Depending on "magical thinking", threatening lawsuits, and ignoring party rules.

madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Mon Mar-03-08 03:26 PM
Original message

Depending on "magical thinking", threatening lawsuits, and ignoring party rules.

I don't know how this primary season will turn out. There was a time I did not especially care. We were for Edwards, then we decided to consider all three, then an event happened that turned us to Obama.

That event was Hillary openly saying she would not stop until the delegates of FL and MI were seated. That was after her campaign agreed that the first four states were important. That was the day we decided to mark our ballot for Obama.

Her campaign did not stop with just saying the delegates should count. They said even more.

Hillary campaign says DNC delegates rules are not the rules of her campaign.

I was attacked when I posted that. I was told that I always stood up for the DNC. Not true. It is just that the DNC has always made the rules for delegates, primaries, and conventions. Now a campaign is openly saying the DNC rules don't apply to them.

Here is the question on the Clinton campaign conference call, asked by Chris Bowers of Open Left.

Do you think there is a meaningful difference in the democratic, lower d, quality of super delegates and pledged delegates, or that there could be a crisis of legitimacy in the Democratic nominee if he or she wins the nomination without the support of the majority of pledged delegates?

Here is the answer he was given on the conference call.

The rules the party has put in place to choose its nominee are not the rules of the Clinton campaign and, just like the Obama campaign, we are doing what we can under those rules to secure the requisite number of delegates for the nomination. One way to avoid the situation described above is to figure out some way to honor the votes of Michigan and Florida, where there was record turnout. Counting the delegates in Florida and Michigan is a civil rights issue, and a solution needs to be figured out before the convention.

No, it was never a civil rights issue...never. It was simply about having rules and enforcing them.

Not only that, but there have been two lawsuits filed against the DNC by Florida Democratic leaders. The one filed by Bill Nelson, Nelson v Dean...was dismissed, and he decided not to pursue it.

The one filed by a Tampa activist was quickly dismissed also, but now it will be heard on March 17 in an appellate court in Atlanta. The activist and his lawyer, who is now chairman of the Hillsborough County DEC, have said they will continue the lawsuit to the Supreme Court by August.

Lawsuit to seat Florida delegates will continue to Supreme Court

Tampa Attorney Michael Steinberg filed the lawsuit in August 2007 on behalf of Victor DiMaio against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over its decision to strip Florida of all its 200 plus delegates to the Democratic National Nominating Convention that convenes this August 2008 in Denver, Colorado.

"We have been impatiently waiting for the Appeals Court to grant us this hearing considering the fact that time is running out if we have to appeal our case to the United States Supreme Court if the Florida Delegation is still shut out of the convention in August at the same time the Supreme Court takes its annual recess" according to Mr. DiMaio. "We are grateful to the Atlanta Justices for granting us the best option of of the three options available. The Court could have denied our appeal and dismissed our case or they could have asked us to mail in our pleadings. Instead they have granted us the opportunity to present oral arguments and the Court has cleared their docket for an entire afternoon, an option that was denied to us at the Tampa District Court. Considering the closeness of the Presidential Election at this point, every delegate vote could make a difference in deciding who the next President could be.

There is a blog at Huffington Post called "Magical Thinking". It presents the kind of thinking that goes on when a campaign presents some facts and denies others.

Then, there is the Michigan and Florida aspect of the Clinton campaign's magical thinking.

Clinton and her supporters believe that the delegates from the renegade primaries, which Clinton "won" (in Michigan because she was the only candidate on the ballot and in Florida where candidates had agreed not to campaign), should be counted. They believe this despite the DNC's August 2007 ruling that these states' delegates would not be seated, as punishment for Michigan and Florida moving up their primary dates. And they adamantly believe the votes should be counted as is, rather than via new contests, as currently suggested by the DNC.

In an interview that aired last Thursday on Texas Monthly Talks, Clinton said she intends to press the issue that Florida and Michigan delegates be seated, despite the widespread belief that she signed a pledge to the contrary. Magical thinking has Clinton and her staffers convinced they are right, even though every other Democratic candidate clearly understood and accepted the DNC ruling at the time, and it strains credulity to think that Hillary Clinton would have misunderstood the intention of the agreement, particularly when none other than her advisor (and delegate expert) Harold Ickes voted in August to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates as a sitting member of the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee.

"I signed an agreement not to campaign in Michigan and Florida. Now, the DNC made the determination that they would not seat the delegates, but I was not party to that," Clinton said. "I think it's important for the DNC to ask itself, Is this really in the best interest of our eventual nominee? We do not want to be disenfranchising Michigan and Florida...Senator Bill Nelson, of Florida, early on in the process actually sued because he thinks it's absurd on its face that 1.7 million Democrats who eventually voted would basically be disregarded, and I agree with him about that."

While it is true that Nelson did file a suit in a Florida district court, the case was lost in December, and there is little hope that any other court will tamper with the party's inner workings on this matter; it will likely remain a matter for the DNC credentialing committee.

Trouble is, it IS likely that a court will step in on the magical journey of Steinberg and DiMaio on the way to the Supreme Court. It is very likely that the courts will now get involved the intra-party doings. In spite of a previous Supreme Court precedent in 1981 in favor of the DNC....a state with the help of a candidate is going to set about getting the role of the DNC negated.

That is not a good thing. To deliberately try to involve the courts...not a good thing at all.