Florida and Michigan and the art of politics

Back in the fall, when the Florida and Michigan primary debacle was playing itself out, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were playing politics.

Both supported the DNC's sanctions and both pledged not to campaign in those states.  It's important to note that there was no rule against their campaigning.  And there was no rule that suddenly and irrevocably disqualified and disenfranchised Florida and Michigan.  The DNC didn't have the power to make such a rule.   What there was was a ruling and Clinton and Obama said they'd abide by that ruling for the scheduled primaries, but neither one ever agreed that Florida and Michigan's voters should never get their say in some way.

In Clinton's case, she was motivated by over-confidence.  She and her staff figured they could get by without Florida and Michigan in January.  They planned to win big on Super Tuesday, have the nomination pretty well sewed-up, and then deal with getting Michigan's and Florida's delegates seated at the convention later.

But Obama and his camp saw a great opportunity.  Taking Michigan and Florida out of the campaign saved him from two big early losses.

There was no principle at stake for either side.  It was politics, pure and simple.

At no point, though, did anybody "rule" that Florida and Michigan would not matter at all.  They were not going to be "disappeared."

The DNC said that's what it wanted, but it didn't have the power to enforce it.  That would be up to the Rules and By-laws Committee and to the Convention's credentials committee.

At any rate, the sanctions punished the wrong people.  It punished the Democratic voters of both states.  The party leaders in both states, the ones who'd caused the trouble, would be getting off scott free.  This was unfair and politically stupid.  It would not do the party any good to have the rank and file in two key states feeling disenchanted, disrespected, and disenfranchised come November.

This wasn't about to happen.  The trick has always been figuring out how to go about not letting it happen.

The fairest option would have been to hold re-votes in both states.  That didn't come about for several reasons, but not the least of them was that Barack Obama made sure it didn't.

Naturally enough.

Why should he have agreed to his own defeat?

But why should Clinton have agreed to hers?  (Because of the math, I know.  It was infallible and totally objective and your interpretation of it had nothing to do with your own wishful thinking.)  Without a revote, she had only two options, surrender or join in the appeals to the Rules and By-law Committee and the Credentials Comittee to have the "rules" "changed."

Her arguments about how to apportion delegates and whether to give them full votes at the convention or half-votes are self-interested and self-serving but they could only be called unreasonable if there was a reasonable alternative, and they don't consititute cheating. 

The only reasonable way to determine how the voters in either state would have voted if the primaries had been "real" primaries was to have held real primaries and, as I said, Obama helped make sure that wouldn't happen.

Which was self-interested and self-serving of him but not unreasonable and does not constitute cheating.

It's not high-minded and principled, though, and it is not very much different than what Clinton's doing.

Both have been trying to work the system to their advantage.

But Obama's had one thing over Clinton.

A National Press Corps that hates the Clintons and is pre-disposed to portray everything they do in the worst possible light.

It didn't take much effort on the part of Obama's team---in fact, it probably took hardly any effort at all---to get the Press Corps and the pundits to start reporting on Clinton's perfectly legitimate and perfectly reasonable decision to continue to campaign as a despicable and borderline treasonous act that only a monster of ego and ambition would have undertaken.  Clinton was tearing the party apart by doing the dirty deed of not surrendering and actually going on to win important primaries by large margins.  Why, in defeating Obama in the primaries, she was attempting to make him lose...the nomination!

It just showed how all she cared about was her own ambition and ego.  She had no concern for his ambtion and ego.

Oh, sorry.  I forgot.  Obama is a different kind of politician.  A humble man of modest ambition who would have been content to remain in the obscurity in which he was so happy and comfortable before DESTINY plucked him out of it and declared him our future President.

No, I haven't forgotten the math.

That was something else Obama had on his side.  Not what the math showed.  The word itself.  The MATH.  It sounds so objective and decisive.  You can't argue with The MATH.  And The MATH showed that Clinton couldn't get enough delegates to win the nomination before the convention.

That the math showed that Obama couldn't get enough either was conveniently ignored.

And now it was Obama who got the "rules" changed.

At least he managed to change key people's perception of what the rules were.

The first rule he got "changed" was the one about the role of super-delegates.  Somehow, the votes of the superdelegates became illegitimate if they were going to be used to decide the nomination, particlarly if they would have decided it in Clinton's favor.

That was back when it looked as though Clinton had the edge among super-delegates.

Part of the reason she lost that edge was that a lot of super-delegates became convinced their own votes weren't theirs to give at their own discretion.  They had to vote in a way that supported the will of the rank and file in the primaries.

That rule's been changed again since the will of the rank and file is nowheres near as cut and dried in Obama's favor as it appeared to be before Clinton did the unthinkable and actually went out and won all those votes.

The other reason for her losing support among the supers is that Obama managed to get that other big rule change.

The rule used to be that the nominee is the candidate who gets a very specific number of votes cast at the convention.

Obama managed to get it changed to the nominee is the candidate who has the most number of delegates in hand at an arbitrarily declared point in the primary season...say, the end of February, before states like Ohio and Pennsylvania have a chance to vote.

What I'm saying is that Obama managed to create the perception in the Media that he had already won the nomination long before he was even close to winning the nomination and that Clinton in continuing to campaign as if she still had a chance was being a vindictive and egomaniacal spoilsport.

With the help of a Clinton-hating Press Corps, he was able to scare Party leaders into thinking that letting the campaign go on was destroying the party and somehow thwarting the will of the people.  He was able to scare enough of the right people into thinking that if they let the nomination be decided by a floor fight they'd be dooming the Party's chances in the fall.

Then, and again I don't think he had to work hard at this, he was able to convince his supporters that if the supers did decide the nomination in Clinton's favor or if she won it in a floor fight at the convention, they would have been robbed!  He was able to make party leaders worry that in fact they would be robbing his supporters.

And, amazingly, what was once egregriously unfair, that the super-delegates would decide the nomination, has now become the right and only thing to do.

All of this was self-serving and self-interested and ambitious on Obama's part, all of it was tinged with hypocrisy and double-dealing, and none of it was unfair or constituted cheating or is in any way reprehensible because all of it is just in the nature of politics.

In this campaign, Obama and his team turned out to be the better politicians than Clinton and hers.

That's why he's going to be the nominee and that's why I'm so hopeful that he will win in November.

I think he'll prove to be the better politician than John McCain.

Those of you who wish to think that he won through the pure force of his goodness and the righteousness of his cause and that his beating Hillary was a case of goodness and light triumphing over evil are perfectly free to do so.   The rest of us know better.  Obama's just another politician with a sharp eye on the main chance, same as Clinton, and that's what we're counting on come November.

Updated:  The RBC has ruled that all Florida and Michigan's delegates will be seated but with only a half  vote each.  It also ruled that all the uncommitted delegates from Michigan will be awarded to Obama.  This pretty much sinks it for Clinton.

Updated in the interest of fairness---ha!:  The RBC awarded Obama his Michigan delegates as if his name was synonymous with uncommitted.  Of course many of those uncommitteds would have voted for him if his name was on the ballot, but back in January a whole bunch of other people's names would have been on the ballot too, and one of them would have been John Edwards, who presumably would have gotten a few votes.  There is no way to know how many of those uncommitteds were really votes for Obama and therefore it was wrong to award them all to Obama.  The right thing to do would have been to award them to the candidate they voted for, "Uncommitted," and then let Hillary and Obama fight for them.  By the way, all the delegates no matter which candidate they're pledged to are free to vote for whomever they want on the first ballot.  So this bad and illegitimate ruling by the RBC is unfair and ought to be over-ruled by the Credentials Committee.  Do I expect Obama to do the right thing and give up those delegates in the interests of fairness.  I don't.  But his supporters who are convinced of his superior virtue ought to expect it of him, although why they should expect that he would agree to undermining his own victory is beyond me.

Let me repeat this, because at least one commenter has missed my point.  I don't think there's anything wrong with Obama being ambitious or in his playing hardball politics.   In fact, I admire him for it.

Updated because I got nothing better to do than repeat myself:  In comments, Kevin Hayden writes:

Maybe Clinton's reversal on the delegate count broke no official rule but it violated the spirit and intent of an unwritten agreement between most of the candidates, which is more than standard opportunism.

Sigh.  The agreement was that they wouldn't campaign in those states.  The agreement was not to leave Michigan and Florida voters out in the cold forever.  But let's assume that's in fact what they were all agreeing to. Then, yes, Clinton violated the spirit of the agreement, and I'd go farther, she always intended to, because she always knew that she would need Florida and Michigan in the general election and she wasn't about to stick her finger in those voters' eyes just to make the DNC look good.  She just figured she'd be the nominee by then and no one would complain.  But all of them had their fingers crossed at the time.  All of them.  If they didn't, they were stupidly promising to sacrifice their chances to support the DNC's failure.  Obama does not deserve a lot of credit for agreeing to something that saved his candidacy nor does he deserve much credit for observing the spirit of the agreement because it was in his best interest to observe that spirit.  Self-interest is not a virtue just because by being self-interested you appear to be on the side of the angels.

Kevin thinks that Obama could have won Michigan and I'd guess that's meant to suggest that Obama was in fact being self-sacrificing by agreeing not to campaign.  I doubt he'd have won, unless Clinton and Edwards split the non-Obama vote, although it was more likely that Edwards and Obama would have split the non-Clinton vote, but I do think he could have done pretty well there.  But there was no way he could have agreed to sanctioning Florida where he'd have gotten clobbered while letting Michigan off the hook.  Competing self-interests.

But I'll go Kevin one better.  I think Obama could have won the revote in Michigan and done pretty well in a Florida revote.  But he didn't need those states anymore, and they would have cost him a lot of time and money, plus it would still have been a big risk.  So instead of doing the fair thing or the bold thing, he did the politically smart thing...and I don't see that there's anything wrong with that!

Comments

[Joe]

"The fairest option would have been to hold re-votes in both states. That didn't happen for several reasons, but not the least of them was that Barack Obama made sure it didn't."

Lance, it would be excellent if you could post some evidence/links to show that Obama caused the re-votes not to occur. I think this is probably a fair statement with regard to Florida (although a quicky mail-in election in a state that has never had a mail-in election would have had its share of problems), although I understood Michigan's plan to have fallen under legal issues (see this link: http://www.mlive.com/elections/index.ssf/2008/03/federal_judge_in_detroit_strik.html)

[Lance]

Glad to oblige, Joe.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/03/michigan-re-vot.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/19/clinton.michigan/index.html

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/03/clinton_says_ob_1.html

But you're right; as I wrote, there were other reasons the revotes didn't come off. But he sure didn't help. My point here wasn't to blame Obama. I really blame the DNC and the state party leaderships. I'm saying that he hasn't been acting out of pure principled goodness here. If he and Hillary had wanted to they probably could have come up with a fair plan. There just was no reason for him to have wanted to. I don't think he should have been expected to help bring about his own defeat, anymore than I think Hillary should be expected to agree to hers.

[Mithras]

Lance, you're just wrong on the facts. The Florida and Michigan Democratic Parties didn't want re-does. They wanted to play chicken with the DNC and get their own way, counting on the DNC to buckle to avoid the prospect of a confrontation, like the shameful display put on by Hillary's supporters today (chanting "McCain, McCain" and trying to disrupt the final vote on the Michigan compromise).

The rest of your post is just overwrought.

[Jim]

Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist wouldn't call the Fla. Legislature into session to authorize another Democratic primary because the GOP didn't want the controversy to be resolved. Republicans also blocked the primary revote bill in Michigan for the same reason.

Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm should have known better than signing the original bill setting the early outlaw primary.

Obama played by the rules. Clinton tried to pull a fast one by putting her name on the Fla and Mich ballots even as she acknowledged that those straw polls would not count for delegate selection. Then when she cleaned up in those polls, she wanted them to be counted for delegate selection. Obama was under no obligation to go along with that BS.

[Sabutai]

Mithras, some links to start you off on Obama's efforts to kill the idea of re-votes. For starters.

Obama also benefitted from the fact that some states got away with changing the rules. List of states that ignored DNC regs, in order of their primaries:

IA - Rushed the calendar
NH - Rushed the calendar, leapfrogged NV
MI - Rushed the calendar, leapfrogged NV & SC
NV - Rushed the calendar
SC - Rushed the calendar
FL - Rushed the calendar

Yet only two states get punished...big swing states that Clinton won.

[Mithras]

Clearly, you didn't read the timeline that I linked to. For example:

August 19, 2006: Based on a recommendation of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, the DNC approves a calendar which allows Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina to host early nominating contests in January of 2008. The measure is passed with near-unanimity (only New Hampshire votes no). Florida and Michigan delegations support the measure.

[Mithras]

Obama foresaw how the election would go as far back as August, 2006, and used his evil mind-control powers to make the RBC hand him the election. Muhahahahaha!

[lina]

Lance Lance Lance. . .

Clinton lost in 2008 because her campaign gurus couldn't figure out how to win caucus states. Period. They should never have let Obama win 11 states in a row back in Feb. With the proportional allocation of delegates, she was never going to be able to come back from that defecit. It's almost like they didn't even understand how it worked. Sen. Clinton was ill-served by her campaign professionals, and it's her fault for not firing the lot of them back in Feb.

It's not the evil media, it's not the evil sexists, it's not the evil Obama supporters. It's just politics.

[Sabutai]

Mithras, the 2006 timeline set certain dates, and penalties for holding contests before those dates. Those dates were ignored by all six states, only two were penalized.

[Judy]

I think your analysis is correct, Lance. But I don't reach the same conclusion. I do hold the Clinton advisers responsible for a poorly thought out campaign strategy based on their overconfidence. And yet BO's performance in appearances early on inspired and strengthened that overconfidence. IMO, he was lucky enough to catch a wave with people desperate for a change from the doublespeak of the Bush administration coupled with the legacy issue. The generational divide is being replicated in many areas of our nation, with the 30-somethings chafing to push out the older, more traditional people so they can try out their own vision. They seem enamored of applying social networking to politics and I look forward to seeing how successful it will be. But in the process, many older people are becoming resentful of being marginalized and many will express that resentment in November in ways that won't help the Democrats. So BO may be winning the battles but will possibly lose the war, all because he is not applying his self-described strength at bringing people together to party relationships. However, I agree with your statement that he is merely acting in his own interest and that's logical and predictable and places him among the traditional category of politician. I think he cannot claim to be especially different from other politicians. Thanks for your post. I enjoyed reading it.

[Mike Schilling]

People who actually studied the press coverage concluded that if anything it favored Clinton. Every time I see a Clinton supporter state as a fact that she's the victim of a media conspiracy of Clinton-haters, I lose a little sympathy for her. When Lanny Davis said on Fox News "Now I know what it feels like to be a Republican", i.e. a victim of the Liberal Media, I lost a lot. When Geraldine Ferraro said "They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white." I lost even more.

There's no moral equivalence here, Lance. Maybe they're both politicians trying to game the system (with Obama simply being much better at it), but only Hillary has turned into Richard Nixon. Running against the media, claiming that her supporters are the real America, appealing to resentment, racial resentment in particular. It's way too familiar, and it stinks of the Southern Strategy.

[Kevin Hayden]

Those of you who wish to think that he won through the pure force of his goodness and the righteousness of his cause and that his beating Hillary was a case of goodness and light triumphing over evil are perfectly free to do so. The rest of us know better. Obama's just another politician with a sharp eye on the main chance, same as Clinton, and that's what we're counting on come November.

I certainly never thought of Obama as a messiah. He's a politician with some ideas to get things done via the power of 'we-ism', utilizing the Net for funding, communicating and organizing more effectively than others have done before. I suspect he'll continue to utilize similarly efficient and innovative ways to garner support for policies to be pushed through legislative chambers.

Beyond that, he's basically run a somewhat standard populist campaign and done so effectively.

The DNC rationale for the earliest primaries is to have relatively small populations at the outset, so the greatest number of candidates can compete without an excessive cost to gain traction so the best of the bunch can advance in name recognition and fundraising, to afford the more expensive rounds that follow.

Florida and Michigan were too big to be well-afforded so early in the season. However, I'd quarrel with part of your first premise. Had all agreed to campaign, I think Obama could have won Michigan, originally or in any re-vote.

While both are opportunists, let's remember that Clinton started claiming those delegations should count in full after it was clearly advantageous to do so, not after Super Tuesday. So now all the voters who thought their votes wouldn't matter and just stayed home have become disenfranchised by this latest compromise. And nobody really knows what the apportionment would look like had there been a normal campaign.

Maybe Clinton's reversal on the delegate count broke no official rule but it violated the spirit and intent of an unwritten agreement between most of the candidates, which is more than standard opportunism.

Otherwise, most of your other points are well made. Obama is not a candidate for sainthood and Clinton's not demonic. But neither are they ethically equal, given the last point I made.

You also attribute much to the national press corps hating the Clintons without any regard to many voters not preferring them for specific policy disagreements. As for Obama creating the perception of being the nominee earlier than he actually was, that wasn't magic but was mathematically based, too: after Wisconsin, the size of the wins necessary in the remaining states had very low odds of coming to fruition so many of Obama's supporters began making that point several weeks before the MSM began reporting the improbability Clinton faced, which ratcheted higher with every fresh primary past.

Several media counters have made the point that Obama was enduring the brunt of the attacks throughout this interim. That anti-Clinton MSM pile-on largely took place in the final five weeks, though certain pundits and networks certainly displayed that bias earlier.

[Jay]

You say all this like it's a bad thing. If Barack Obama wasn't an ambitious man, he wouldn't be running for the big job. It's just silly to accuse a presidential candidate of "ambition", as if any humble man would ever run for president. And if his principles weren't tempered by political savvy, I wouldn't support him for the job. It's no job for a saint.

[Michael Bartley]

I respect your work tremendously. Luckily, we merry band of brothers and sisters do not believe in ditto as a political philosophy. So, I will dissent. Listen politics is tough and both side have engaged in tough, at times, unfair campaigning. The "true believers" of both sides might want try smelling salts and deep breathing. I am, as I believe many people are, a combination of pragmatic and dreamer. The tough fight of politics appeals as does the soaring rhetoric. And it is in this latter category that I believe Clinton has crossed the line. As a wordsmith surely you are drawn by the importance of rhetoric in politics and its centrality to our political life and democracy. Words matter. For a leader, the careful balancing of words in a campaign are crucial to their and ultimately our succcess. In these past few months the Clinton campaign, in understandable but unaccpetable desperation, increasingly adopted the rhetoric of those who have failed us so often in the past. It is this language that is producing cries of "Denver Denver" and most stunningly "McCain McCain" amongst her supporters. Now, perhaps, those fevered minds are few in number and Hillary herself will fight the good fight and help kick the bums out. Lord I hope so...but, if these fevered few spread like a contagion across the land and we lose. I believe we will look back at Clinton's overwrought language with grim understanding about the power of words and their ability to unite or divide.

[Lance]

Mike Schilling: People who actually studied the press coverage concluded that if anything it favored Clinton.

Mike, I've heard Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, David Broder, and Charles Gibson all agree with this study. As do all the folks at Fox News, the Washington Post editorial page, the Politico, and Matt Drudge.

I think my local newspaper did a very fair and even positive job of covering Hillary and I'm sure that had a great influence on voters all across the country.

[Lance]

lina,

No, Obama gained the lead in the delegate count by winning all those caucuses. He "won" by convincing a lot of people that "winning" was just a matter of gaining and maintaining the lead in the delegate count. Both things show him to be a brilliant politician. I'm complimenting the man here and I'm not trying to take anything away from his victory---and I don't mean his present "victory," but the real one when the required number of delegates actually vote for him at the convention.

[JMG]

Dear Lance: On balance, I agree with you. I don't think either campaign drew anything more than the occasional two-minute minor penalty from start to almost finish. I forget who said that the superheated frenzy from many on both sides is a transference of the rage that GW Bush and Co. will die rich, in bed, and unpunished.
BOTH candidates made the Florida/Michigan mess by agreeing to the extortionist demands of New Hampshire and Iowa. Those two states should be sent to the end of the line for the next two elections.

[Chester]

I guess I don't understand your point here: "He "won" by convincing a lot of people that "winning" was just a matter of gaining and maintaining the lead in the delegate count." Wasn't getting the most delegates the objective of the primary?

Also, the Clinton 1992 campaign used "the math" argument to badger Jerry Brown out of the race so I guess what goes around...

[NatTurner]

Lance--

I don't understand your point about the committee's decision on the Michigan delegates. In one sentence, you (correctly) note that no delegate is required to vote for the candidate to which they're pledged (you make this point to support your argument that the committee should've just left the uncommitted delegates uncommitted, and let Hillary and Barack fight over them); and in the next sentence, you call the committee's decision to give Barack these uncommitted delegates "bad and illegitimate." But if it _really_ doesn't matter to whom a delegate is pledged, then what difference does it make if they're pledged to Hillary, Barack, or Uncommitted? According to your logic, Hillary and Barack can presumably fight over _all_ of the delegates, not just the ones pledged to Uncommitted--so what makes the committee's decision "bad and illegitimate"?? To me, your use of "illegitimate" is uncalled for in this case.

Nat

[Victoria]

Oh, siiiiigh. I have been so good at staying out of the arguments, even as I devour every shred of news on the campaigns. But here goes:

I believe we can all agree that Obama is an extremely savvy politician, in the non-Karl Rove sense. Better yet, he put together a whale of a team. Yay for our side.

About the six states jockeying position, the big difference is this: The four agreed-upon early states did some leap-frogging but they didn't violate the pre-Feb 5 window they were assigned. That no big states were allowed in the special upfront window is a good thing for us because it allows some fragile possibility that candidates with limited money can at least have a prayer of competing long enough to build financial traction. Florida and Michigan were punished because they pushed their way out of their agreed-upon window which threatened to destroy the whole concept of "the first four."

Lance, I'm confused by your saying, "At no point, though, did anybody 'rule' that Florida and Michigan would not matter at all. They were not going to be "disappeared." --- If no one ruled that, why were they "appealing the ruling" this weekend?

My understanding is that (a) the DNC rules require a sanction of losing no less than half the state delegates, and (b) the DNC originally sanctioned them by saying "zero delegates" because they were worried they were about to have a chaotic free-for-all and they wanted to send a strong message. I recall a number of people saying, "These votes in Florida and Michigan won't count for anything." That's certainly what friends in those states were telling me. Hillary said that.

Now, of course, there would probably be some peace-making later, but that's for insiders to understand; a lot of primary voters in those states just knew the first part.

I take it, from other entries, that you like the idea of having suspenseful conventions. Lance baby, let go of the PAST! I remember those late hot summer nights in front of the TV, too - but the times they have a changed. In the new media environment, it would be suicide for a convention at the very end of the summer.

About the press corps hating the Clinton's... (1) I remember also hearing from reasonable sources that in the beginning they were "afraid" of the Clinton's and holding their tongues. (2) I have seen early academic studies that say Hillary's press was nowhere near as negative as her team believes. (3) I also remember the story about the miserable chill between the traveling press and HRC, when she showed up with a tray of goodies for them on caucus day in Iowa. My question has always been WHY. Am hoping someone writes about this. - I'm actually looking forward to the post-election glut of analysis on multiple fronts because there's just so much we do not and cannot know at this point.

[Lance]

Victoria: Lance, I'm confused by your saying, "At no point, though, did anybody 'rule' that Florida and Michigan would not matter at all. They were not going to be "disappeared." --- If no one ruled that, why were they "appealing the ruling" this weekend?

Good question. Here's the answer. Because everybody knew there was an appeals process and that there would be an appeal. Also, because everybody involved knew that the whole mess was the result of stupid decisions and stupid mistakes and they wanted it undone. The process to undo it began immediately and Clinton was always up front about what she wanted to happen. She didn't change her mind after she discovered she needed Michigan and Florida she changed her tone. She became more urgent.

I've said before that I blame the state party leaders in FL and MI more than anyone. They thought the DNC was bluffing. Stupid. But the DNC were always acting like the cop who writes the ticket. But two judges were always going to hear the case, the RBC and the Credentials Committee. Both judges have a lot of discretion in interpreting and enforcing the "rules." The RBC could have given Clinton everything she asked for. Instead they gave Obama pretty much everything he wanted. Whether their decision would have been fair in the first case or was fair in the second is open to debate, but their power to make either decision isn't.

And, yes, once upon a time, I was in favor of open conventions, but that was before it became clear that if Clinton persisted it would be backfire on her and also before I read the chapter in Rick Perlstein's Nixonland about the 72 Democratic convention. I think I wrote a post about how I changed my mind.

[Mike Schilling]

The RBC could have given Clinton everything she asked for. Instead they gave Obama pretty much everything he wanted.

This is true only if you define "what Hillary asked for" as Lanny Davis's "Hillary gets all of her own votes and most of everybody else's."

[DCMike]

Jesus, what nonsense. Once again, a writer I've enjoyed immensely is seemingly driven round the bend by their desire to vindicate the Clinton campaign. I certainly understand, and share, the desire to make clear once and for all time that the press has been unbelievably unfair to the Clintons. I worked for a Democratic House Member during impeachment and it was an overwhelmingly depressing time. I wanted to throttle Maureen Dowd on a daily basis. But primary campaigns are ill suited to exorcising our demons of past slights.

Enough with the straw man arguments about how we all worship at the feet of Obama. Of course he's a politician. Of course he wanted to win and he did what he could to benefit himself. He and Clinton had exactly the same motivations, not pissing off NH and IA, in supporting the DNC decision on FL and MI. One thing they didn't share is power in actually making that decision. It's hard to remember since they've both been at the top for several months, but back in the fall, when the decision was made, Obama had no influence at all and the Democratic party was still essentially Clinton's party. Harold Ickes was there and voted to strip the delegations, Obama was an upstart among a group of hopefuls with no real power to influence the process. Obama didn't "see an opportunity" to do anything, he had no influence at that point.

Where on earth do you get, "but neither one ever agreed that Florida and Michigan's voters should never get their say in some way?" That was the explicit message. That is exactly why the DNC telegraphed the sanctions back in August and then backed it up with a vote stripping the delegates. The explicit message was, "if you break the rules the primary won't count." It was crystal clear right up through the day of voting, which is why so many people stayed home (and where's your concern for those poor disenfrancised souls) and everyone wrote them off as "beauty contests."

Was Obama unhelpful in getting revotes? Beats me. Beats you, too. There is no evidence at all one way or another. All anyone ever said from the Obama side was that they'd abide by whatever the DNC and the states worked out. Since the states wanted the DNC to pay for them to revote after defying the DNC's rules, it's not terribly shocking that a deal was not struck. MI and FL decided to play chicken with the DNC and their voters suffered but it's simply bullshit to attribute it to some nefarious "political hardball" strategy on the part of the Obama campaign.

This whole "we wuz robbed" attitude among Clinton supporters is baffling and the situational ethics being applied to try and justify retroactively changing the rules is just disgusting. It is laughable to somehow assert that the deck was somehow stacked against Clinton from the beginning when she, among all of the candidates, exerted the most influence over developing the ground rules of the game.

She tried hard, she got beat. It always feels unfair to lose but that feeling is not the same as having a case that injustice was done.

[MBunge]

"The process to undo it began immediately and Clinton was always up front about what she wanted to happen. She didn't change her mind after she discovered she needed Michigan and Florida she changed her tone. She became more urgent."

Please provide a link to the first time Hillary Clinton ever publicly stated that the sanctions against Florida and Michigan shouldn't be upheld.

Mike

[Scout]

I have little to add since some of the above posters made all of the salient points already, but I will say this: BE GLAD WE HAVE A POLITICIAN THIS SKILLED on our side. We need to end the death grip of Republican mis-rule and we cannot wait another four years to do it.