Obama Questions Nevada Caucus Lawsuit - "all of the sudden, they decide they want to change rules"

[jefferson_dem]

Obama Questions Nevada Caucus Lawsuit
By Jeff Zeleny

LAS VEGAS – At a rally this afternoon, Senator Barack Obama questioned the timing and legitimacy of a lawsuit that had been filed here seeking to prevent caucuses from being held Saturday in nine casinos on the Las Vegas strip.
“Are we going to let a bunch of lawyers try to prevent us from bringing about change in America?” Mr. Obama said, speaking to members of the Culinary workers union, which has endorsed his candidacy.

A federal judge is expected to rule this week on a lawsuit filed against the Nevada Democratic Party by the state teachers’ union, which believes that nine “at-large” caucus locations at casinos provide an unfair advantage to Mr. Obama. Why? Culinary union members and other shift-workers who are on the job Saturday will be allowed to take an hour break to caucus near their workplace in a hotel ballroom, rather than return to their home precincts.

The rules were approved by the Democratic National Committee months ago. But criticism began after the Culinary union here – the state’s largest – endorsed Mr. Obama last week.

“As soon as you decided, I’m going to support the outsider, I’m going to support the new guy, I’m going to support the guy who is standing with the working people instead of the big shots,” Mr. Obama told union members here, “all of the sudden, they decide they want to change the rules.”

The lawsuit was filed late Friday by the Nevada State Education Association. The group has not endorsed a candidate, but several officials involved in the legal action are closely associated with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign here. The campaign has not taken a formal position.

Asked about it Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mrs. Clinton said, “The courts and the state party will have to work it out.”

“The caucus idea is for neighbors to get together to argue and talk about their choices,” she said. “The problem is that if you have a limited period of time, as I pointed out long before anything happened in Nevada, you’re going to essentially leave people out who can’t be there during those one to two-hour periods of time.”

Then, she added: “I haven’t read the lawsuit. The coverage of it seems to suggest that some people are saying, ‘Well, wait a minute. What about us? Those are not our workplaces. We have to be at work. How are we going to participate?”

Lawyers for the state party were studying the lawsuit and intend to reply as early as Monday. This could shape up as the biggest wild card of the zany Nevada caucuses.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/obama-questions-nevada-caucus-lawsuit/

[Joe the Revelator]

1. I'm really glad to see him address this. nt

[jefferson_dem]

3. Contrast his *democratic* position with Hillary's feigned ignorance...

shrouded in slithery political double-speak.

[Cha]

11. Yeah! It's

Monster and Monsterous!

[jasmine621]

22. Who is "they?" People who think they are being denied equal voting

access? Obama had better watch how he handles this allegation.

[cali]

31. oh, I don't think Obama's the one who should be

worrying. For once the press is actually connecting the dots and has made it clear to Nevada dems that people close to the Clinton campaign are pressing this lawsuit. She's in trouble because of it.

[babylonsister]

2. Good for Obama; he's exactly right! And I'm glad he's sharing

with the audience what's going on. I'm sure they're impressed. Not!

[Ian David]

4. I question why the caucuses have a two-drink minimum.

But I like the fact that they come with free buffet tickets and $20 worth of casino chips.

Having Penn & Teller announce the tallies is great, too.

I'm kidding.

[Infinite Hope]

5. Hm, locations could be biased. I can see the argument. Though...

any location in Vegas could be biased.

[papau]

6. Obama only won his first political race because of his lawsuits - does he really want to there?

[FrenchieCat]

7. Can you clarify this one sentence drive-by spam you seem to be depositing

like fertilizing manure on various threads?

Thank you.

[jackson_dem]

20. What clarification? Obama got all his opponents off the ballot through lawyers

What a hypocrite. Karma sucks, doesn't it Barack?

[cali]

32. not that you will, as you never do post links to your outrageous

accusations about Obama, but- Post a damned link to that fucking claim.

[dionysus]

25. ziiiiiiiiing!

spot on!

[Cha]

12. Yeah, Obama wants to go where

justice is served.

[Pirate Smile]

17. He didn't try to change the rules. He played by the rules.

Somebody changed their mind and tried to force him out. He played hardball in response but only by actually applying the rules to them.

[papau]

26. force him out is also called run against him via petition in an election

[MADem]

8. If the CWU endorsed his opponent, I'd expect him to do the same exact thing.

There is a clear-cut equal protection issue at play here. We'll find out how the judge rules soon enough.

That said, if the shoe were on the other foot, and Obama failed to have someone in his corner file the exact same suit, I would consider him a below-par campaigner and a rank amateur, frankly.

The larger picture: Caucuses really do suck. One voter, one vote is a much fairer way to do it. That pedestrian primary system enables EVERYONE to participate via the absentee ballot process, even if they have to work or they get deployed to Iraq or some other hell hole.

[dailykoff]

9. Except that he'd already agreed to it

as did Hillary, apparently. Do you have any evidence that Obama is a welcher?

[MADem]

14. Which is why he shouldn't do it himself, but he should have friends that care enough about his

candidacy to step in for him.

And if he didn't have friends like that, he'd have a lousy organization.

This is politics, not a tea party.

"Welching" (and spelling aside, I have to cue the anti-racist PC police--that is a SLUR against the Welsh! Given all the recent headlines about racial slurs, you need to watch your language, now!! And let me tell you--the Welsh take that one rather seriously, and they really don't find it funny in the slightest...) has absolutely nothing to do with it, because NO CANDIDATE filed that suit.

The candidate is not responsible for the actions of those who aren't directly affiliated with the campaign. Even if they are 'simpatico' about the issue.

This is politics--if you think this is rough, you'd better hang on.

[cloudythescribbler]

21. No one is saying it's "too rough", only that it's sleazy and reveals much about HRC and her campaign

Meanwhile, there are quite a few DUers out there who are still harping on the McClurking matter (to which there is so much less than meets the eye) and accusing Obama supporters of "smearing" Hillary Clinton on this issue.

A recent thread by anti-imperialist was devoted to the latter subject.

It seems that there are swarms of trolls -- VERY MUCH UNLIKE THE SUPPORT FOR OBAMA -- who are out there and ready to mobilize either attacking some of the most elementary and obvious observations about how the Clinton campaign has been introducing the race issue in a calculatingly devisive way, or at least temporarily shutting down discussion of the exit poll/reported election result divergence in NH (so these trolls must have some influence in how DU is run, it seems to me), etc. It is amazing how, in LESS THAN ONE WEEK since the NH primary, people have already said that the "divisive" issue of "racism" -- how the HRC campaign and leading spokespeople (in one less publicized instance, with Bill Clinton himself making a provocative favorable comparison of his wife to Nelson Mandela) are using the race issue -- is already passe. Meanwhile, literally after MONTHS, there are DAILY threads about McClurkin and related themes.

I have seen this sort of phenomenon at the astroturf roots of the American left in MANY venues -- WBAI, where there are always swarms of callers to support HIV denialism, and other favorite causes like the 9/11 Horseshit movement (called a "Truth" movement) -- in Berkeley CA in the 80s and early 90s (as authentic progressives were dropping like flies, 'natural causes' or 'accidents' of course), and now in some quarters of the current rebirthing of sds (for those who don't know, sds (students for a democratic society, rebirthed as sds/mds, also MOVEMENT for a democratic society) was the foremost anti-imperialist movement in US history (in the 60s). Now that the cancer of imperialism has advanced to much more perilous stages in our country, where it seems obvious that even the sham republic that we DO have is fast disappearing (eg Gore v Bush), it is certainly time for a contemporary version of sds.

But wherever there are important progressive efforts, there are people (not excluding at least SOME of both good faith and intelligence) who collect in droves pursuing agendae just like I have observed at DU.

OK, let the protestations & dismissals fly.

I recommend not only addressing this issue, but reading Arthur Conan Doyle's "Red Headed League", just to warm up the synapses, if nothing else .......

[MADem]

28. I don't even regard it as sleazy. I regard it as politics.

I find it funny as hell that the same people who are squealing like stuck pigs about this are the same people who were telling me to shut the fuck up when I raised the issue of voter disenfranchisement of the working class schmucks who worked midshifts, to say nothing of those in hospital and in the military, in Iowa. I was told it was a great tradition, and the people of IOWA should be the ones to make their own halfassed rules, and that I had no business commenting about how urban and minority voters don't get the same bang for their choice as do the rural voters.

Well, here we have citizens of NV bringing a suit to their courts on a similar matter. And like I have said, if the shoe were on the other foot and the suit would have benefitted Obama, his peeps should have been ready to step up and do the same thing.

This ain't a bridge game...this is bare knuckle politics, and if Obama is too genteel to play it I'd be surprised and disappointed. THe fact that he's squawking shows that he has an idea how the system works, after all--rile up your peeps and get THEM to carry water for you...

[cloudythescribbler]

29. I agree that the Iowa caucuses, as HRC said, should have done more to accomodate ...

all voters. I am not aware that anyone IN A TIMELY WAY tried to raise that issue and was squelched, nor am I aware of Obama or anyone with ties to him REMOTELY like the close ties of those bringing the lawsuit have to HRC being involved in any attempt to make the process in Iowa any less fair. I don't know who lambasted you or exactly why (often people, I am not saying you, will tone down what they say and then complain that merely for saying 'x' they were pilloried).

(further digression: A recent example of the latter was someone who made the reasonable point that HRC's race baiting was apparently drawing more white support to her in S Carolina, with polls as evidence, for which they said they were pilloried. But in fact, the person really cast Obama's campaign as somehow responsible for this and as partly or even largely to blame, which IS offensive, at least to me. Race-baiting is NOT a strategy that requires co-operation of the target candidate ('two to tango') in what I'm sure you would describe as the real world of politics.)

Now, as for NV, HRC is pointedly remaining silent/neutral about this suit brought by a number of her political allies who are able to control the policy of a major union in NV. As with the silence of W Bush on the Swiftboaters, it is the silence of what might be termed 'passive complicity'. To in any way tacitly condone the politics of disenfranchisement, here disenfranchising workers, in particular a union that is 40% Latino, is a politically dangerous game. Let's not be too "realistic" about our realism. The issues of disenfranchisement and race-baiting by HRC and her allies if understood generally by Democratic primary voters (who tend to be more politically concerned than the majority who don't vote, and the many who are Repugs) might very well lead to a backlash hardly limited to blacks and the politically correct left.

Say I'm dreaming -- and I admit this won't happen unless Obama supporters make the issues clear, and somehow gain more traction, but it is NOT impossible. Again, the MSM role is key.

At any rate, I see disenfranchisement aimed lawsuits as sleazy, especially where their timing reveals that their purported concern for fairness is a sham and a scam pretext.

[MADem]

30. It is said that Clinton has a massive advantage amongst the hispanic voters

She and her people have been working the latino issues left, right and center, and that forty percent of the CWU that is latino may not march in 'union lockstep' IF they are separated from their work center bosses who, in an open caucus environment, can easily 'bully' their subordinates into toeing the line. That's certainly a part of the motivation behind this business that no one is talking about, along with the stated issue of equal protection that is cited in the lawsuit.

If the CWU workers are allowed to caucus at their home precincts, it will be harder for the union bosses to force them to vote the union way if they are disinclined to so do--they'll have the support of their friends, neighbors and family members to vote the way that they want to, and not the way the union tells them to.

[MGKrebs]

33. Did they?

This appears to be approved by the DNC. No info if the candidates had anything to say about it. But even if they did, when you look at a rule that makes it easier for a group of people to vote, you might say sure why not. But then when another group comes in and manipulates that rule to give one candidate an advantage over the others, then suddenly you have a problem, the rule isn't fair anymore.

[sandnsea]

16. There isn't, it's as phony as it comes

Lots of people have to work during caucus times. That's all there is to it. State law says the party makes the caucus rules and lays out how the caucus weighs the vote. This is such a load of bullshit.

[MADem]

18. I'm not getting excited and calling "bullshit." I simply pointed out that

the plaintiffs are making a case with regard to equal protection, and it's not hard to see where they're coming from on that issue with a quick read of their complaint.

It's not up to me, or you.

The judge will rule, and he or she will do it by applying applicable law.

We'll find out when we find out, won't we?

[sandnsea]

19. I frankly don't care what the judge rules

I don't trust the justice system to be fair either. I can read. I know the Secy of State wouldn't have moved forward with an election against NV law. I know caucuses would have been challenged years ago if they were disenfranchising people who work. And I know that Hillary didn't care until she lost the culinary worker's endorsement. This is Republican bullshit and I'm ashamed of the DUers and Democrats making excuses for it.

[MADem]

27. Yeah--screw that pesky rule of law. Let chaos reign! Don't judge situations on the merits,

let blind partisanship be your guide...

Yeah, team!

Nevada has only in recent decades freed itself from the pervasive grip of organized crime. NV, like other states, has "issues."

Were you this upset about all of the shift workers who were at work in Iowa and who were disenfranchised? The whole midshift of workers--mostly working cleass types-- who were unable to caucus because of their mopping, sweeping, serving, bedpan emptying, cashiering, sales clerking jobs? To say nothing of the duty doctors, nurses, orderlies, cabbies, cops, firemen and military serving on acdu? A whole shitload of people were disenfranchised in Iowa...do they matter? Was Iowa "unfair" too?

I didn't see you piping up to defend their interests at all, so I was wondering if they mattered.

Or do the results dictate which voters are important?

[Barack_America]

10. Casino workers are disporportionately affected by a Saturday caucus.

Why are the teachers suing? Since when do teachers work on Saturdays?

The only validity in this argument is the ratio of delegats:voters between the casinos and other precincts.

But, the caucus has been designed this way for some time and nobody says anything. Then a casino workers' union endorses Obama and not Clinton and now it's suddenly a problem for a second, Hillary-affiliated union?

I call bullshit.

[Cha]

13. Bullshit it

is!

[sandnsea]

15. Any location that employs 4,000 people

would be eligible as a caucus site. Lots of people can't vote because they have to work. I don't understand why people can't apply their common sense.

[cloudythescribbler]

23. I hope this doesn't violate protocol, but here's an important NV case issue ...

I raised in another thread: a number of the parties to this outrageous lawsuit actually were themselves participants in the group that voted UNANIMOUSLY to establish the caucus structure/rules in the first place, this March. And even those who weren't in on the ground level, like the teacher's union, surely knew about it for months (as Obama references) before the recent endorsement by the CWU of Obama meant that HE and not HRC would be likely to gain more votes from the 'at-large' sites.

Check out:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4052397

especially comment #9

[GalleryGod]

24. My wife and I gave Bill Clinton the Fed MAX in $$$'s in 1992,1996.

And $1,000 to Hillary's Senate Campaign.


Time to LEAVE THE STAGE,Mr. & Mrs. C..."Next generation? You're UP!