Enforce The Rules
From CNN’s Political Ticker: Pelosi prepared to ‘step in’ to end race
(CNN) – Hillary Clinton has hinted that she is prepared to take her fight to fully seat Florida and Michigan all the way to the party’s convention in late August, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that’s not going to happen.
…“I will step in,” Pelosi told the paper. “Because we cannot take this fight to the convention…It must be over before then.”
… [The] House Speaker has said Democratic superdelegates should not overturn the pledged delegate winner, and has warned of irreparable harm if they do so.
…
Pelosi also indicated she opposes the Clinton campaign’s desire that both Florida and Michigan’s delegations be fully seated at the convention.
…Pelosi said she agreed the two states should be seated in some way, but said only “in a way that is not destructive to any sense of order in the party.”
“If you have no order and no discipline in terms of party rules, people will be having their primary in the year before the presidential election,” she said. “So there has to be some penalty.”
First off, the superdelegates get to vote for whomever they wish, and that vote isn’t taken until the convention.
Second, while pledged delegates are supposed to vote for a particular candidate on the first round, there is no penalty if they don’t, and that has happened in the past.
Third, there is no rule, nor reason, that this should end before the convention. The convention is the actual election, and no one has suggested that people stop campaigning months shy of the November election.
If Nancy Pelosi were actually concerned with rules and laws, she would have begun impeachment proceedings in 2006. This is about control of the party by the “Old Guard”, rather than any other group. The “Old Guard” has selected Obama as their candidate, and they don’t want anything to interfere with that selection. Anyone who believes that Obama represents change, should take a look at who among the superdelegates supports him, and understand – there will be no change.
At Left Coaster eriposte looks at Florida and Michigan using other people’s posts and it is always come out the same.
The rules passed in 2006 say that Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and Florida should all lose 50% of their votes. The rules say there will be no exceptions or waivers.
The rules say that Obama will lose all of his delegates for Florida because he held a press conference in the state.
The talk about “waivers” was a smoke screen thrown up by the DNC after the decision was made to take away all of Florida and Michigan’s delegates, but not punish Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
The DNC has absolutely no intention of following “the rules”, because that would endanger the “Old Guard” candidate.
I’ve heard a lot of people making noise about having to “support the party” regardless, well, some of us won’t give up our principles. The people who are in charge of the current Democratic Party are proving to be just as corrupt as the Republicans. Supporting that corruption in any way won’t bring change. There has to be a penalty, or they will just continue with business as usual, supporting the corporations and screwing the working people.
[Note: I’m not saying that Obama had any part in the decision to be the candidate of the “Old Guard”, he’s much too new to be included in their circles.]
35 comments
Who are the members of the “Old Guard” and what sort of “New Blood” supported Hillary Clinton? I totally disagree that Barack Obama was ever the establishment candidate, he ran an insurgent campaign against what everyone was calling an “inevitable” Clinton victory. Some people still seem to think that a Clinton victory is inevitable.
The New England elite and the pre-Clinton Democrats are the Old Guard – the followers of Ted Kennedy.
There is no counter to them in the Democratic Party, there is only the rest of the Party.
Obama didn’t apply for the position, he was selected by them. They think they can control him, but only time will tell if that’s true. They have opened doors to contributors, because money is what really talks. It’s machine politics on the national level.
I prefer the Kennedy wing to the Clinton wing, if it comes down to that. But I don’t think Barack Obama is beholden to either (well, certainly not to the Clintons). I certainly hope they cannot control him, but at the same time, I hope they have apprehended him well. By the same token, I’ve come to believe that he is the best candidate for president with a chance of winning in my lifetime.
I have to agree with Michael, but at the same time, it doesn’t matter. Pelosi is to late. It’s already gone on to long. Start thinking ahead to 2012.
Frederick, I’m sick to here of defeatism. Sorry to make you the brunt of it, but really, you’re posing a no-win scenario if Pelosi is “too late” when it’s not correct to push Hillary Clinton out when she wants to participate in every state contest. Let her finish. On June 4, delegates can be encouraged to make their intentions known.
I have to agree with Bryan on this one. Having spent some time in and around Boston and almost a year dating a Boston woman from an ‘old family’, I learned much about them. I suspect they would have preferred Hillary, but she had already made her pact with the devil of her choosing. Obama, while touched by the ‘Chicago’ corruption, I don’t think had yet made any significant deals there. So he was *ready* for grooming and manipulation.
*shrug* It’s just ‘business as usual’ really. 🙂 Why would anyone be surprised?
By “stepping in” the “leadership” acknowledges that the voters don’t matter, and they will resolve this to their liking.
The whole thing was a sham, a circus for the unwashed. The whole purpose of the superdelegates was to ensure control of the decision.
Nothing has fundamentally changed, because change is bad for “business”.
Clinton has her own organization, and the “Old Guard” don’t like it. They didn’t like Bill Clinton’s victory, and didn’t support Al Gore, because they didn’t control it.
The only appropriate thing to do is seat all the delegates from Florida according to who they are pledged, and seat Clinton’s delegates from Michigan according to the number of people who voted for her there, and the “uncommitted” delegates to Obama (if they had wanted to vote for Clinton they would have done so). Obama still wins both the popular vote and the delegate if you seat all the delegates according to the will of the voters . Voters in Michigan who voted “uncommitted” obviously were not voting for Clinton, and given that the other major candidates who were not on the Michigan ballot have already said they’re supporting Obama (and the minor candidates WERE on the Michigan ballot), “uncommitted” should properly accrue to Obama. If any of those people voting “uncommitted” wanted to vote for Clinton, they would have done so.
This solution gets us two things: 1) nobody can say they were disenfranchised, and 2) Clinton looks like a vote-stealing witch if she continues to insist that the “uncommitted” delegates in Michigan ought to be assigned to her. It accurately represents the will of the voters in all the states involved. Which is why Clinton won’t allow it to be done, she is fighting tooth and nail to say that the “uncommitted” delegates in Michigan ought not be assigned to Obama even though Obama’s people clearly communicated to his supporters that, since Obama was not on the ballot, they should vote “uncommitted” instead. Who does Hillary think those voters were going to vote for? Dennis Kucinich? Kucinich *was* on the ballot!
– Badtux the Practical Penguin
Obama didn’t have to take his name off the Michigan ballot, he was pandering to Iowa and New Hampshire. If the delegates go as uncommitted, which is the legal way of going, that is only on the first ballot. People are only “pledged” for the first ballot and can do whatever they want after that.
Obama broke the DNC rules in Florida and his Florida delegates are forfeit on the first ballot, if they follow the rules.
If they had followed the rules, none of this would be a problem, and Florida wouldn’t have been stuck with a totally destructive constitutional tax amendment. The DNC decided to make-up rules as they went along, and they can live with the result of their stupidity – John McCain.
Bryan, stop saying John McCain is going to win. He isn’t.
I think Michigan will get their delegation exactly the way it was voted, with each delegate having 1/2 vote, same as Florida. How the uncommitted delegates vote is up to them.
“Bryan, stop saying John McCain is going to win. He isn’t.” – Michael
My now-retired former financial advisor at a major nationally known brokerage, a specialist in “socially responsible” investments, used to tell me, “Now Steve, I don’t have a crystal ball.” Michael, if you’ll tell me where you acquired yours, I’d like to pass that information along to my advisor. 😈
I’m not going to put any money on sanity with this DNC. They have been acting like a bunch of first graders at recess.
Wishing and Hoping was a great song by Dusty Springfield, it is not an election strategy.
Steve, if you’re looking to make a bet, you could try Intrade or IEM. Personally, I’m not telling you where or how to invest your money, but I am confident in our ability to win in November.
So now who is talking about disenfranchising who? N0w you want to disenfranchise the Obama voters??? Sigh.
– Badtux the “Dem0cracy would be a good idea” Penguin
That’s what “the rules” tell us is supposed to happen, Badtux. Obama knew the rules and chose to violate them, so it’s his fault. Just ask all of his supporters who don’t think that Florida and Michigan should be seated. Just ask his campaign that has blocked every attempt to resolve this problem with a re-vote – the rules must be enforced.
Obama has been using “the rules” since his first campaign to be sure he has never had a tough election.
Remember, I’m out of it. If they had held a re-vote, I wouldn’t have been part of it because I’m no longer associated with the Democratic Party, and Florida is a closed primary state.
Selective enforcement is discrimination.
Bryan, Florida is being seated with 1/2 vote per delegate. They’re still working out Michigan.
Too little, too late – fuck them.
What it all boils down to is a question of legitimacy. If the candidate put on the ballot by the Democrats does not reflect the will of the majority of the Democrats who voted in the primaries and caucuses, the damage to his or her legitimacy is going to be incalculable, and he or she *will* lose the election.
At this point in time I don’t give a shit about rules, I give a shit about making sure John McCain doesn’t win in the fall. The only way that happens is to have the candidate who represents the will of the majority of the Democrats be the candidate who is running. Appointing someone else is going to be just one giant shitstorm until John McCain’s inauguration day and the final ignominous end of the American Republic as it finishes its collapse into economic ruin and some demagogue arises and seizes power as a savior. We are seeing the final end-game of the Weimar Republic here, complete with the Federal Reserve pumping out dollars with all the avidity of the Weimar Finance Ministry, and it isn’t one that makes me happy as an American. McCain hastens those last days considerably due to his ignorance of economics and his aggressive personality that would lead to more wars that drain vitality from the economy. I had hoped that the collapse of the American Republic would happen after I was too old to care. It now seems that it’ll happen within my lifetime, but I’d prefer that it *not* happen next year, thank you very much — a slow collapse is a lot easier to deal with than a quick one.
As for the shit-flinging contest against one candidate or another, I’m sure we can find plenty of shit to fling at both candidates when it comes to the situation in Florida and Michigan. For example, DNC chairman Howard Dean asked all the major candidates to withdraw their name from the Michigan ballot, and all of them promised to do so. Except, one major candidate then double-crossed everybody and filed the papers to do so but only after the deadline, and then made the laughable statement that she “forgot”. Should we reward treachery by not allocating the votes that would have gone to the other candidate to that candidate? Or what about Hillary Clinton’s campaign stops in Florida on the Sunday before the election, she broke the rules (claiming that a campaign stop isn’t a campaign stop because you needed a ticket from her campaign to get in doesn’t make it “not a campaign stop”), should we strip all of her delegates for that? My point is that we can come up with shit to fling at any candidate, but that’s not what’s going to win an election in the fall.
At this point in time it’s clear that, if you include those who voted for Obama in Michigan by voting “Uncommitted”, the majority of Democrats want Obama as their candidate. Overruling the will of the majority of Democrats would leave a stench in the room that ends up electing John McCain in the fall. So my opinion is that we should seat *all* the delegates, allocating the “Uncommitted” ones in Michigan to Obama because clearly he or one of the candidates who have already endorsed him is who they would have voted for if he’d been on the ballot, and make it clear that the Democratic candidate in the fall represents the will of the majority of Democrats. We can quibble about rules and all that, but in the end, it all boils down to legitimacy. A candidate who gets in via finagling of the rules can never be viewed as legitimate, and will never win the fall election.
– Badtux the Big Picture Penguin
I don’t care anymore.
No one knows what the majority of Democrats want, because the system is not designed to find out. If there were a system of closed Democratic primaries, then we would know. If the delegate count was based on the number of Democratic voters, then we would know. If there were no superdelegates, them we would know. We don’t know, because the people in charge apparently don’t want anyone to know.
They change the rules as they go along, and expect people to simply follow.
Nothing these people have suggested is going to help me in any way, and the Democratic Party has already screwed me this year. I’m not rewarding people who abuse me. Telling me that someone else will be even worse is not going to cut it.
Five states violated the rules, only two are even being considered for punishment. The DNC did this to themselves. The Democratic Party can’t run a primary, why believe they are capable of running a country?
Bryan, you wouldn’t be disparaging the party if your favored candidate had won the primary.
badtux,
let’s not single out hillary for selective disparagement on that ‘campaigning in florida’ thingy. the dnc expressly did not prohibit fundraising in either florida or michigan, because they’re all about the money. voters, not so much.
obama pulled the same ‘i’m not really here’ trick. for which i admire both of them actually, since i think these particular roolz were really really stoopid.
Actually, Hillary stayed within the rules by not talking to the press in Florida, but Obama screwed up after the event.
Obama also “accidentally” scheduled a “national media buy” that was seen in Florida just prior to the primary.
Given Obama’s long history of “playing games” in primaries, it’s not a stretch to conclude that he has been “gaming” the system since the beginning. He’s a typical machine politician – anything to win.
If Hillary just decided to go Independent, that would solve a lot of shite. I say, Country First, Party Second.
This is what the middle finger is for.
Moi, she may have a lot of faults, but she would never do anything to hurt the party. She will try to unite behind Obama if he wins the nomination. I think she will be surprised at the number of people who will be unwilling to join her.
Obama’s supporters have attacked too many people for there to be a healing process, the wounds have been too deep.
The shit has flown both ways, my friend. Some of the outright racism coming out of the Clinton camp has been disconcerting, to say the least (“vote for Clinton because America won’t vote for a nigger!” being the implication of far too much of what’s been said there), and the body-slamming of the victim card onto the table by both Clinton and her supporters (“oh boo hoo, I’m a victim!”) doesn’t convince anybody to vote for Clinton. Nobody votes for a victim. People vote for a winner. A winner may be victimized, but does not define him or herself as a victim and doesn’t dwell on it inordinantly. Sad to say, the Clintonistas and their continual whining “oh boo hoo our candidate is such a victim of mean, mean people” doesn’t win them any support. People getting irritated at you when you start talking about how victimized you are might not be fair, but life ain’t fair. That’s just how life is. I can give you some stories from my own life that would make your hair stand up on end, but I post as a penguin, not a victim. Nobody cares how victimized you were in the end, they just care about what you can do for them (and for a Linux penguin that’s a fair amount, regardless of any… quirks… due to things that happened long, long ago).
Note that I don’t have any delusions about Obama. You say he’s a machine politician. Well, he was successful in Chicago politics, so that is a given. His health care plan is nothing but pandering, his attacks upon Clinton’s health care plan were dishonest, and in general I view him as just another Democratic politician, “change” rhetoric nonwithstanding. He has demonstrated that he is intelligent and chooses good staff, but nobody ever accused Clinton of being an idiot either (but Clinton certainly has been accused of unwarranted loyalty towards long-time staffers who haven’t produced — shades of Dubya!). There certainly isn’t anything policy-wise coming out of Obama’s camp that makes any kind of case that he’d be a better President than Hillary. At the moment Obama has the support of more Democrats than Clinton for one and only one reason: Obama spoke out against the Iraq fiasco at the beginning and correctly predicted its outcome, while Clinton voted for it. That’s pretty much it.
But to deny the reality that Obama has the support of more Democrats at this time… (shrug). Sounds like something the tighty righties are always doing (denying reality, that is). And to hand the Presidency to John McCain out of spite (yes, spite), well. We get the government we deserve in the end. Alas.
Now, if you forgive me, it’s time for me to disturb the cat that is sleeping on my lap and go see a man about a bunker :-).
— Badtux the Practical Penguin
Badtux, every one is entitled to opinion, but the fact for this election is that mine is a vote the Democratic Party won’t get, and I’m not alone in this feeling.
This is going to be a nasty, low turnout election, and “the rules” are the reason why.
You’re entitled to your sour grapes, Bryan. Hope you enjoy them. While you’re entitled to your opinion, the reality is that Democratic turnout almost everywhere has been huge in the primaries. Do you think by refusing to vote you’re representing some national trend?
Democrats came out in the primaries, but the problems is to get them to come out in the general. They came out because for the first time in years their state had a voice in selecting a candidate. Now they must decide whether they will support the candidate selected.
I don’t worry about trends. I’ve been out of this for months because of what the DNC did to me and the state of Florida. The treatment that the Florida situation received from other so-called progressive bloggers, just confirmed that my decision was correct.
Your man has to reach out to the voters he and his campaign have alienated, and there is no indication that he knows how to do that, or if it is even possible.
Clinton will support the party, as she always has, but I doubt she has the ability to convince people to return.
I think if Hillary Clinton will accept a cabinet-level health care position in the Obama administration, we can be unified pretty soon. If she won’t and wants to fight until the convention, things could be uglier. Right now there are a few more states (and Puerto Rico) to vote, and Clinton deserves to finish. I don’t think we’ll be having much of an argument in a few days.
Gee, Michael, why not offer her the Department of Housekeeping and Childcare, that should help unify things.
Think about it – that’s why there will be no unifying.
Gee, Bryan, I had no idea that a cabinet post is equivalent to being barefoot in the kitchen. I guess to give Hillary Clinton anything but the presidency would be an insult even though she lost.
Snark aside, she has the decision to make. It isn’t up to you or me right now.
I know what you said, and I know what would be heard, and that’s why unity is going to be almost impossible.
A cabinet post is insulting, especially concerning health care which is one of the few areas where the two of them actually differ. Cabinet officers implement the President’s policies. You are suggesting that Clinton implement Obama’s policy on an issue she has been involved with for almost two decades, and you don’t understand that it is an insult.
She is on the Senate armed services committee and has traveled in both war zones, but you didn’t suggest Secretary of Defense.
I know you don’t get it. You don’t mean anything by it, but you are definitely going to tick people off with your off-hand remarks, and don’t have the sensitivity to know why.
You know, Bryan, Secretary of Defense sounds like an interesting compromise.
She is not going to work for him. She will retain her Senate seat and start working on 2012 if she doesn’t get the nomination this time.