Cheater
A blunt title for a blunt grab for power. Hillary Clinton is now arguing that the convention should seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida that everyone agreed shouldn’t be seated. Whether that decision was right or wrong, every Democratic candidate in the race agreed not to campaign in those states because of their (too-)early primary dates, and every major candidate but Hillary withdrew their name from the Michigan ballot. Because of her massive edge in name recognition and because no advertising or debates took place in Florida, Hillary has essentially won by default in both states. Having “won” a considerable number of delegates solely because no one else contested the races, all of a sudden she is struck by the manifest unfairness of not seating the delegates — and just in time for a) a bounce in the Florida poll for sticking up for them, and b) Obama to have no chance to contest the Florida race! Hooray!
Anyone really up for four years of this deceit?
"Everyone" didn’t agree to that. The Democratic Party voters in Michigan didn’t agree to be disenfranchised by the national party. Every serious observer I’ve seen predicted that the efforts by the national Dem party to ignore Michigan and Florida primary voters would cause massive problems for them down the road, and this is just the first part of it. As much as I dislike Hillary, I don’t at all fault her for this. Whichever candidate would be helped by counting those delegates would inevitably be doing the same thing.
I agree with Pat and would like to add that I think that the decision fo the DNC was very undemocratic.
Actually it was presumptuous of Michigan and Florida to attempt to alter the traditional pattern of the primary season and I think the DNC’s actions were entirely reasonable.
Hillary’s, however, are anything but. After the race issues and watching Bill’s barnstorming tour the thought of suffering through 4 (or
more years of the Clinton’s backwoods elitism is suddenly sickening.
I still think she’d be a better president than Obama, but is it worth the price? I’m no longer sure.
marc, certainly the state party machinery in Michigan and Florida deserve their share of criticism for trying to tinker with the traditional primary order in the absence of some kind of national solution to that particular problem. But that shouldn’t be taken out on the voters themselves. The RNC’s solution to the problem was to cut the number of delegates from those states in half, rather than to not count them at all. That sends a message but also doesn’t have too much of an influence on the outcome of the election.
Perhaps Dan should have said Hillary and the other candidates agreed to this. At the time when this decision was made, all the polls showed Hillary winning Florida. For Hillary to then wait until it is too late for the other candidates to campaign in an attempt to win votes and then argue to seat the delegates? I agree with the post. It is a massive power play and manifestly unfair.
I also agree that the decision by the DNC was undemocratic..but that is nothing new. It is important to the DNC to control which states votes in what order in the primaries for one main reason: it gives them a huge amount of control over who can win, allowing them to winnow out candidates they don’t want.
If Democratic voters don’t like the way the DNC is run, they should do something about it. Allowing Clinton to get away with this won’t stop it - it’ll only prove that these strong-arm tactics work better than ever in the DNC.
It really is a brilliant move on her part -disenfranchise some voters- wait until it’s too late for the other candidates-screw over the other candidates and get credit for restoring the voter’s delegates. WOW.
If she does get away with this, it is not all bad news though. Not for me, anyway. I’m a Republican. I think Obama has a much better chance than Clinton of winning the general election, and this move could go a long way towards eliminating his chances of ever getting there.
Pat, you say it shouldn’t be taken out on the voters - but here in Florida it was all over the news - if we went forward with this, we would lose our delegates. It was done anyway.
Trust me, I have sympathy for anyone trying to break this system- and if this does it I’ll be glad. I’m tired of having a few liberal states exercise so much disporportionate power.
But none of that means that this is not an extremely nasty trick on Clinton’s part.
Fairness, of course, that’s Hillary’s intention. She only wants what’s fair! Riiiight.
Actually wrong. The DNC made a decision. Whether or not that decision was correct at the time is besides the point now. The campaigns were shaped in accordance to that decision, which is why Obama and Edwards weren’t even on the ballots in those states, since they were acting in accordance to the DNC decision. Allowing the delegates to sit at the convention now is changing the rules so Hillary gets more delegates, nothing more, nothing less.
Arguing that giving Hillary those delegates means that Michigan voters get their thought represented is ludicrous, considering they weren’t given any option BUT Clinton. Even with all that, the uncommitted vote got 40%. This bears repeating, people actually left their homes and went to the voting stations to say they DIDN’T want Hillary, so giving her delegates in a State where she was allowed to run uncontested is more than a little unfair.
And not allowing the delegates continues to disenfranchise important states for the Democrats, giving them no voice in the primary process. It’s a nasty conundrum all the way around, and OF COURSE that controversy was going to be played up by whichever side would benefit from it.
Gasp! It’s hard to believe that they’re playing politics with politics.
As for Michigan, well, Hillary made a decision to leave her name on the ballot, Obama and Edwards made the decision that hewing to the dictates of the national party was more important to them than the voters of Michigan. This is one of the consequences of that decision. They bet one way, and maybe that’ll help them, and maybe it’ll hurt them, but it’s hardly unfair for the person who will benefit from counting those delegates to argue for counting them.
My co-blogger Tully has posted about this for many, many months now. More than a year, actually, going back to August 2006. This is just the entirely predictable (and predicted) circus.
Actually, unless I’m mistaken, the others ARE on the ballot in Florida. I know they weren’t in Michigan but I think they are in FL. I’m not totally sure about that though.
But athat doesn’t help the fact that the DNC (read Clinton machine-we all know the Clintons control the DNC for now, anyway) required pledges from the candidates not to campaign or run ads in FL and they all agreed to it with the knowledge that Clinton had the early lead there. It wouldn’t matter though, since no delegates were to be seated….ha.
I’m not entirely sure what the national party should’ve done about it. The states clearly broke party rules and deserved some sanction, and cutting the delegates in half (as the Republicans did) is entirely irrelevant to the states’ goal of garnering campaign promises and giving the state party officials exposure to the candidates and to the national media. It’s not like Michigan or Florida are really suffering from the RNC’s decision, right? Those campaigns rolled on just the same, and the odds of those lost delegates being the decisive ones are pretty darn long. So let’s get rid of the fantasy in which the Republicans picked a "compromise" solution; they rolled over and admitted defeat. That said, it certainly does seem unfair that the primary voters in Michigan and Florida get no voice in the party’s nomination other than their "endorsement" of a candidate. Maybe not counting their votes on the first ballot, but on any subsequent ballots? Not sure.
All of this is sort of irrelevant, though, because the question here isn’t really the fairness of the DNC’s decision, it’s the timing Hillary Clinton has chosen to make her stand on the fairness issue. She could’ve said something when the decision was made and when everyone else pulled out, but no, she chose to wait until her victory in both Michigan and Florida was assured to make a peep. This is underhanded campaigning designed to increase her standing in battleground states without risking in the least her chances of winning those two primaries. If she objected to the DNC’s decision, the time to object was before the primaries happened. It’s simply too late to raise a principled objection now — that is, if you care about the integrity of the process. I think we know now that Hillary doesn’t.
I think it is an interesting move by Clinton. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Though it pushes against the Democrat Leadership rulings, it has to help her with those voters of the two states feeling disenfranchised. It could also be part of a bigger plan to push out Dean as the party head and replace him with hubby Bill. Who knows what all motivates them but the Clinton’s never do anything with out motive.
I think Tap is right about the timing issue. I don’t know all the details, but at the time the decision was made I think in order to NOT be guilty of gaming the system, a candidate would have had to have objected or appealed it at that time. If all candidates agreed to it at that time, it’s smarmy to decide to appeal it AFTER it’s too late for the other candidates to campaign to try to compete with the frontrunner.
Even with all that, the uncommitted vote got 40%. This bears repeating, people actually left their homes and went to the voting stations to say they DIDN’T want Hillary, so giving her delegates in a State where she was allowed to run uncontested is more than a little unfair.
Amazing what lengths supporters of either side will go to in order to insure their candidate gets the edge. Look at what you are saying. These people. Left their home. Went to the polling place. Took time off. Gave up their own personal time to stand in lines knowing at the time that their vote might not count. Why?
Because this is America in which every vote should count. The 40 percent most likely would fall to Obama. So in the end Hillary might get. What? 20 more candidates in an election that requires 1000’s to win the day?
And because you are so Pro Obama and anti Hillary you would disenfranchise voters for 20 delegates? How sad for a party whose mantra is that EVERY vote should count that we have come to this in the democratic party.
Let me be fair. This is not a general election. This is a primary. Therefore it is run by the DNC. They have rules and they can surely choose to do whatever they like. Yet the party that demands, runs on and champions "every vote should count" now wants to say no "only the votes we approve of should count".
Good or bad. This was a horrible decision by the DNC. Nothing can change that fact except to follow through with the position they have always championed.
ALL VOTES COUNT.
Because you are so Pro-Obama? Okay. Everybody who is pro-Obama raise your hands!
Hillary wouldn’t have a problem with this if Obama had taken Michigan and Florida
ha ha ha ha ha! That was a GOOD one! You’re very funny, Linda.
I find it utterly amusing, strike that, amazing, that we can have a calm discussion about the pros and cons, the interestingness of this topic as if we’re discussing the color of carpet for the living room. What in the world are we teaching our children if we think this topic has so many shades of gray that we think it might actually be okay for a candidate for President to make such an outlandish suggestion? I’m deathly afraid that the Clintons could deny the Jewish Holocaust and we’d all be discussing the credibility of the historical record and evidence instead of standing up and shouting "WE WON’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!"
This behavior is similar to what we can expect from Clinton judges and administration. If the rules or the evidence don’t fit what you want, change ‘em, ignore ‘em, convince enough people that they’re just wrong.
In business (especially banking), we have a word for this: manipulation. And it’s illegal. As in, if you try to do it, you can go to jail. Don’t we want everyone to understand that?
People who do this lack something important that many of us cherish: integrity.
We spent several years wringing our hands over the "character" issue to no avail, and this just demonstrates what that’s all about. Our children need to understand this, but they won’t if we don’t understand it.
Of course she would have, but that wouldn’t have prevented Obama from doing exactly the same.
Actually, all primaries should be held on the same day. That way no one gets slighted. It’s ridiculous that the early primaries matter so much more than the later ones. Michigan and Florida were trying to redress this grievance. It’s very rare that we have a primary like this one that goes on so long. Usually, Iowa, New Hampshire, etc decide the primaries long before it even gets to the later states. That’s not democratic. But clearly Hillary is trying to cheat now. (Her campaign has been caught cheating in a number of caucuses, etc) Obama was not on the ticket, so those primaries cannot count now. The respective parties, though, should not be allowed to set the rules for primaries–that must be decided more objectively by the government itself.