNC is on the wrong side here. And even if everything they’ve done is entirely legal they’ve certainly strained the boundaries of credibility, good will and tradition. Speaking of tradition, when I took an educational law class we discussed instances where tradition could be construed as law. I don’t know how that applies here but I think the voters, the Florida democratic party and the state government certainly has an expectation that their delegates will be seated and that those delegates will have a meaningful voice in selecting the nominee based on tradition and on state law.
As for Dean, Donna and the others my thinking is very similar to Riverdaughters on this whose eloquence can’t be surpassed. I truely believe these folks think they are doing what is right by stopping a Clinton nomination. I can’t for a second believe that these people possess long term strategic thinking skills; however, if they did their actions might seem rational.
By torpedoing Clinton we are left with the charismatic and transformational candidate Obama who might not be ready for prime-time; however, in a truely Reaganesque maneuver he’s able to strongly challenge the defacto nominee all the way into the convention despite long odds against him. If he wins its all good. If he loses its all good. If he wins he has a decent shot at winning in November and if he fails in November he’s a rock star who’ll overwhelm in 2012 and they’ll be able to pin the loss on Hillary’s negative campaigning.
All the while the democratic party will be making gains in both houses. If he loses to McCain then McCain and the republicans will be forced to clean up the mess in Iraq, the economy, health care, etc. At this juncture it seems like an impossible task and taxes will have to be raised. Better to pin it on McCain and the republicans. Being the opposition party also makes them popular with the voters.
Now, if Hillary somehow wins both the nomination and the general election then democrats will have to put their money where their mouths are. They’ll have to enact the progressive agenda and taxes will have to be raised to balance the budget and pay for cleaning up the war effort, oh and they’ll have to pay for fixing our crumbling infrastructure. Hillary would be a strong leader while Obama would not. They’ll have to do Hillary’s bidding while Obama would probably do theirs. People like Kerry and Kennedy would have great power with an Obama presidency while they would probably be marginalized by Hillary.
Michigan and Florida knew the rules They chose to ignore them. Their delegates won’t be seated. End of story.
Dear -30-, you might like to visit another blog. We’re not too keen on absolutist statements, especially when the person on whose behalf they’re made would greatly benefit from striking a deal.
I’m afraid to tell you this, as it is likely to make you angry, but the odds are not in Obama’s favor and you may want to explore the possibility that he will lose.
Until you do that, you may be more comfortable elsewhere.
heh! keep it up, -30-. you’re obviously qualified for a job in the obama campaign- statesmanship division. i almost felt sorry for tom daschle today defending disenfranchising florida, and arguing that caucuses are more democratic than primaries. almost.
campskunk: he DID sound quite lame, didn’t he?
I can only hope that after all is done and said Obama can be gracious loser. I would not like to see our party become divided by some imaginary racial line because that is just what many republicans would love to see and perhaps help to create. It would not take much for this to occur if Obama shows to be a sore loser and for what I have seen and heard so far he is just that. I really have little trust in this guy and still do not understand why a man with such little experience could or rather would want be the elected candidate to run the richest most powerful nation in history? I’m sorry this whole thing just does not feel right, kinda scary really!
Riverdaughter, I’m a registered Independent and haven’t decided yet which party, much less which candidate, I’ll be voting for in November. I just have a thing about rules. And manners. When the hostess invites me to leave, I leave.
Scranton’s mayor said that Hillary’s relationship with the city is the ‘real deal’. Hillary’s sincerity is an uncommon, precious virtue rarely found in politicians.