Threats toward Howard Dean by Clinton's big donors this week should alarm us greatly.

madfloridian

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Sat Apr-05-08 11:25 PM
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Threats toward Howard Dean by Clinton's big donors this week should alarm us greatly.

I think it is getting very obvious that this primary season is not an ordinary one. The fact that there is the wife of a former president running with her husband alongside her is unique in itself.

The fact that her donors have made threatening moves toward the party chairman to break the rules about Florida and Michigan...to in effect let the primaries count...is more than unique. I don't remember a time when big money so openly threatened a party chairman. We have let this slip under the radar basically. There was a post here by WesDem about that meeting, but it disappeared fairly quickly.

We should not ignore this. This is a primary season in which two states deliberately, intentionally, and in a planned way broke the rules of the party for conducting a primary. In the case of my state, they immediately put the blame on the chairman and tried to crash the fundraising.

This is big money demanding that the party chairman acquiesce to their desires to have Florida and Michigan count. It has gone on a while, and it hit a larger scale this week.

I am going to add to what the original post on this subject said. It was essentially a hijacking of a meeting which was planned with the DNC and both campaigns. It was about finances, not the two states who were sanctioned. It is said in the posts about it that the Obama fundraisers sat mostly silently, while at least two of Hillary financial guys began questioning Dean about why he wasn't taking a more aggressive stance on fixing the problem the two states had caused.

After Dean's initial remarks, Bernard Bergreen, a Hillary bundler, rose and said that Dean's address left out any discussion of Michigan and Florida, which was the critical bone of contention between the two campaigns.

Dean said that in his view, the question could be settled only after the primaries had finished in June, and after the superdelegates had made their decision.

At that point Clinton campaign finance chair Hassan Nemazee spoke up. He said Dean's response sounded to him as if the DNC chairman were "essentially trying to kick the can down the road" and that the chairman was not exhibiting the type of leadership one would expect. Nemazee said that since the campaigns obviously could not reach a solution on their own before June, Dean's argument amounted to passing the buck.

Dean then responded, heatedly, that in his experience, those who sought the intervention of party leadership were motivated by their own particular agendas. And that was not the sort of leadership he intended to provide.

Clinton donors vs Dean

Yet the most alarming statement to me was by the former DNC finance chair, Maureen White. It told me a lot, though it was very short.

It told me this is going to the convention.

It told me to expect a lot of ugliness on the way.

White had a different take, saying that politics was a nasty and sometimes very unfair business. Nobody ever said democracy would be easy, she said, but called on all of those present as leaders in the party to reduce the level of rancor, even if it went to a convention.

According to the source, White's intervention met with applause. At least from the Clinton donors.

Bundler's summit

The big Clinton donors have done this to the DCCC. They threatened the DCCC because Pelosi said superdelegates should not go against the will of the people.

They threatened the DNC previously, even before the meeting.

True faces of the money men behind the curtain are showing now...threats to Dean and Pelosi.

"I've expressed to Dean my feeling that it's critical that this matter be resolved on a timely basis," Patricof says. "The voters in Florida and Michgan cannot be disenfranchised."

"He's got to exercise some leadership, and the sooner, the better," Patricof continued. "This is a party issue. We cannot afford to alienate this large a voting population in two very important states."

....."Pushing to seat the Florida delegates, at least one top Clinton fund-raiser, Paul Cejas, a Miami businessman who has given the Democratic National Committee $63,500 since 2003, has demanded Democratic officials return his 2007 contribution of $28,500, which they have agreed to do.

�If you�re not going to count my vote, I�m not going to give you my money,� said Mr. Cejas, who was the United States ambassador to Belgium from 1998 to 2001.

Christopher Korge, a Florida real estate developer who is another top fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, held an event last year in his home that brought in about $140,000 for the national party, which was set aside in a special account for the general election battle in Florida. But he told committee officials this week that if Florida�s delegate conundrum was not settled satisfactorily he would be asking for the money back.

I knew from the start that money was going to be one of the weapons because Florida Democrats immediately sent out emails trying to crash the party fundraising nationally.

There appears to be no shame about it. The ones demanding that the national party break the rules and give in to their demands are not all troubled by what they are doing. That is one of the worst parts, that it just seems natural to them.

It seems to me they think it is their due. They think it is their right to demand by withholding money, even though what they are demanding is against the rules.

That is being lost in the Obama and Hillary shuffle.....that it is big money, really big money exerting their power on Dean and Obama, two men who built campaigns on small donors.

Perhaps to these big money men the small donors are a danger.

Perhaps it really will be a battle for the heart and soul of the party.