If you wondered what Senator Hillary Clinton’s next step would be in light of her two primary defeats yesterday, you now have an answer: the campaign has set up a new website to press to change Democratic convention rules so she can win by delegates other than those won in contested primaries.
ABC’s Political Punch reports:
This morning brings the news that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, has launched a new website where they are announcing how they are officially preparing to make the case that the rules of the Democratic nomination process should be changed.
Among many “facts” they declare are some accurate ones, such as the idea that superdelegates, which in true nomenclatural dexterity they now term “automatic delegates” “are expected to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and the Democratic Party.”
But then comes this juicy non-fact:
“FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy.”That’s not a fact, that’s an opinion.
And it’s clear evidence (not that there was any mystery about it) that the Clinton campaign is trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.
We asked this before: has the Democratic party EVER seen anything like this? And will Democrats allow it?
Clinton’s own senior adviser, Harold Ickes, voted as a member of the DNC committee to not recognize these two state delegations because they violated the rules of the primary scheduling process. Now as a Clinton campaign representative he’s making the case that they should count.
And Democrats have been frustrated over this kind of quick-change-artist behavior when it’s done by Bush administration members. MORE:
The Obama people deserve to be tweaked for suggesting that the superdelegates should follow the lead of the regular delegates — that’s not what the rules dictate, either.
But there’s a difference between pressuring/lobbying/strongly suggesting that superdelegates follow the will of regular delegates — that ultimately will be decided by each individual superdelegate — and trying to change the rules of the nominating process.
The Clinton camp is now calling 2208 “the number required for a candidate to secure the nomination with Florida and Michigan included.”
But that’s not the number.
According to the DNC, the number is 2025. And Florida and Michigan don’t get included.
Once again: there is a fundamental credibility issue here. AND:
The three chairs of the Democratic Convention Credentials Committee, which will decide this Michigan and Florida morass, all worked in the administration of Bill Clinton: Former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, Social Security Administration associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr., and White House travel consultant Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, as noted yesterday by the Washington Times.
More and more, this reminds me of the Florida recount.
Don’t like the rules? Change the rules.
Count every vote — except the ones for the for the other guy.
If Hillary Clinton doesn’t win Ohio and Texas convincingly and wins by this method look for a President John McCain in the White House come January. Many of the new, young voters will be turned off and she is already losing independent voters in increasing numbers. She can’t win by just getting hard-core, traditional Democrats (Hillary backers and those that give her a pass if she uses this method to secure the nomination) to vote for her in the general election.
UPDATE: A diary writer on Daily Kos contends some Clinton campaign workers are calling delegates already pledged to Obama in Nevada. See THIS POST that we ran yesterday.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.