The Liberal Avenger
You got that right, Al!
When the state legislatures in Michigan and Florida decided to hold early primaries, they violated the rules of both the Republican and Democratic parties. In order to preserve the integrity of the process, those states had to be penalized. The Republicans decided to strip both states of half of their delegates, while the Democrats decided not to award any delegates to Michigan and Florida.
That didn’t sit well with the Clinton campaign, because Clinton won both states by a wide margin. She won because every other major candidate had withdrawn their names from the ballot, and because her enormous advantage in name recognition was a tremendous advantage, especially because the candidates agreed not to campaign in Michigan and Florida.
On one hand Clinton had agreed, along with all of the other candidates, that the Michigan and Florida delegations would not be seated at the convention. On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to ignore the fact Clinton is the most popular democrat in those states, albeit by a much smaller margin than the primary votes indicated. So today, party officials met to work out a compromise.
What they came up with was exactly the solution that I proposed a couple of months ago: just adopt the Republican solution. Penalize the states by stripping away half of their delegates. That should prevent other states from holding early primaries in 2012, and it minimizes the unfair advantage given to the early front-runners.
Naturally, the Clinton camp is throwing a hissy fit:
The decision was a blow to Hillary Rodham Clinton as she was on the verge of watching Obama make history as the first black Democratic presidential nominee. It prompted an irate reaction from boisterous Clinton supporters in the audience and her chief delegate counter, Harold Ickes.
Ickes angrily informed the party’s Rules Committee that Clinton had instructed him to reserve her right to appeal the matter to the Democrats’ credentials committee, which could potentially drag the matter to the party’s convention in August.
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity let’s all come together, and put our arms around each other,” said Ickes, who is also a member of the Rules Committee that approved the deal. “I submit to you ladies and gentlemen, hijacking four delegates … is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.”
Right. in the name of unity, Clinton might keep the party divided until August.
The fact is, Clinton has lost. She’s lost because she’s not a strong candidate, and she didn’t run a good campaign. She started with huge advantages in terms of organization, fundraising, and name recognition, as well as a 30 point lead in the polls. There hasn’t been a more self-destructive candidate since Michael Dukakis. And now the people who ran her campaign, people like Harold Ickes, are looking for someone to blame for their own failure. Now they’ve decided to scapegoat party officials who refuse to simply hand her the nomination.
Party officials can’t do that, thought, because Clinton lost the popular vote (she leads only if the votes aren’t counted in caucus states), and she’s behind in pledged delegates, and behind in superdelegates. Polls show that she trails among Democrats, among Republicans, and among Independent voters. They show that she doesn’t run as strongly against McCain as Obama does. There’s simply no reason that she should be the nominee, beyond the fact that her marriage to Bill Clinton gave her the opportunity to connect with the some of the most powerful members of the Democratic party. And that’s just not a very good reason.
(cross posted at appletree)
