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Title: Clinton Campaign Chair Threatened to Strip Michigan of Delegates in 2004
Source: ABC News
URL Source: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04... Apr 26, 2008
Author: Jake Tapper
Post Date: 2008-04-27 14:44:22 by nolu_chan
Keywords: None
Views: 25
Comments: 2
blogs.abcnews.com/politic...8/04/clinton-campa-1.html
Clinton Campaign Chair Threatened to Strip Michigan of Delegates in 2004
Jake Tapper
ABC News Senior National Correspondent
April 26, 2008 5:33 PM
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has staked her path to the Democratic nomination on the officially illegitimate contests held in Michigan and Florida somehow being recognized, in opposition to Democratic National Committee rules.
What's so remarkable about this is that two of the Clinton campaign's most important strategists have in the past taken the stand that these states should abide by the DNC's instructions -- even if that meant stripping them of their delegates.
In direct contrast to the positions they hold now.
Senior strategist Harold Ickes as a DNC Rules Committee member in 2007 voted -- along with the other 11 Clinton supporters on the 30-member committee -- to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates as punishment for disobeying the DNC primary calendar schedule.
Ickes now is a leader of the "count Michigan and Florida" rhetoric coming from the Clinton campaign, despite his previous position.
Now comes this curious find, on Daily Kos.
It turns out that irrepressible Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe once -- when he was DNC chairman -- threatened to strip Michigan of delegates if that state's Democrats carried out their long-time goal of disobeying the DNC calendar.
In his lively book, "What A Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals," McAuliffe tells the tale. If you're an Amazon.com member, you can read the passage for yourself on pages 324 and 325.
McAuliffe at the time had been pushing for early contests for South Carolina and a Western state with a large Latino population, perhaps Arizona or New Mexico.
"Our plan became very controversial," McAuliffe writes. "Some people thought any change was bad. Others thought we were not shaking things up enough. Leading the charge for more radical alterations in the primary calendar was Michigan Senator Carl Levin, who thought Iowa and New Hampshire should not have exclusive rights on voting first and that it was time for other states to have a turn. He had pushed unsuccessfully for change before the 2000 elections and was back in full force this election cycle. He made it very clear on the telephone that if I allowed Iowa and New Hampshire to go first, then Michigan was going to act on its own and put its primary first."
McAuliffe invited Levin to make his argument before the full DNC meeting on Jan. 19, 2002. Levin did, and his motion was defeated by a unanimous vote.
"After the vote, the issue was settled in my mind -- however, not in Carl's," McAuliffe writes.
On Feb. 1, 2003, Levin, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and Dingell's wife Debbie (a DNC member and power broker unto herself) called McAuliffe.
"They told me they were going to hold the Michigan primary before New Hampshire's," McAuliffe writes, "which would have led to complete chaos since New Hampshire has a law stating that it must hold the first primary and the DNC had already voted on this issue and settled it.
"'If you do that, I will take away 50 percent of your delegates,' I told him.
"They thought I was bluffing. But it was my responsibility as chairman to take action for the good of the party, and taking away half their delegates was well within my authority...The whole primary calendar was in danger of spinning out of control. The candidates kept calling me and asking what was happening with the schedule, and I made it clear that I was not going to let Michigan throw the entire process out of whack. Finally I'd had enough and scheduled a meeting in Carl's Senate office for April 2 to settle this once and for all...
"Soon Carl and I were going at it.
"'I'm going outside the primary window,' he told me definitively.
"'If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,' I said. 'We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.'
"He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.
"'You won't deny us seats at the convention,' he said.
"'Carl, take it to the bank,' I said. 'They will not get a credential. The closest they'll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.'
"We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it."
Clinton herself said, in October 2007, "It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything." She said she was keeping her name on the ballot (unlike her competitors) just so when it came time for the general election she could argue she had not ignored the state.
It wasn't until Clinton lost the Iowa caucuses in January that she acted as if the Florida and Michigan contests had any meaning at all. As Tallahassee political journalist S.V. Dáte recently wrote in Slate, "Last summer and fall, when the DNC made these decisions, she had a lot more clout. She exercised none of it."
As for Ickes and McAuliffe -- they have exercised a great deal of clout. But it has been in the name of preserving order, even if that meant stripping recalcitrant state Democrats of their delegates.
As McAuliffe said then -- "the rules are the rules."
Why? "For the good of the party," he wrote (then).
- jpt
I turn my attention to, blame and disgust towards the DNC. I will forever hold them responsible for this horrific mess they have allowed to culminate.
They wanted to give the crazy one space and all they have done is give a clearly delusional and irresponsible person a platform to display schizophrenic tendicies. The voices in her head propel her on and we watch in horror!
Shortly after June 3rd she will concede and make a perfunctory attempt at party unity by throwing her arms around Obama while secretly hoping for disaster allowing her triumphant return in 2012. The key is wishing for an implosion at the convention or a mass desertion by her supporters in November without appearing to be culprit of this sinister plan
I've cussed her name in so many ways I'm now simply saying "that bitch!" at the mention of her name.
She reduced the greatest genocide and injustice in world history to a political quest for individual power!
How can any negro that continues to support her looks themselves in the mirror?!
I think that Obama is going to release a few superdels between now and June 3rd, and then let the pledged delegates set him over the top.
Yes, I meant the superdelegates.
Hillary is embarassing.
Can someone slap Jonathan Capehart.
She's trying to hold the nomination hostage, y'all.
-----------------------------------
I've wanted to for sooooo long!
She is calling to that tiny fear deep inside some white Americans.
There is no hell for Hillary to go to, except the one she's created for others.
what does that horn-rimmed pansy usually do?
be a handkerchief head.
PS- Jack, great post!
@ ronnie b,
Geller is the one on the YouTube video mocking the DNC over moving up the primary date I think:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r25wUeMAwdE
Handkerchief-head: sycophant type of Negro; also an Uncle Tom
http://aalbc.com/authors/harlemslang.htm
syc·o·phant:
a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.
—Synonyms toady, yes man, flunky, fawner, flatterer.
My personal favourite is "fawning parasite". I pray I shall never become this.
-----------------------------------
ahahahahahahahahahaha
Too funny!
I knew it was something besides Capehart's momma's boyish demeanor that bothered me.
That's it he doesn't have an original thought (I've never really listened to him consistently enough to arrive at that conclusion on my own), I realized that today, while I listend to him report the news that was handed to him by Clinton and Quinnipac as opposed to digging deeper and offering varying sides.
They will vote for John McCain as he looks them squarely in the face and tells them to f@$# themselves, and they will happily do it as long as they keep that Black man out of the White House. Yes, we will keep living these desperate lives and blame everybody else for our predictaments, but damn it, we kept that Black man out of the office.
That's the vote Hillary is counting on, even as she dishonors every person all over this world especially the ones in this country who have been killed advocating for their right to vote. She is past disgraceful and for any of US to continue to support her shows a lack of self-interest, self-worth, and deep, deep denial of what you see before you.
You Black Hillary Clinton backers, do you still think she deserves to win?
I can't STAND Johanthan Capehart!!! Listening to him co-sign criticism of Senator Obama as coming off as elitist and out of touch with 'working class' whites was excrutiating! Come the fuck on, a black gay man with a fake Madonna like English accent sporting a $200 silk tie with a windsor knot calling another black man out of touch with white folks!
I'm with you, it's f***ing mind boggling how blacks could support her.
Really it's mind boggling that anyone would support her after the way this thing has played out.
In short, a monster with several heads!