Tim Russert asked Ickes point blank this morning about her many appearances on television, talk radio, and conference call representations by Howard Wolfson, and in the national and international print media stating explicitly that Michigan was not a valid primary when she wanted to satisfy four states who crafted an agreement. Ickes gave an imperious wave of his hands, and mumbled that that was then, and now is now. Indeed.

Clinton signed this agreement. She was over the age of consent when she signed it, and her parents paid her tuition to Yale law school and she completed it. That made her a law school grad when she signed the document.

Many of us who treasure our votes dearly, have a ton of other things to do besides vote when the vote is make believe. Unfortunately, until the RBC met yesterday, at the time when Michigan conducted the clusterfuck, potentially 15% or more (and Marcy is in the catbird seat to arrive at this figure) did not turn out.

40 percent of Michigan voters (236,723 in total) opted to declare themselves “uncommitted,” many in protest of the DNC’s decision to withhold the delegates. By a huge margin, most of them would have voted for Obama. There were grassroots organizations like Detroiters for Uncommitted.

Trying to float the hypothesis as Ickes and Clinton’s supporters (Super D’s in Michigan made that their first proposal yesterday) for restoring the entire vote in Michigan to Clinton that no one in Detroit would have voted for Obama is like trying to float the proposition that no woman has ever put Babyface Edmonds’ tunes on their ipod. It’s a claim that’s false on its face (no pun).

If she tried to argue that after removing her name from the ballot voluntarily, I’d laugh at her myself.

Obama chose to remove his name from the ballot. His supporters should be question HIS judgement, because nothing required him to do so.

Marci, will all due respect (and I’m serious about that) you really can’t say what people thought in that room. That was a poltical power play accomplished by supporters of Barack Obama — those people were not acting in good faith.

Nor can you say that they thought that the election met the technical definition as I described it of “fair reflection”, which is not “what I wish I could do”, rather it is “what I will do within the option available to me.” Finally, as I noted earlier — in order for this to have been acceptable under the rules of the party, there had to be an implicit assumption that the district level delegates represented a “fair reflection”. So I don’t really think that you can say that the people in the meeting thought it was not a “fair reflection” as used in the rules.

Your declaring it a fair representation does not make it one; eventually a vote will do that and neither you nor I have a vote.

Marci, that is not the point. At NO point did anyone argue that the results of the primary election did not reflect the ACTIONS taken by the voters. They may have said “if Barack Obama was on the ballot, he would have gotten votes”…. but that is not relevant to the question of “fair reflection.”

(And of course, of those who crafted the compromise in MI, most were Hillary supporters; only one was an Obama supporter.)

and as I noted, the compromise was a political one, and included the provision that the delegation be seating with full voting power. Team Clinton was willing to compromise by tacitly allowing all the uncommitted delegates to vote for Obama, and by releasing four of her own delegates to vote for Obama — but only if she recieved the BENEFIT of the compromise in full. That is why Ickes was upset.

2) I’m happy to say they should have just punted to Credentials (as I said, both in the post and my comment). I can agree that would have been the most appropriate thing to do according to the rules. I’m assuming that, since you think RBC didn’t have the authority to do what it did, then you agree it should have gone to credentials once it determined by a large majority that MI’s primary was not a fair reflection.

no. I would have accepted the FULL compromise, because the primary results represented a “Fair Reflection”, and the compromise could have been achieved (more or less) within the rules if you decide that an ambiguous provision of the rules meant what it said, rather than what it was clearly intended to say.

While one option would have been to accept the michigan delegation as voted in the primary with a recommendation to the credential committee that would have reassigned four of Clinton’s delegates to Obama with the agreement of all parties, that didn’t have to happen as long as Clinton named four Obama supporters among those eligible to serve as delegates for her.

So where would that have put us? First, it would have added uncertainty to the process because it would be unclear when a candidate had to cross the win threshold, though probably Obama would have crossed the threshold in the next week anyway. Then, a month after a candidate presumably passed the threshold, a committee would get together and (unless Ickes had improved his argument about fair representation), cast a similar vote and then try to craft a fair solution. At that point, if the committee came to the same conclusion, they might have just said 50-50.

while they could have… but the point is that it would not have happened, because politically, it was suicidal for the Party (and Obama) not to have this resolved. Team Clinton could have made it clear that a compromise was possible that was acceptable to the leadership of the Michigan democratic Party, and that Obama supporters on the committee had made it impossible to reach that compromise.

Marci, the real problem here was the overreaching of the Rules Committee in the first place. It should have been settled in the rules committee, but that settlement should have been achieved under the rules.

And in the process, MI would continue to be a political football, with people who have little understanding of the facts on the ground making claims that have no basis in reality and that ignore that, when people had a choice to select people to fill uncommitted slots, they overwhelmingly supported Obama explicitly. In the process, we would remain distracted from getting the coordinated campaign going.

Just to clarify, YOU (plural) would have been distracted from getting the co-ordinated OBAMA campaign going. I’m not part of that “we” you’re talking about here. See, I think its far more vital to this nation that Hillary Clinton be elected President than that the Democratic Party settle on a nominee. And the longer the resolution remains in limbo, the better it is for this nation. I’m an American first, and (soon to be former, I suspect) Democrat second, and I personally don’t think that Obama is fit for the office of President — anymore than I thought George Bush is fit for the office of President.

Now, I can see both sides of this argument–the pragmatic one that implements an arguably flawed solution, or the principled one that puts MI at further risk come November. All I was trying to do with this post was point out that–as soon as a large majority of the RBC concluded that Mark Brewer was making a more persuasive argument that Harold Ickes, then those are the only two choices you’re faced with.

Marci, you do realize that there is a sunshine provision in the DNC rules, don’t you. You also realize that an hour lunch took well over three hours, that the agenda that was announced at the beginning is NOT the agenda that occurred after lunch, and that there were dozens of reports that deliberations were expect to last for hours, don’t you?

This had nothing to do with people operating in good faith being persuaded by one person or another. This was a political power play, worked out in secret in violation of DNC rules. (According to Katz, Obama had the votes for a 50-50 split….tell me that has ANYTHING that could possibly be called a fair reflection in light of this polling data.)

No one operating in good faith could have approved this outcome. People operating in good faith would have seated Florida in full with full voting power, because the rules are very vague with regard to what consitutes “positive provable” steps to stay within the timing rules, and all they had to do was say “oops, we made a mistake, and after further consideration realize that you qualify for a waiver.”

Although a good portion of it has been recently dismissed, Dan Rather’s suit against CBS still has enough viable discovery to potentially uncover much of the swiftboating content and CBS’s complicity in blocking information on Bush’s fraudulent claims as to actual military service, particularly in the Guard in Alabama where his dad manuevered for him to trin for a plane never going to Nam and where he failed to show for a physical exam when he was assigned to train for a plane that was. Marcy has done a blog on this subject, and Bmaz, Mary and others made some excellent comments.

Nearly all chickenhawks in Bush’s administration or his supporters in the Senate dodged military service as you know from your time spent researching.

Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Saxby Chamblis are three prime examples. The children of Cheney and Chambliss have shown no interest whatsoever in supporting the Iraq fiasco by serving there because they are afraid to go as were Cheney and Chambliss in the Viet Nam conflict.

What bothers me though, besides attacking Marcy for things she definitely hasn’t said, who has given you well written serious answers and spent time doing it, is that I read your claims a thread or two ago, and wrote this to you:

You never butress your broad claims with facts

Your candidate and your points for her are in the should, woulda, coulda territory.

Marcy doesn’t want debates about the relative merits/positives/negatives of candidate x on her blogs, and as I said to you in the first link, I’d be happy to counter your claims somewhere else.Cliff’s blog has a context for that and a tab here. Maybe you have a blog with a comment area for this type content. I know that distinction may be a little difficult when there are threads on the DNC’s process in this primary, but I understand it.

If you do want to debate your sweeping comments on Obama/Clinton on another space, you have to provide facts to butress claims that go “Candidate X is losing voters as time progresses” or “Candidate X has many negatives or Candidate Y has positives that you like.” It’s impossible to respond to you by reading your mind.

As to my second link, without getting into a debate here on a candidate’s relative merits or lack of them, because Marcy has requested that not happen on her blog, you have been advocating for Senator Clinton it seems.

Marcy has parsed in detail why the clusterfuck wasn’t a legitimate primary vote, and why Ickes is simply full of it. His collegues on the RBC proved they thought this with their votes, and Obama had the votes without conceding anything besides 50-50 had he wanted to. He’s been generous. I personally i don’t believe there is anything graceful or classy about Clinton’s exit conduct thus far, nor that she plans to exit on Wednesday.

That’s why what has been organized is to exit her swiftly and finally this week. This election is vitally necessary for Dems and we don’t have the luxury of allowing a candidate to play make believe for two more months to September. It’s not going to happen. What I’m trying to tell you in the most respectful way, is that Senator Clinton is no longer in the driver’s seat for this primary. She doesn’t have any real choice. She can concede or she will be exited. She’s not in a driver’s seat–the train long ago left the station and she’s not on it.

Senator Clinton could be very helpful, but many of us expect her to be anything but. She has been hurtful in many ways to the Democratic candidacy for November 2008 in ways that haven’t advanced her chances, and I believe speak to her personality.

Obama only needs about 20 Super D’s and he’s going to get something like 4 times that many Wednesday to Friday if not some sooner. He has at least a two gain today.

Obama only needs about 20 Super D’s and he’s going to get something like 4 times that many Wednesday to Friday if not some sooner. He has at least a two gain today. He has Nevada’s Yvonne Gates and will have Maryland’s Donna Edwards since Al Winn is resigning this weekend.

Come Wednesday, you’re going to be in the world of shoulda, coulda, mighta but Clinton will be gone whether Senator Clinton recognizes the reality or not. There is a good chance she will not.

They’re fighting hard, but acting like spoiled babies.

Same goes for Hillary’s argument that she has the popular vote when she knows she’s leaving out the caucus-goers.

This will probably be my last comment, because you continue to misread both the meaning and the content of my post. I’m not trying to persuade you that the Clusterfuck was a fair representation–you’re not going to agree. I’m trying to point out that a majority of people in the room believed it was not a fair representation, and certain possible outcomes necessarily follow from that, none of which is the seating of MI’s delegation at 73-55.

1) You are making an argument about “fair representation” that a large majority of the RBC found to be uncompelling. What you think and what I think is completely irrelevant. What matters is what a majority of the people in that room thought. Harold Ickes said the most important principle was fair representation, everyone on RBC agreed to that principle, but Harold Ickes’ argument failed to win the most votes about whether or not MI was a “fair representation”–failed by a large margin. Your declaring it a fair representation does not make it one; eventually a vote will do that and neither you nor I have a vote. Perhaps Ickes could have made a better argument, or perhaps most people who look at the facts of the MI primary believe it does not reflect fair representation. But for some reason, a majority voted against treating it as a fair reflection, including at least 4 Hillary supporters. (And of course, of those who crafted the compromise in MI, most were Hillary supporters; only one was an Obama supporter.)

2) I’m happy to say they should have just punted to Credentials (as I said, both in the post and my comment). I can agree that would have been the most appropriate thing to do according to the rules. I’m assuming that, since you think RBC didn’t have the authority to do what it did, then you agree it should have gone to credentials once it determined by a large majority that MI’s primary was not a fair reflection.

So where would that have put us? First, it would have added uncertainty to the process because it would be unclear when a candidate had to cross the win threshold, though probably Obama would have crossed the threshold in the next week anyway. Then, a month after a candidate presumably passed the threshold, a committee would get together and (unless Ickes had improved his argument about fair representation), cast a similar vote and then try to craft a fair solution. At that point, if the committee came to the same conclusion, they might have just said 50-50.

And in the process, MI would continue to be a political football, with people who have little understanding of the facts on the ground making claims that have no basis in reality and that ignore that, when people had a choice to select people to fill uncommitted slots, they overwhelmingly supported Obama explicitly. In the process, we would remain distracted from getting the coordinated campaign going.

Now, I can see both sides of this argument–the pragmatic one that implements an arguably flawed solution, or the principled one that puts MI at further risk come November. All I was trying to do with this post was point out that–as soon as a large majority of the RBC concluded that Mark Brewer was making a more persuasive argument that Harold Ickes, then those are the only two choices you’re faced with. A bunch of people who have been around Democratic politics longer than I–including Don Fowler, who obviously recognized it was a flawed in terms of the rules–decided to go with the pragmatic, arguably flawed (per the rules) decision. I take that to mean they believe the political football that MI has been for the last 5 months is a worse evil than a solution that may overstep the RBC authority.

As a self confessed, borderline-useless heathen, I object to you attributing my mild, ill-informed speculations to, and using them to attack the leader of this blog.

Find the door on your own. Enough heads have been thumped during the last few days to last till 1/09.

does that include Hillary Clinton… because you’d probably spend all your time going “INTOLERABLE! INTOLERABLE! if it did.