Remember the DNC Rule that actually called for a 50% stripping of delegates? Now the DNC has employed its lawyers to invoke that rule - to put a cap on the number of delegates Florida and Michigan can be awarded:

A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to restore delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully seat the two states at the convention as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to a party analysis. Party rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, Democratic National Committee lawyers wrote in a 38-page memo.

This is sad, rich and hilarious. After trampling their own rules, including the 50% Rule, in fully stripping Florida and Michigan of their delegates (all the while ignoring other violations of the schedule by Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina), now the DNC has its lawyers write a memo giving it an excuse for why it will (as now seems obvious) only restore 50% of the delegates in Florida and Michigan. And of course this ignores the fact that Florida was entitled to the safe harbor provision in the DNC rules (See DNC Rules 20c.7, 21a and 21b), and should not have suffered any penalty. Heck, maybe the DNC owes Florida EXTRA delegates now.[More...]

Barack Obama escaped hot water over his mistaking Auschwitz for Buchenwald. Fair enough. But I have a new theory now -- one that's more a curious observation than a criticism, or perhaps a little of both.

He makes a lot of mistakes about his family history. It's like he's retelling stories he's heard from third parties, including campaign staff who looked the stuff up. Maybe, aside from his grandparents with whom he lived for several years, he didn't know their side of the family that well -- including the great uncle who was one of the first at Buchenwald. In other words, he's telling stories he's learned on the campaign trail rather than ones he grew up hearing.

It probably wasn't his father who mistakenly told him the Kennedy family paid for his travel to the U.S. to study in Hawaii. It probably wasn't his mother who told him the 1965 March in Selma, AL allowed her to marry his father (he was born in 1961). More likely, I think, campaign researchers and aides came up with it.

Just like the Boston Globe reported the campaign came up with the story about his Indiana "homestead." I doubt he even knew there was a family homestead before going to Indiana to campaign: [More...]

In a poll performed by the largest newspaper in in Puerto Rico, El Nuevo Dia, the indicted Puerto Rico Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila trails his Statehood Party opponent Luis Fortuno by 34 points, 59-25. Acevedo Vila has endorsed Barack Obama in the June 1 Puerto Rico primary.

However, the Statehood Party candidate for Resident Commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, also an Obama endorser, holds a hefty 29 point advantage over his Commonwealth Party opponent.

I expect the newspaper also polled the Presidential primary but will release those results in the next few days. What this means, imo, is that the Statehood Party is in the ascendancy and the question is whether it will activate its political machinery at the behest of its Resident Commissioner candidate Pierluisi, or stay on the sidelines, as its Gubernatorial candidate, Fortuno, is a Republican and a McCain supporter.

My speculation is that the Presidential candidates will largely be on their own in this contest and will have to rely on their own hastily built political operations on the Island.

Here is a good telling quote from an Obama operative about how Puerto Rico works:

Here I go again giving McCain advice, but I have been struck by the fact that in all the McCain VP talk no one has mentioned Rudy Giuliani. Heck, I heard them talking about Bloomberg today, but not Rudy. I figure that folks think McCain has to have an anti-choice VP but does that hold true for Rudy? No one thought it was going to kill Rudy's chances when he was running for President. In fact, Rudy got the good housekeeping approval from a lot of evangelicals. His problems were different.

If Obama is the Dem nominee, won't McCain be able to buttress his shots at Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and even New Jersey with Rudy as his running mate?

Maybe I am crazy but I think given the way the map is shaping up, Rudy could make the most sense for McCain. And it is striking to me the no one seems to be talking about him.

POSTSCRIPT - People are mentioning Colin Powell and if he would take it then it is a no brainer imo. He broke with the Bush Administration (too late of course) and is greatly respected despite his failures. But my understanding is he would never ever accept it.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me, and as a political pundit. only. I detest Rudy Giuliani.

Comments closed

It is my expectation that at the end of this process, Barack Obama will have had more voters go to primaries and caucuses expressing support for him than Hillary Clinton. In short, I believe Barack Obama will win the popular vote and thus his likely nomination will reflect the will of the people.

I imagine the above paragraph will be viewed as a strange opening graf to defend Hillary Clinton's right, indeed, duty, to fight to see that all the votes are counted. But there it is. I believe the Democratic nominee should be the choice of the People (as defined by the Democratic Party, the electorate eligible to vote for our Democratic nominee in the nominating contests). As Jeralyn's post below conclusively demonstrates, there is virtually no moral imperative in terms of the Will of The People attached to the pledged delegate count. Not only is it fundamentally flawed and undemocratic, the pledged delegate count has no rules based mandate either. So when Barack Obama trumpets his so called winning of a majority of the pledged delegates (excluding Florida and Michigan), it is an entirely trumped up metric, as Jeff Toobin of CNN pointed out. As for the popular vote, even opponents of Hillary Clinton, as Greg Sargent points out, like Hendrik Hertzberg are forced to concede the moral weight of the popular vote:

What has 2008 shown us in terms of the fairness of the Democratic nomination process? That the caucus system is neither fair nor representative.

Here's an interesting report on the differences between primaries and caucuses and the impact in the 2008 Presidential nomination. I am reprinting it with the permission of its author, P. Cronin. It addresses:

• Voter Suppression in Caucuses
• Disenfranchised Voter Groups & Statistics
• Differential in Voter Turnout Rates
• Popular Vote Disparity
• Estimated Voter Suppression in 2008 Caucuses
• Caucus Systems Distort Election Results
• Vote-spread Differences
• Disproportionate Votes-to-Delegates Ratio
• More Math of Electability
• Other Primary versus Caucus Considerations
• 2008 Democratic Election Snapshot
• What IF: Florida & Michigan

Some highlights are below, but I recommend reading the entire report. [More....]

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the electoral map challenges for Obama in November:

The same day that Obama enthralled the young, educated voters of Oregon, he was thrashed in Kentucky, losing many counties by 85 and 90 percent margins.

"I was shaking my head when I looked at the Kentucky results," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. "Single-digit numbers are something a fringe candidate gets. You put a Joe Smith, a placebo, on the ballot and they get 7 percent. ... The voters in Kentucky in our poll said they thought Barack Obama would be the next president, yet only 7 percent in some of these counties were voting for him."

And these were Democrats. Parts of pivotal Ohio and Pennsylvania mirror or include Appalachia.

Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico don't make up the difference:

Obama then would have to recoup those 41 electoral votes someplace else. Taking Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado would yield just 19, leaving him short even of Kerry's losing total.

Add Ohio and PA to Florida and one has to wonder what the superdelegates are thinking.

Comments now closed.

John McCain shows that he can twist the facts with the best of them:

"[Obama] really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time."

Granted, Obama hasn't done anything to distinguish himself on getting us out of Iraq (aside from his speech in 2002 before we went in) and his experience and knowledge are fair game, but to say he advocated surrender? That's just false.

I might add, of the three remaining candidates, McCain is by far the worst on Iraq.

Here is my translation of portions of this interview of Barack Obama by the Puerto Rico newspaper El Nuevo Dia:

Q: Hillary Clinton promised that she would work to provide Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico [those living in one of the 50 states or in DC already can vote for President since they are US citizens. If US citizens from the US moved to Puerto Rico, they would lose the right to vote for President] the right to vote for President. do you agree with this position?

OBAMA: This would need to be resolved as part of a general solution to the status problem. If we are sending Puerto Ricans to war, they need to have more representation in Washington. But of course I can not make any promises, if the status issue is not resolved. Sen. Clinton needs to explain to you how she would acquire this right for Puerto Ricans without dealing with the US Congress.

Q: Do you think Puerto Rico is a colony? . . .

Here's the gist of Lanny Davis' eminently fair proposal for seating Florida and Michigan delegates.

In Michigan, Clinton received 55 percent of the vote. According to Thegreenpapers.com, she thus should receive 73 pledged delegates based on that percentage.

What about the 50 remaining uncommitted delegates, and 7 collectively cast for Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, who were also on the ballot? Some of those 50 delegates might have been for Clinton as a second choice to candidates other than Obama, so it would be totally unfair to award all 50 delegates to Obama....Obama was not forced by party rules to remove his name — he chose to do so.

The Rules Committee has several options. The fairest would be to allocate those 57 pledged delegates, to Clinton and Obama by the same ratio of their standing to one another in the average of the most recent Michigan statewide polls prior to the Jan. 15 primary. [More...]

Here's some more number crunching I just received from a Talkleft reader as to electability in November, based on the past five Presidential Elections...

• There are FIVE "BELLWETHER STATES". These are states who have voted for the WINNER in ALL FIVE of the most recent Presidential elections. They are: Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee.

  Number of these that HRC has won? FOUR (80%)
  HRC's Average Margin? 13.2%

• There are THREE "VERY SWINGY STATES". These are states who have voted Democratic in either 2 or 3 of 5 of the most recent Presidential elections. They are: Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

  Number of these that HRC has won? THREE (100%)
  
  HRC's Average Margin? 21.3%

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake today asks whether John McCain will make a pitch for Hillary's female supporters if Obama is the nominee.

I spoke with a well-known pollster recently who said that if women think the country would be safer with McCain over Obama by 10 points on election day, she predicts that McCain will win. While it's absurd to think that McCain would be better than Obama on women's issues, these kinds of decisions are -- as Krugman says -- highly emotional. A pitch to "security moms," combined with an appeal about "elitists in the Democratic party" looking down their noses on working class women just might work.

I hope McCain fails in his bid for women voters, should Obama be the nominee. It's the last thing Hillary would want. And, Democrats who switch sides out of spite or revenge will get far more than they bargained for, including anti-choice Supreme Court Justices and right-wing ideologue federal judges.

Any Democrat is better than what John McCain is offering. Given McCain's age, his selection of a VP candidate will be very telling. I suspect it will be someone that can bring him evangelical and ultra-conservative votes. That makes his candidacy twice as dangerous.

Yet, Jane's post is correct that Obama's nomination poses big electability challenges for Democrats in November.

The answer, to me, is simple: The nomination is still a two way race. Superdelegates can still pick the more electable Democrat among not only women voters but older, rural and blue collar voters as well. That candidate is Hillary Clinton. [More...]