The Usual Suspects

Harold Ickes at RBC Meeting, May 31, 2008

Dan Balz has a piece in the Washington Post today about the efforts by both parties to “reform” the presidential primary system. The article is mostly about the Democrats’ problems though. Surprisingly, Balz to some extent acknowledges that the 2008 Democratic primaries were handled in a way that severely damaged Hillary Clinton’s chances. But he has it mostly wrong.

…there’s no disputing that the rules governing the nomination process can affect candidates’ fortunes. Just ask supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The DNC’s decision to punish Florida and Michigan for staging their contests in violation of party rules, particularly the penalty against Florida, robbed her of victories that could have changed the outcome. The Obama campaign’s mastery of the nominating rules clearly contributed to his victory over Clinton.

Um…Dan, “the Obama campaign’s mastery of the nominating rules?” Obama won by taking the small red-state caucuses, while Hillary won the big states. In the end, Clinton had more popular votes than Obama, and she would have had almost the same number of pledged delegates as Obama if it hadn’t been for the DNC’s refusal to count the votes of Florida and Michigan voters. The DNC rigged “the roolz” from day one in favor of Obama and they got plenty of help from the media in doing so. The RBC committee had to fiddle with the Michigan primary results, taking away four votes from Hillary and giving them to Obama along with “uncommitted” votes he didn’t earn in order to cement his “victory.”

Let’s get in the way-back machine and go back in time to May 31, 2008, shall we?

Michigan’s 128 pledged delegates will be heading to Denver, Colo., this August for the party’s national convention but with one half of one vote assigned to each delegate, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee ruled this evening in a 19-8 decision.

The delegates of the contested Jan. 15 primary were given a 69-59 split in favor of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won the contest. That split means 34.5 delegate votes for Clinton, and 29.5 delegate votes for Sen. Barack Obama.

Meaning that four of Hillary Clinton delegates were given to Barack Obama and once the votes were fully counted, he would get nearly 60 unearned votes handed to him.

Opponents of the decision, including Clinton senior advisor and committee member Harold Ickes, condemned the move because Obama was awarded delegates he did not earn outright because his name did not appear on the ballot.

“This is not a good way to start down the path of party unity,” Ickes said, who admonished the committee for their “gall and chutzpah” in the ruling. Ickes also warned that this may not be over yet. “Sen. Clinton has asked me to reserve her right to take this to the credentials committee,” Ickes said, to cheers from Clinton supporters in the hotel ballroom.

No, it certainly wasn’t. In fact, an Unparty was born. As Riverdaughter wrote recently,

Let’s look at what actually happened last year. Barack Obama ran a terrible campaign. Oh, I know this isn’t the conventional wisdom but that’s why conventional wisdom is so often wrong. Obama spent a king’s ransom on trying to win the big states on SuperTuesday. He couldn’t pull it off. Instead, he focussed his attention on the caucuses, which were far easier to game. And game them he did. We have the affadavits to prove it. But at the end of the day, he still needed the delegates from a state he didn’t even run in in order to get the nomination. It all came down to Michigan. Forget what ever the Obots were screaming about The Roolz. The RBC had to bend the roolz to give Obama the win.

He wasn’t on the ballot in MI. He wasn’t entitled to diddly-squat. In normal years, we would have called this a very foolish political decision.

[....]

Please do not tell me that MI wasn’t going to count. It was always going to count and count fully. Withholding Clinton’s MI and FL delegates from her win column just made her look like a loser all primary season. The whole thing was smoke, mirrors and psychological one upsmanship. It was a haka. We knew it but would people listen to us? But I digress.

The reason why the 2008 primaries are still important is because the powers that rigged them emerged triumphant. Not only did they rig them and get away with it, they had the support of half of the people they were planning to screw with the continuation of Bush’s policies. Obama has capitulated to the bankers, he’s capitulated to the religious right on gays and women, he’s making no effort to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and he’s become a party to torture.

And now we have the Democratic Change Commission, which had its first meeting yesterday. And who are the leaders and members of this committee? The usual suspects, that’s who.

Heading up the commission is Obama’s hand-picked DNC Chairman Tim Kaine. The co-chairs are South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn, who did so much to stir up racial animosity before the SC primary, and loyal Obama sycophant Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Members of the commission include Alexis Herman of Virginia and James Roosevelt of Massachusetts, former chairs of the infamous DNC rules and bylaws committee (remember them?); Obama campaign manager David Plouffe (he must be there to serve as enforcer in case any supporters of small “d” democracy managed to worm their way in), California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez; along with other DNC functionaries and assorted large donors such as Jeremy Alters of Florida.

Yep, that’s “change we can believe in.” Not that I expected there would actually be positive change in the primary system for 2012. One of the commission members, Suzy LeVine, has a lot of information about yesterday’s meeting on her blog. She reports that the commission’s main goals are:

1. the issue of timing and frontloading of primaries
2. the issue of superdelegates and their out of proportion representation
3. the question of caucuses and how to run them better

Another commission member, Frank Leone of Virginia, liveblogged the meeting here.

At yesterday’s meeting Elaine Kamarck of the Harvard School of Government and author of a new book, Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System, proposed that superdelegates be completely eliminated in favor of a more “public process.” But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. As ABC News’ David Chalian writes, any changes are likely to favor the “Obama worldview.” The main goal of the commission seems to be the same as the one for 2008: preventing states from battling over who goes first. That didn’t work out too well last time.

Here is a list of future Democratic Change Commission meetings.

One positive note: I haven’t seen Donna Brazile’s name anywhere so far. Did she finally quit the party because they let the superdelegates choose the candidate?

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