Thank goodness for Eugene Robinson, who appears to be the only one to call this nonsense out:
Recall that the Michigan primary, like the Florida contest, was not legitimate. Period. As far as the party was concerned — and as far as Clinton herself was concerned, before she fell behind Barack Obama — the primary never happened. None of the candidates campaigned in Michigan. Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot.
Yet, in the interest of party unity, the rules committee came up with a formula that gave Clinton credit for 69 delegates that she “won” running virtually unopposed in a vote that technically never took place. Ickes and the angry Clinton supporters who protested the committee meeting objected to the fact that Obama was awarded Michigan delegates that he didn’t win. But Clinton, too, was awarded delegates she didn’t win, because — remember? — there was no legitimate Michigan primary.
One of the things that is so maddening about the Clinton campaign is their ability to reshape the media narrative, and then have everyone act and react to their alternate reality, rather than to the simple facts. This is yet another example of that- people running around having to react to the hysterical notion that delegates were “stolen” or “hijacked.”
Grover Cleveland
AP saying she will “acknowledge” tonight that Obama has the delegates to secure the nomination… whatever that means!
D.N. Nation
Even Terry Mac is throwing in the towel.
I’m really really really curious what the ridiculous Hillary apologists will do for the next few months if she concedes and even semi-endorses.
joe
Oh, just stop talking about it.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Why?
sunny
Icky has just come on MSNBC to *deny the accuracy of the AP report* that Clinton will concede and acknowledge Obama as the nominee. Continues to say Hillary will be strongest candidate in the general.
pharniel
i think that was what they’d do.
kinda like when the wingnut-o-sphere get’s told right proper, they pretend that it never happened.
El Cid
This is not entirely correct. The Rules & Bylaws Committee did not come up with that formula of delegate selection.
That count arose from the Michigan Democratic Party’s actual Congressional District Conventions. From those, the MDP then recommended that as the delegate count they would request the RBC to recognize.
So, it seems like the people who always determine the Michigan delegate count by party rules did so, as always.
Then, at the RBC, the delegate count submitted by the Michigan Democratic Party was offered as one of the proposals for the RBC, the RBC voted, and it accepted the Michigan Democratic Party delegate count as determined by the Michigan Democratic Party’s own Congressional District Conventions.
zzyzx
She might have denied that but check out this Ickles quote:
Fingers crossed.
Jake
It seems clear to me that Team Clinton is having message control issues this AM. Christ I’m really sick of this bunch. The day-in-day-out drama has just been unbearable.
Is there really any doubt a Hillary White House would be about 10 times worse?
Crusty Dem
Ugh, Americanlog has the Clinton campaign denying the AP report. And so it continues, on and on, in a world without end. Amen.
ed
It is nice to see Hillary up on Eight Bells, still going to the whip. This filly is all heart, she has no quit in her!
Hillary’s campaign, like the fatally injured race horse, will have to be put down. The drug injected will be a promise of no further money or support for her senatorial re-election, or the governorship of NY, from the DNC. I suspect the needle has already been inserted.
w vincentz
Two years ago, Harold and Terry took positions that are 180 degrees away from their current positions re DNC rules. At least Terry is willing to face reality. Harold is a hanger-oner.
Look folks, the shock has set in. The “deal making”, “denial”, “anger” continues to unfold. They’ll get to the “acceptance” someday. The remainder of the “grief” process will unfold this week. It will start with Hillary’s speech tonight. It’s the only way she can bring them back form the brink.
Give it a little time. Barack will be gracious and sympathetic.
Shit like this is something I’ve seen firsthand watching 3rd graders at recess. The story plays out the same everytime. Same with funerals.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Stay classy, ed.
D.N. Nation
Jake- Exactly. The Clinton campaign has been poorly managed up until the very end.
sunny
xxyzx-
Ickes himself on MSNBC denied a Thursday end to this mess.
What we are seeing here is Clinton camp infighting, I do believe.
Apsaras
Right now, the only thing that has me worried is that a number of the senate superdelegates “strongly support” an Obama/Clinton ticket. God willing, they won’t try to leverage Obama into adding Clinton to his ticket. She adds nothing but significant negatives to his campaign.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Cue ‘Yakity Sax’.
ed
Wow. I have never seen any discussion of the Clintons include the word “class” before.
slippytoad
On the contrary, she brings the Insane Elderly Woman demographic, which will be crucial in November.
zzyzx
This is Ickles denial quote on MSNBC, “She will say what she will say when she says it.”
That was a response to what she would say if Obama got to the magic number today. To me that says that he is not going to concede for Clinton, but that’s not much of a denial.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
If they are this good at winding down a simple election campaign, imagine how much better they would be at orchestrating a withdrawl from Iraq.
Catfish N. Cod
If McAuliffe beats Wolfson on predicting Hillary’s actions, I will be proved a poli-prognostication genius.
C&C: I think she’s going to force Obama to pull out enough supers to actually get 2118—by whatever private count she is using—and only then will she negotiate.
McAuliffe: Yeah, I think that if Sen. Obama gets the numbers, I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him, and call him the nominee.
w vincentz
zzyzx,
I’m just guessing cause I’m not in Chappequa listening to her phone conversations. Seems, I’m guessing. that she’s looking at her options and trying to salvage a position. She offers to bring the older women, hispanics, disgruntled blue collars. Barack needs them.
I don’t think he’ll offer the VP to her for this. Perhaps he’ll give her a major role in a cabinet position where she can push her health care agenda, and thereby preserve dignity. Otherwise, she’s toast.
sunny
Ickes also said, after mentioning he had talked to folks on Capitol Hill yesterday: “Mr. Obama does not, *will not* have the nomination”. Full stop. He did not qualify this statement by saying “by tonight” or “by Thursday”.
I’m left wondering if some truly serious strong-arming of superdels is going on as we speak.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
IMHO some of Hillary’s draw was due to machine politics and name recognition, rather than personal appeal. I would be cautious in evaluating how much she adds to the ticket with some of these demographic groups, compared with Obama reaching out to the established party hierarchy more broadly.
For example I live in an area which did reasonably well for Hillary in the primary but a lot of her support was due to traditional institutionalised patronage politics, and enthusiasm for her has fallen dramatically as her chances at getting the nomination have faded. I think a lot of the wire-pullers who were able to turn voters out for Hillary are looking for a gravy train, not necessarily Hillary exclusively, but just somebody who will punch their ticket.
Just Some Fuckhead
Rumor has it there is a tape of al-Sadr accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. When this tape is released, we’ll win.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Or maybe there aren’t enough lifeboats to go around, to save all the career pols in the HRC campaign. We may be seeing a split between the staff who can see themselves getting jobs and building careers in a new Obama-centric party, vs. those who have burned too many bridges for that.
That would explain why so many mixed messages are coming out of her campaign at multiple levels.
Frank
Jesus John for an Obama supporter that was an unexpectedly pro-Hillary point to make. If Obama really can’t reshape the media narrative, and then have everyone act and react to (his) … reality, then he is fucked. Even if he manages to somehow get elected he can’t ever have anything other than a failed presidency.
sunny
AP:
“The former first lady *will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race* in her speech in New York City.”
kwAwk
Jake Says:
Yes. There is a lot of doubt.
kwAwk
ed Says:
This is where O-bots leave reality behind. This was not a landslide victory by Obama by any measuring stick. To think you are going to try to run somebody who got the most votes in a nominating process ever and 29% of the delegates out of the party?
That is funny, and pretty stupid.
kwAwk
ed Says:
This is where O-bots leave reality behind. This was not a landslide victory by Obama by any measuring stick. To think you are going to try to run somebody who got the most votes in a nominating process ever and 49% of the delegates out of the party?
That is funny, and pretty stupid.
kwAwk
Sorry about the duplicated posting, I thought I’d hit the stop button in time.
w vincentz
It’s all about leverage. Toss in a bit of perception. Sprinkle with “resoring dignity” and maybe she can bake a “Credibility Cake”.
Or, if it’s kept baking for too long, it will be burned to a crisp.
She should have stuck with cookies.
John Cole
Why does Obama need to create a narrative about the nomination fight? He won. That is why he is attacking McCain, and the Clinton’s are spinning about this “not being over yet.”
Jesus.
ET
After 8 years of having this administration reshaping the narrative (or reality as that person quoted in the Suskind piece) – this has to be one of the biggest reasons for me to NOT vote for Clinton. I don’t think I can take 4 more years of life on the other side of the Looking Glass.
Brachiator
It’s not about O-bots vs Hill-bots. “Most votes in a nominating process” is not really accurate, and in any case is irrelevant. It is the delegate and superdelegate count that matters. The majority of superdelegates are people who have their own political careers to think of, and here, Senator Clinton’s defiance of the Party might have negative consequences for her. Despite her showing in the primary, she is at the end of the day a junior senator from NY. She is not dealing from a position of strength.
MBunge
“If Obama really can’t reshape the media narrative, and then have everyone act and react to (his) … reality, then he is fucked.”
It’s pretty clear that the Obama people decided that not engaging the Clintons was the best strategy. They had the nomination locked up and there was nothing the Clintons could do about it, so they stopped fighting. That meant they weren’t inflicting damage to Hillary, but they also weren’t hurting themselves and were limiting the scope of Hillary’s attacks. If Obama had gone into West Virginia and Kentucky like the campaign was still going on, he might have lost by a smaller margin but he would have produced daily campaign stories in the media that just would have added more fuel to the fire.
Frankly, Obama’s ability to recognize when he doesn’t need to fight is impressive compared to the mindless aggression we see from Hillary and company up to the very last moment.
Mike
Krista
Horseshit. Clinton’s supporters can’t be pigeonholed into one category, nor can they all be called insane (nor are they all women). Yes, there are some who steadfastly refuse to accept that their candidate is behind and has no practical hope of winning the nomination, and who have been very destructive during this process.
But there are others who just flat-out preferred Hillary, and are disappointed at how things are turning out, just as many of us would have been disappointed had Obama been in that position. I can empathize with those people. They were excited about the idea of Hillary being president. It’s never easy to get emotionally invested in an idea and then to see that it’s not going to happen.
To say that Clinton’s supporters are just a bunch of crazy old women is not only inaccurate, it’s insulting to the large majority of her supporters, whose more reasonable voices are being drowned out by the Hilaryis44 type of crowd. I’m certain that some of Obama’s supporters are utter asshats as well, and I certainly don’t want people to judge me by what they see from them.
So maybe we should extend Hillary’s supporters the benefit of the doubt, and shrug off the nuttier ones, ’cause every group’s got ’em.
Frank
Ok John I get it its “maddening” when the Clintons do it but it is fine when Obama does it. I forgot that you never care a bout fairness or reason. I just have to remember that you used to be a Republican for a reason.
kwAwk
Its not about the primary and who won, it was a post about the absurd notion that Obama has somehow banished Hillary and Bill from the Democratic Party. Whether all of the votes were counted by the DNC or not Hillary won the most votes.
John Cole
Frank- there is a difference between shaping the narrative to better reflect reality, something Obama is going to do to show why mcCain and his policies would be horrible for the country, and shaping the narrative to some sort of alternate reality THAT SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST.
Brachiator
As I noted before, it is not true that Hillary won the most votes. And as I noted before, even had she won the most votes, this would be utterly meaningless. It’s kinda like someone claiming that they should be elected president because they won the popular vote but clearly lost the electoral vote.
Also, I never claimed that Obama had banished Hillary and Bill from the Democratic Party, nor is that the conclusion of many of the remarks in this thread. The point was, and is, that Hillary Clinton damaging her own future in the party by behaving as though she is a law unto herself. And some of her supporters are having such a good time admiring Senator Clinton’s toughness and drive that they forget that the point is to defeat the Republicans in the general election.
kwAwk
John Cole Says:
Yeah, he means like shaping the narritive to show that covering everybody with healthcare is the same as covering everybody but a few million people with healthcare.
Or like how your Pastor of 20 years who married you and baptised your children and who was prone to say outrageous things was prone to say outrageious and sometimes racist things but you didn’t know it.
Cause Obama different. Don’t you get it?
John Cole
Both healthcare plans are just markers until single-payer. And as a Clinton supporter, do you really want to talk about Hillary’s awesome track record of handling health care.
Should we talk about Hillary Clinton and the Family?
Seriously, have you picked up your Mccain 2008 bumpersticker yet?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
To the extent that the Clintons have been moved from the center to the periphery of the Democratic party it is their own doing and not something that Obama is in any way responsible for. They have only themselves to blame for the campaign tactics they chose to use which alienated a great many people who used to support them (here’s a clue: how did MoveOn.org get its name?).
“Hard working white Americans” is a quote that will hang around Hillary’s neck like a millstone for the rest of her political career. Using the Republican meme of “latte sipping elites” will leave a mark. Obama did not force them to do any of that.
No matter how many times you repeat this BS, it will still be BS. The mental gymnastics you have to go thru to fiddle with the numbers so as to make them come out the way you want them to are just embarrassing. Stop making your candidate look like something out of a Dilbert cartoon. See above, for “Clintons, no longer respected by many Democrats, reasons for”.
kwAwk
John Cole – Its about all of the claims about how the Clintons do one thing and Obama doesn’t which are easily disproved. Obama is claimed to only spin the narritive towards the truth, but I don’t seem to remember Obama making any claim that his plan is simply a trojan horse. If Mr. Unity Pony is really aiming at single payer, shouldn’t he be making that case if he stands for always telling the truth and not being a ‘typical politician’?
And no I haven’t gotten my McCain 2008 bumper sticker yet, but I obviously haven’t gotten my Obama 2008 bumper sticker either.
As far as ‘The Family’ I could really care less. Are you going to actually try to convince me that Bill and Hillary are closet Nazis?
sbj
So let’s follow the ‘logic’ here. Eugene says that the Florida and Michigan primaries were illegitimate. So far as the party is concerned, no primary took place in either state coz they broke the rules. However, in the interest of party unity, the RBC gives Hillary all of the delegates she won in Florida based on that illegitimate primary. You see where I am going here.
If both primaries are illegitimate, as Eugene contends, then why did the RBC use the results in Florida to doll out delegates, but not use the results from Michigan? Are you arguing that Florida and Michigan were both illegtimate but Florida was less so because Obama’s name was on the ballot? Weak! Are you arguing that Florida was legitimate? Then why the 50% penalty? Are you arguing that the Michigan primary was illegitimate but the Michigan delegate proposal was legit? Then why the 50% penalty for timing when the supposedly too early primary isn’t being used for anything? There’s no way to square this circle.
Geeno
I don’t know kwAwk; are you trying to convince us that Obama hates the US?
asl
McAuliffe, Wolfson, Ickes, etc. aren’t fighting each other. They’re orchestrating a series of head fakes that sets up the ‘this still isn’t clear’ moment.
They’ve done these head fakes before many times. Carville says he has an unsigned check for Obama dated June 3. HRC says in a debate that she’ll fight for whoever the nominee is.
It will come down to tonight when HRC will declare ‘hold on! we still don’t have a clear nominee because popular vote, delegates can change, etc, etc.
Sleeper
The RBC ruled that Florida’s primary was legitimate but too early, and thus restored their delegates but ounitively halved each delegate’s vote. But Michigan was a hopeless clusterfuck. That primary was essentially thrown out, and the Michigan state party, based on data from each county party, drew up a slate which they felt best represented the feelings of their state.
Both states were penalized for jumping ahead, but only Florida’s primary was considered a valid one, precisely for the reason that it wasn’t a contest when most of the contenders had taken their names off the ballot.