Is Hillary Forcing Obama's Hand?
Forget all the gibberish and fuzzy math that came out of the Democratic Rules Committee on Saturday.
It was meaningless, except to prolong the inevitable: Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee in 2008. It was such a ridiculous exercise, almost laughable, when you think about it.
The Democratic National Committee originally said they would sanction any state that moved the dates of the primaries. Despite this clear ruling, Florida and Michigan, said ``rules schmules'’, broke them anyway and switched the dates for fear of being upstaged by other delegate-rich states.
So after enough whimpering and charges of disenfranchising voters, the DNC ended up invalidating their own rules, by voting to seat the delegates in Florida and Michigan, but only giving them half a vote.
Call me dense and thick-headed, but I still don’t see the logic why this went to a rules committee. What’s the point of instituting rules if you’re not going to enforce them?
This would be like Major League Baseball ruling that Pete Rose can be inducted into the Hall of Fame, despite being stripped of eligibility for violating league rules, but Cooperstown will only showcase half of his career?
If you’re going to set rules and standards, you need to stick by them or else you look shallow and wimpy, like the DNC rules committee certainly looked on Saturday. Michigan and Florida should have thought about the consequences of their rebel actions before deciding to move their primary dates.
So what happens in 2012?
Can states arbitrarily set their own primary dates without regard to party rules, knowing that if enough voters yell and scream, after their party’s actions come back to haunt them, like it did in Florida and Michigan this year-the Democratic party will give them the delegates back?
Knowing how the DNC ruled Saturday, you would think states will be even more willing to thumb their noses at the party and set their own primary dates. Thanks to the ``we can have it both ways’’ compromise ironed out by the Democratic leadership, be prepared for complete anarchy four or eight years from now, depending on whether the Democrats win the White House in 2008.
The irony is, Hillary Clinton, Harold Ickes, and Terry McAuliffe knew full well the DNC wouldn’t give them back all the delegates; that there would have to be some kind of uneven compromise, which would only lead to disappointment with Clinton backers, more division, more acrimony, and cast more of a shadow over Obama as the legitimate Democratic nominee.
So, in the end, what this whole train ride about contesting whether delegates in Michigan and Florida should be seated, and now threatening to put it before the credential’s committee in Denver is nothing more than Team Clinton’s desperate attempt to force Obama to name her as a running mate as the only way of healing a divided party.
Donald F. Kettl, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of ``Politics: The Search for Balance in American Political Life’’, thinks Clinton is ``playing for time, in the hope of some kind of Obama train wreck that would allow Clinton to slide ahead in the delegate race; and playing for position, perhaps for the vice presidency or, at least, for a stronger hand in the Senate as a launch for the 2012 campaign. The odds of it leading to an outright victory this time around are the kind the house would love in Vegas’’ Kettl wrote through an email.
Clinton has known for some time, the game is over, despite her resounding win in Puerto Rico on Sunday. After the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, where 31 delegates are at stake, states in which Mr. Obama is expected to win, Mrs. Clinton will then and only then, deliver a magnanimous concession speech and concede the nomination to Obama, saying something like: ``that which unites us is greater than what divides us’’…. `there is a higher duty than what we owe to our political party’’, and of course, the Stephen Douglas line that he delivered to Abraham Lincoln after his defeat: ``partisan feeling must yield to patriotism’’ All these lines, by the way, were spoken by Vice President Al Gore during his concession speech in 2000.
By then, though, it might too late for Clinton to play the role of healer and putting ``party before politics’’, and uniting Democrats at the convention in Denver. The wounds might be too deep for Obama to even think of asking her to join his ticket; and her reputation fighting a losing battle in the final months of the primary season and tearing the party asunder, despite having little chance of surpassing the Illinois senator, could very well damage her reputation with Democratic colleagues when she heads back to the Senate.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net
It was meaningless, except to prolong the inevitable: Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee in 2008. It was such a ridiculous exercise, almost laughable, when you think about it.
The Democratic National Committee originally said they would sanction any state that moved the dates of the primaries. Despite this clear ruling, Florida and Michigan, said ``rules schmules'’, broke them anyway and switched the dates for fear of being upstaged by other delegate-rich states.
So after enough whimpering and charges of disenfranchising voters, the DNC ended up invalidating their own rules, by voting to seat the delegates in Florida and Michigan, but only giving them half a vote.
Call me dense and thick-headed, but I still don’t see the logic why this went to a rules committee. What’s the point of instituting rules if you’re not going to enforce them?
This would be like Major League Baseball ruling that Pete Rose can be inducted into the Hall of Fame, despite being stripped of eligibility for violating league rules, but Cooperstown will only showcase half of his career?
If you’re going to set rules and standards, you need to stick by them or else you look shallow and wimpy, like the DNC rules committee certainly looked on Saturday. Michigan and Florida should have thought about the consequences of their rebel actions before deciding to move their primary dates.
So what happens in 2012?
Can states arbitrarily set their own primary dates without regard to party rules, knowing that if enough voters yell and scream, after their party’s actions come back to haunt them, like it did in Florida and Michigan this year-the Democratic party will give them the delegates back?
Knowing how the DNC ruled Saturday, you would think states will be even more willing to thumb their noses at the party and set their own primary dates. Thanks to the ``we can have it both ways’’ compromise ironed out by the Democratic leadership, be prepared for complete anarchy four or eight years from now, depending on whether the Democrats win the White House in 2008.
The irony is, Hillary Clinton, Harold Ickes, and Terry McAuliffe knew full well the DNC wouldn’t give them back all the delegates; that there would have to be some kind of uneven compromise, which would only lead to disappointment with Clinton backers, more division, more acrimony, and cast more of a shadow over Obama as the legitimate Democratic nominee.
So, in the end, what this whole train ride about contesting whether delegates in Michigan and Florida should be seated, and now threatening to put it before the credential’s committee in Denver is nothing more than Team Clinton’s desperate attempt to force Obama to name her as a running mate as the only way of healing a divided party.
Donald F. Kettl, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of ``Politics: The Search for Balance in American Political Life’’, thinks Clinton is ``playing for time, in the hope of some kind of Obama train wreck that would allow Clinton to slide ahead in the delegate race; and playing for position, perhaps for the vice presidency or, at least, for a stronger hand in the Senate as a launch for the 2012 campaign. The odds of it leading to an outright victory this time around are the kind the house would love in Vegas’’ Kettl wrote through an email.
Clinton has known for some time, the game is over, despite her resounding win in Puerto Rico on Sunday. After the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, where 31 delegates are at stake, states in which Mr. Obama is expected to win, Mrs. Clinton will then and only then, deliver a magnanimous concession speech and concede the nomination to Obama, saying something like: ``that which unites us is greater than what divides us’’…. `there is a higher duty than what we owe to our political party’’, and of course, the Stephen Douglas line that he delivered to Abraham Lincoln after his defeat: ``partisan feeling must yield to patriotism’’ All these lines, by the way, were spoken by Vice President Al Gore during his concession speech in 2000.
By then, though, it might too late for Clinton to play the role of healer and putting ``party before politics’’, and uniting Democrats at the convention in Denver. The wounds might be too deep for Obama to even think of asking her to join his ticket; and her reputation fighting a losing battle in the final months of the primary season and tearing the party asunder, despite having little chance of surpassing the Illinois senator, could very well damage her reputation with Democratic colleagues when she heads back to the Senate.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net
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