I have never seen such a self-destructive display in politics as what I saw today from the Obama campaign and the members of the RBC.
After all the self-righteous preening about "the rules," after Donna Brazile invoked her mother's lessons about how you have to play by the rules and how people who don't play by the rules are cheaters, she and the other members of the RBC proceeded to ignore every rule in the book.
The timing rules that apply to New Hampshire and the other early states? Gone. The supposedly automatic 50% penalty that applies to anyone who violates the timing rules? Gone. Instead you heard one speech after another about how "48 states followed the rules," as if saying it makes it so.
The rule prohibiting delegates from being reassigned from one candidate to another? Gone. The rule mandating that "Uncommitted" is a voter preference entitled to the exact same protection as a vote for a candidate? Gone. With one well-meaning compromise, the results of every delegate selection process in the country were rendered merely advisory. If the RBC or any other body has the authority to reassign delegates from one candidate to another - based upon exit polls, the desire to "compromise and move on," or whatever else - then they can vote tomorrow to assign all of California's delegates to Chris Dodd. There is no such thing as a pledged delegate if the committees of the DNC have this power.
Let's talk reality here. Is any Obama supporter in the house under the impression that he might win the nomination by a mere 4 delegates? Of course not. Yet by playing hardball with the Michigan situation and forcing thereby the MDP-approved compromise of 69 delegates to Clinton, as opposed to the 73 she would have received under the result her campaign urged, the Obama campaign gave Clinton and her supporters an excuse to keep fighting about this in order to gain a mere 4 delegates. Excuse me, 4 half-delegates. Can anyone explain to me how this is a rational decision, even from the standpoint of Obama's pure self-interest?
Let me be 100% clear about something. This is not the fight I want to have. I will vote for Obama, I hope everyone votes for Obama, I don't think any of this stuff is worth risking the White House over. I would not be upset if Clinton dropped out tomorrow.
But saying "let's compromise and move on" only works if everyone is willing to go along with it, and obviously not everyone is. What happened today was nothing more than an attempt to construct a new reality, to pretend that everything is happening according to the rules just by saying so. And as you might have noticed over the last several years, no matter how much someone wants to create their own reality, no matter how many times they get supporters to repeat the same slogans and no matter how willing the media is to go along, there are going to be reality-based people who understand that it just ain't so and refuse to give in to the new reality.
The DNC's own lawyers told them there was absolutely no basis under the rules to seat a 69/59 delegation in Michigan. Today, a bunch of people gave a bunch of speeches about what their mothers taught them and how sacred the rules are, and then the actual rules went straight down the memory hole. There are people who see that and will refuse to play along.
It didn't have to happen this way. Everyone knows what Obama's delegate margin is. It's apparently believed universally among Obama's supporters that on top of everything else, there are a mountain of superdelegates just waiting for a few more days to endorse him and seal the deal. Yet somehow, for the sake of fighting over a handful of delegates that apparently make no difference in the big picture, the Obama campaign has allowed the issue of Michigan and Florida to keep on festering.
I hope none of this amounts to anything at the end of the day. But if the Democratic Party loses this election in November, the autopsy is going to reveal a self-inflicted wound.
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