In a telephonic press conference this morning, Roy Romer – a former Colorado governor, former Democratic National Committee ("DNC") chair, co-chairman of the 1996 Clinton-Gore reelection campaign, and a superdelegate – announced his endorsement of Barack Obama as the Democratic Presidential nominee. Despite what he called “affection for Senator Clinton,” Romer said that “[t]he math is controlling. This race is over, over. Sen Obama has accumulated a lead in caucuses, primaries, and superdelegates that cannot be overcome.”
Redrawing the Electoral Map: Romer explained that his endorsement was based largely on his belief that Obama has a better chance of beating McCain in November, which he said Obama could do using a different electoral map than the one Democrats have used in the last few elections and which Clinton is continuing to advocate: “As I watched the campaign unfold it was obvious there was a different kind of winning possibility that Senator Obama was presenting to the party.... This nation is evolving. Colorado is one of those states you call a red state... [but] I don’t think Colorado is the same state it was 20 years ago. I think we need to get out of the straight jacket, ‘this is a red state, this is a blue state’.... We need a candidate who can appeal to the evolving nature of U.S. politics.” Plouffe added, “we’ve won a heck of a lot of battleground states,” including Washington, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina, and stated that Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, and North Dakota “all could be competitive in the fall.”
Not Pressuring Clinton, Just Giving Her Information... Romer denied that his announcement was intended to put pressure on Sen. Clinton to drop out of the race, explaining that his goal instead was to eliminate any uncertainty about where he stood so that Clinton had more information on which she could base her own decision, and calling on other undeclared superdelegates to do the same: “All superdelegates would help the party by making [their endorsements] known as quickly as they can. That’s not forcing [the Clinton campaign] out of the race, that’s giving them facts that they can then base their own decisions on.” He later added, “it’s important for her [Clinton] to know where we [superdelegates] are so she’s not misled.”
... But the Information Says the Race Is Over: However, Romer also believes the time has come for Clinton to make a decision about whether the nomination is achievable. While the extended primary campaign has helped the party in some ways, Romer added that “there is a time that we need to end it and to direct ourselves to the general election. I think that time is now.... At some point in time all of us have got to say, ‘where are the numbers? where is the math?’”
Michigan and Florida: Seat, But With Consequences: As a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, Romer also had firm opinions about the contentious issue of seating delegations from Michigan and Florida, which the DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee unanimously voted to disqualify after those states tried to increase their influence in the primary process by moving their elections to dates earlier than those allowed by DNC rules. Romer said, “I was chair of the party. The party has to set rules, and the party has to have some control over the timing of the primary races... you can’t just excuse that and say everybody has the same delegates they used to have.” He added, “They need to be seated, but there needs to be a penalty for failing to follow the rules” in order to preserve the party's ability to set primary schedules in the future: “This party has got to find a solution to seat those delegates, but it’s got to do that in a way that says to all states in the future that we mean business when we say there are rules... you can’t have a party that’s effective in modern politics unless you have rules that you can enforce.”
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also observed that the Clinton campaign, not the Obama campaign, was blocking the resolution of the Michigan problem: “The Michigan and Florida situation will be resolved. There is a proposal from Michigan.... [and] we’re open to that proposal. [But] the Clinton campaign rejected it out of hand.” (The current Michigan proposal would give Clinton a net of ten more delegates than Obama.) Plouffe added that he does not believe Obama will be unable to compete in those states in the general election, citing polls showing Obama beating McCain in Michigan and running even with him in Florida.
Defining, and Approaching, the Finish Line: Plouffe also ruled out the possibility of the Obama campaign “declaring victory” after winning the majority of pledged delegates, which probably will occur during the Oregon primary on May 20. Plouffe said that winning the majority of pledged delegates would be “an important moment” because it will reflect “the will of the voters” and because most superdelegates have said they will endorse the candidate who wins the pledged delegate race. However, he denied that the campaign would be over at that point: “we’re definitely not going to declare victory... we still have three contests after that.”
Instead, the Obama campaign will continue until it reaches 2,025 delegates, which Plouffe said was close: Obama is only 147 delegates short at this point, which Plouffe characterized as “a very achievable number.” Ever since the Indiana and North Carolina primaries last week, the Obama campaign has been portraying the race less as a head-to-head, state-by-state matchup between the two candidates and more as a countdown to a 2,025-delegate finish line. In today's teleconference, Plouffe said that “our focus is on getting to that 2,025 number as quickly as we can.”
Not Poaching Superdelegates: Plouffe was asked to comment on the decision by Maryland superdelegate Jack Johnson to switch from Clinton to Obama; he replied, “Sen. Clinton’s camp has said on occasion that [even] pledged delegates are fair game... [but] we have not approached any of her delegates” to persuade them to defect. He added that Johnson “made that decision on his own.”
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Showing posts with label superdelegates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label superdelegates. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A Big Win in Pennsylvania -- But Not Nearly Big Enough to Change the Math
Update, May 6: Obama wins North Carolina, squeezing Clinton mathematically even more than this post predicts. Big voter turnouts in both NC and Indiana, which bodes well for Obama (and the party's chances in November).
Americans, schizophrenically, love two things: winners, and quixotic heroes who do great things in a losing cause. Last night in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton was both: the winner of what in an ordinary election year would be a tremendous victory, and the protagonist of an unequivocally lost cause.
Clinton won Pennsylvania. But in the national Democratic primary election overall -- and by that I mean the go-to-a-polling-place-and-cast-a-ballot part of the nominee-selection process -- Pennsylvania put the last nail in Clinton's hopes of winning anything resembling the popular vote or popular delegate count nationwide.
Before I go further, please understand: this post isn’t about hating Hillary, but about math. It’s no secret that I support Obama, -- but I honestly can’t help but admire any candidate who can win Pennsylvania by ten points (which, as of the time I'm writing this with 99% of precincts reporting, appears to be Clinton's margin of victory). It’s a great victory in anyone’s book.
And yet mathematically, Pennsylvania didn’t move her forward; it actually put her further behind. That’s what makes her win there tragic.
In a post the day before the Pennsylvania primary, I explained in detail what margins Clinton needed in order to win the majority of elected delegates before the last primary election occurs on June 3. This election is like a footrace, I explained; with a relatively small handful of primaries left, and a finite number of delegates remaining to be won, she needs to gain ground with every primary if she wants to make up the ground she lost in the first 40-plus contests.
Before Pennsylvania voted, Clinton trailed Obama in the elected-delegate count by 162. With only 566 delegates left to be won in the remaining contests, some fairly simple math showed that to catch Obama, she needed to win everything from Pennsylvania forward by 28 points – i.e., to win 64% of the elected delegates to Obama’s 36% in all the remaining contests (with the exception of North Carolina, where she currently trails by 17 points; all my math asked her to do there was tie). Again, this isn’t pessimism or misogyny, it’s just a calculation. Here’s the algorithm: (Remaining delegates) - (Obama’s lead in delegates) ÷ 2 + (Obama’s lead in delegates). You can do the math yourself.
If she didn’t win Pennsylvania (or any other primary) by 28 points, she’d only fall farther behind. If she won Pennsylvania by ten points, Clinton would actually have lost ground. In my post before the vote in Pennsylvania, I explained it this way:
Think of it like a hundred yard dash. Catching up to Obama after a ten point “victory” in Pennsylvania would be like standing on the starting line and expecting to win the race – with your opponent having a 36 yard head start. And every step you take that doesn’t gain you ground puts you closer to defeat: every time Clinton falls short of the requisite 64% or 68% or even higher margin, the margin she needs in the remaining states goes up even more. Or, as Richard Durbin put it, Clinton is “running out of real estate.”
Hillary didn’t win 64% of the vote in Pennsylvania. She only won about 55% to Obama’s 45% – the ten-point spread I predicted, about two-thirds short of the 28 point spread she needed. Accordingly, she’ll only net about 16 delegates (87 for her, 71 for Obama) – not enough to stay on pace to win. After her win in Pennsylvania, Clinton now has to win 68% of the vote in all the remaining primaries -- up four points from the 64% she needed just two days ago.
In the real world, this is an insurmountable problem for Clinton. In some states, she may have had a little wiggle room; if she fell a little short in Indiana she might make it up by winning extra delegates in Puerto Rico. But Pennsylvania was Clinton’s best shot at a big win in a populous state – her “if you can’t make it there, you can’t make it anywhere” test (apologies to Sinatra). A month ago, a PPP poll showed Clinton leading in Pennsylvania by 26 points. Pennsylvania’s primary came after the Reverend Wright and “bitter” brouhahas. Clinton has family in Pennsylvania; her father and brother went to school and played ball in Pennsylvania; she spent vacations in Pennsylvania; her grandfather taught her to shoot in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has one of the last great Democratic political machines – read this frustrated post by Chuck Pennacchio, a great Democratic candidate who lost a Pennsylvania primary because that machine was aligned against him, if you want a taste of how powerful the Pennsylvania machine is – and that machine was overwhelmingly in Clinton’s camp. If she couldn’t make the requisite margin there, she won’t be able to make it in state after state after state, without any major slips, from now til the end of the campaign. (In fact, even if Michigan and Florida were miraculously counted in Clinton’s favor, she still would have needed 12 point wins from here on out – but she fell short of even that lower standard. So not even Michigan and Florida could help her win the nomination democratically.)
No: Pennsylvania was her best shot, and she fell short. Hope is a wonderful thing, but no amount of blind optimism can change the reality: Clinton’s not going to win the majority of democratically-elected “pledged” or popular delegates. More broadly: no logical person can continue to argue that Clinton can win in any popular or democratic sense of the word; it’s inevitable that she will lose the popular vote and the popular delegate count.
That doesn’t mean she can’t win the nomination. It does mean that the only way she can win the nomination is if the unelected Superdelegates overwhelmingly and unexpectedly decide to disregard the wishes of their collective constituents and hand the nomination to the candidate who lost the popular delegate count (and the popular vote, and the majority of states).
Here’s the important thing to take away from Clinton’s win/loss in Pennsylvania: because she no longer has any realistic chance of winning the “election” phase of the nominating process, the rest of us need to insist that the politicians, pundits and prognosticators stop putting so much undeserved attention on the upcoming primaries, and focus instead on the single issue that could decide this election in Clinton’s favor: the likelihood, the moral right, and the wisdom of allowing the Democratic Party’s aristocrats to override the will of millions of Democratic voters.
Personally, I don’t think it’s likely, moral, or strategically wise for the Supers to exercise a veto of the voters’ choice. I think Obama has already won this election, and inevitably will win the nomination, and that Clinton’s just the last one to realize it. But I also understand that many of her supporters disagree, and feel strongly that it’s both meet and proper for the Supers to do whatever they want. I’m willing to agree to disagree on that question, at least for now; I don’t really want to have that argument today, because it, too, is a distraction at this point.
Instead, all I’d like, from Clintonites and Obamanuts alike, is an agreement, based on simple logic, that the issue is no longer whether Clinton can win the election – she can’t, even if we count Michigan and Florida – but rather whether she can, and should, win a contrary outcome via a Superdelegate override.
Polls and predictions no longer count. Michigan and Florida, and Indiana and Puerto Rico and North Carolina and my own Oregon, no longer count, simply because their primaries can’t realistically alter the outcome of the election. The only remaining issue is the propriety and wisdom of Superdelegates overriding the voters. So let’s talk about that from now on, instead of wasting time and energy on distractions that make money for CNN and MSNBC and play into the candidates’ spin but aren’t actually relevant to the decision that’s being made.
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Americans, schizophrenically, love two things: winners, and quixotic heroes who do great things in a losing cause. Last night in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton was both: the winner of what in an ordinary election year would be a tremendous victory, and the protagonist of an unequivocally lost cause.
Clinton won Pennsylvania. But in the national Democratic primary election overall -- and by that I mean the go-to-a-polling-place-and-cast-a-ballot part of the nominee-selection process -- Pennsylvania put the last nail in Clinton's hopes of winning anything resembling the popular vote or popular delegate count nationwide.
Before I go further, please understand: this post isn’t about hating Hillary, but about math. It’s no secret that I support Obama, -- but I honestly can’t help but admire any candidate who can win Pennsylvania by ten points (which, as of the time I'm writing this with 99% of precincts reporting, appears to be Clinton's margin of victory). It’s a great victory in anyone’s book.
And yet mathematically, Pennsylvania didn’t move her forward; it actually put her further behind. That’s what makes her win there tragic.
In a post the day before the Pennsylvania primary, I explained in detail what margins Clinton needed in order to win the majority of elected delegates before the last primary election occurs on June 3. This election is like a footrace, I explained; with a relatively small handful of primaries left, and a finite number of delegates remaining to be won, she needs to gain ground with every primary if she wants to make up the ground she lost in the first 40-plus contests.
Before Pennsylvania voted, Clinton trailed Obama in the elected-delegate count by 162. With only 566 delegates left to be won in the remaining contests, some fairly simple math showed that to catch Obama, she needed to win everything from Pennsylvania forward by 28 points – i.e., to win 64% of the elected delegates to Obama’s 36% in all the remaining contests (with the exception of North Carolina, where she currently trails by 17 points; all my math asked her to do there was tie). Again, this isn’t pessimism or misogyny, it’s just a calculation. Here’s the algorithm: (Remaining delegates) - (Obama’s lead in delegates) ÷ 2 + (Obama’s lead in delegates). You can do the math yourself.
If she didn’t win Pennsylvania (or any other primary) by 28 points, she’d only fall farther behind. If she won Pennsylvania by ten points, Clinton would actually have lost ground. In my post before the vote in Pennsylvania, I explained it this way:
Think of it like a hundred yard dash. Catching up to Obama after a ten point “victory” in Pennsylvania would be like standing on the starting line and expecting to win the race – with your opponent having a 36 yard head start. And every step you take that doesn’t gain you ground puts you closer to defeat: every time Clinton falls short of the requisite 64% or 68% or even higher margin, the margin she needs in the remaining states goes up even more. Or, as Richard Durbin put it, Clinton is “running out of real estate.”
Hillary didn’t win 64% of the vote in Pennsylvania. She only won about 55% to Obama’s 45% – the ten-point spread I predicted, about two-thirds short of the 28 point spread she needed. Accordingly, she’ll only net about 16 delegates (87 for her, 71 for Obama) – not enough to stay on pace to win. After her win in Pennsylvania, Clinton now has to win 68% of the vote in all the remaining primaries -- up four points from the 64% she needed just two days ago.
In the real world, this is an insurmountable problem for Clinton. In some states, she may have had a little wiggle room; if she fell a little short in Indiana she might make it up by winning extra delegates in Puerto Rico. But Pennsylvania was Clinton’s best shot at a big win in a populous state – her “if you can’t make it there, you can’t make it anywhere” test (apologies to Sinatra). A month ago, a PPP poll showed Clinton leading in Pennsylvania by 26 points. Pennsylvania’s primary came after the Reverend Wright and “bitter” brouhahas. Clinton has family in Pennsylvania; her father and brother went to school and played ball in Pennsylvania; she spent vacations in Pennsylvania; her grandfather taught her to shoot in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has one of the last great Democratic political machines – read this frustrated post by Chuck Pennacchio, a great Democratic candidate who lost a Pennsylvania primary because that machine was aligned against him, if you want a taste of how powerful the Pennsylvania machine is – and that machine was overwhelmingly in Clinton’s camp. If she couldn’t make the requisite margin there, she won’t be able to make it in state after state after state, without any major slips, from now til the end of the campaign. (In fact, even if Michigan and Florida were miraculously counted in Clinton’s favor, she still would have needed 12 point wins from here on out – but she fell short of even that lower standard. So not even Michigan and Florida could help her win the nomination democratically.)
No: Pennsylvania was her best shot, and she fell short. Hope is a wonderful thing, but no amount of blind optimism can change the reality: Clinton’s not going to win the majority of democratically-elected “pledged” or popular delegates. More broadly: no logical person can continue to argue that Clinton can win in any popular or democratic sense of the word; it’s inevitable that she will lose the popular vote and the popular delegate count.
That doesn’t mean she can’t win the nomination. It does mean that the only way she can win the nomination is if the unelected Superdelegates overwhelmingly and unexpectedly decide to disregard the wishes of their collective constituents and hand the nomination to the candidate who lost the popular delegate count (and the popular vote, and the majority of states).
Here’s the important thing to take away from Clinton’s win/loss in Pennsylvania: because she no longer has any realistic chance of winning the “election” phase of the nominating process, the rest of us need to insist that the politicians, pundits and prognosticators stop putting so much undeserved attention on the upcoming primaries, and focus instead on the single issue that could decide this election in Clinton’s favor: the likelihood, the moral right, and the wisdom of allowing the Democratic Party’s aristocrats to override the will of millions of Democratic voters.
Personally, I don’t think it’s likely, moral, or strategically wise for the Supers to exercise a veto of the voters’ choice. I think Obama has already won this election, and inevitably will win the nomination, and that Clinton’s just the last one to realize it. But I also understand that many of her supporters disagree, and feel strongly that it’s both meet and proper for the Supers to do whatever they want. I’m willing to agree to disagree on that question, at least for now; I don’t really want to have that argument today, because it, too, is a distraction at this point.
Instead, all I’d like, from Clintonites and Obamanuts alike, is an agreement, based on simple logic, that the issue is no longer whether Clinton can win the election – she can’t, even if we count Michigan and Florida – but rather whether she can, and should, win a contrary outcome via a Superdelegate override.
Polls and predictions no longer count. Michigan and Florida, and Indiana and Puerto Rico and North Carolina and my own Oregon, no longer count, simply because their primaries can’t realistically alter the outcome of the election. The only remaining issue is the propriety and wisdom of Superdelegates overriding the voters. So let’s talk about that from now on, instead of wasting time and energy on distractions that make money for CNN and MSNBC and play into the candidates’ spin but aren’t actually relevant to the decision that’s being made.
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Monday, April 21, 2008
Defining What Would Constitute a "Win" for Clinton In Pennsylvania
UPDATE, APRIL 23: Post-Penna-election analysis here, though this post is a really good foundation for that one.
UPDATE, PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY DAY, APRIL 22: So far, it's looking like a Clinton win, as expected -- but the more numbers come in, the lower her margin gets. Again: if her margin's under 28%, she's losing ground -- and the spinmeisters, on MSNBC at least, aren't recognizing that fact. Hang on for more.
As politics junkies prepare for the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow, the pundit class and the candidates’ spinmeisters are endlessly debating what, exactly, would constitute a “win” for Clinton. Both campaigns are trying to manipulate people’s expectations; Clinton’s people are playing down her lead so that a 4- to 7-point victory will seem like a huge shift in her political fortune (and a double-digit victory, which polls consistently showed was well within reach until just a couple of weeks ago, will seem like a blowout), while Obama’s camp is portraying his support as being so low that anything under a 10-point win by Clinton will be anticlimactic.
But at this late stage of the Clinton-Obama primary, perception is not reality. Elections are a matter of counting votes, and counting is a matter of mathematics, not expectations or spin. Each candidate has won a precise number of delegates so far, and there are a finite number of delegates yet to be won. Instead of acting like Bush Republicans, responding to fear and greed and spouting bumper-sticker slogans and truthiness, Democrats can behave like real members of the Reality-Based Community, rejecting blind cries that “Clinton can still win!” or “There’s no way Clinton can win!” and crunching the numbers instead – in this case, analyzing the electoral data to determine what, precisely, would constitute a “win” for Clinton in Pennsylvania so that we can reject any spin, from any source, that isn’t grounded in reality.
Calculating Clinton’s necessary margin of victory is important for at least two reasons:
(1) Clinton’s ongoing, uphill battle for the nomination almost certainly is cutting into Obama’s yearlong lead over McCain in hypothetical head-to-head matchups; if her campaign isn’t actually viable, and she doesn’t actually have any realistic chance of winning the nomination, she should shut it down now so that Obama can focus on the general election. Conversely, if Clinton does have a good chance of a comeback, all Democrats should support her right to continue to fight. Objectively settling the “viability” issue would be a significant step toward resolving the question of whether Clinton should or should not bow out, and could reduce friction between the two candidates’ supporters.
(2) Even if the Clinton campaign’s viability isn’t conclusively resolved one way or another, the question of how she can and can’t win could be; in other words, her chances of winning the nomination with or without winning the popular vote, with or without Michigan and Florida, and with or without a counter-democratic “override” by Superdelegates could be winnowed down. If Clinton has no realistic chance of winning the elected-delegate race, then everyone should put much less emphasis on the final ten primary elections. If Michigan and Florida wouldn’t affect the outcome, then Michigan and Florida probably should be seated without alienating them further. If the only way Clinton can win is with a Superdelegate “override” of the popular vote, then we should be focusing like a laser on the principles and practicalities of allowing the candidate to be selected in contravention of the voters’ will – i.e., whether that outcome matches our democratic principles and how it might affect turnout by the disaffected candidate’s supporters in the general election, how it might affect independent and crossover voters’ perceptions of the nominee, and ultimately what the impact of a brokered outcome would be on the Democratic Party’s Presidential and Congressional chances in November. If Clinton still has a genuine chance of winning the majority of elected delegates, on the other hand, then no one has the right to question her right to continue her campaign. Evaluating the probability of the various combinations of scenarios will allow us to focus, hard, on the variables that actually will control the outcome – and to tell the spinmeisters to take a hike.
CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: So I’ve crunched the numbers, looking primarily at how big a win Clinton needs in Pennsylvania tomorrow to remain a viable candidate in the “democratic” portion of the election (because if she’s not viable in terms of winning the popular vote, then we all need to shift our perspectives and start seriously discussing the principles and the practicalities of her trying to override the popular vote with Superdelegates). And what I’ve learned is that Clinton needs to win 64% of the vote tomorrow to Obama’s 36% – beating Obama by a 28-point spread – to have any chance of winning the popularly-elected delegate count. The TV pundits and campaign spinners may be talking about the relative merits of a six-point, ten-point or even fifteen-point spread – but it’s all smoke and mirrors: hard numbers say anything under 28 points represents an overwhelming Clinton loss. Aggravating for Clinton backers? Of course – and, in all seriousness, I’m sympathetic. But those are the numbers. Here’s why:
Pennsylvania is the largest remaining primary state. It has 158 elected (aka “pledged” or “popular”) delegates – delegates assigned democratically by the votes of the people. TV talking heads keep mentioning the possibility of a ten-point spread. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania’s primary by ten points (i.e., Clinton gets 55% of the popular vote, Obama gets 45%), then she’ll get 87 elected delegates to Obama’s 71 – a 16-delegate gain for Clinton. Obama’s current 162-elected-delegate lead will be reduced to a 146-elected-delegate lead. If she wins Pennsylvania by ten point, the TV talking heads will blather endlessly about her tremendous win – but in reality, a ten-point win would be a terrible loss, putting Clinton mathematically even further behind than she is now.
As of today, before Pennsylvania, Clinton needs to capture 64% of all the remaining delegates (including Pennsylvania’s) to catch up to Obama. Every time she wins a state by less than that, she falls farther behind. After Pennsylvania, there will be nine remaining primaries carrying a total of 408 elected delegates. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania by only 10 points (55%-45%), then the mathematical reality is that she’ll have to win more than 277 of those 408 remaining delegates to beat Obama. That’s 68% – worse odds than the 64% she needs today.
Think of it like a hundred yard dash. Catching up to Obama after a ten point “victory” in Pennsylvania would be like standing on the starting line and expecting to win the race – with your opponent having a 36 yard head start. And every step you take that doesn’t gain you ground puts you closer to defeat: every time Clinton falls short of the requisite 64% or 68% or even higher margin, the margin she needs in the remaining states goes up even more. Or, as Richard Durbin put it, Clinton is “running out of real estate.”
Does Clinton have a rational chance of winning all the remaining contests by at least 28 points? Reality check: according to a pollster.com mashup of nearly 60 polls, Clinton has 48% of the Pennsylvania vote – 16% less than the 64% she needs just to avoid losing even more ground – and to make things worse, she’s been trending downward (though I expect her to get a bump tomorrow that’s not predicted in the polling data, as conservative Undecideds finally make up their minds for Clinton at the last minute):
Wait: it gets worse for Clinton than that. After Pennsylvania, the most delegate-rich primary is North Carolina on May 6, with 115 delegates. According to pollster.com’s mashup of 45 polls (24 in 2008 alone), Obama’s not just projected to win North Carolina, but to win it by over 17 points – AND he’s widening his lead over time:
It’s unrealistic to predict that Clinton go from an overwhelming loss in North Carolina (garnering only 36% of the vote) to winning it overwhelmingly (nearly doubling her base of support to 64%). In general, Obama closes gaps with her as elections near, not the other way around. But since we’re doing thought experiments anyway, let’s throw her a bone and say she somehow manages to come back from a 17 point deficit to tie in North Carolina, splitting those 115 delegates evenly with Obama. If she can tie North Carolina, then once again she’ll need to pick up 68% of all the remaining delegates, including Pennsylvania’s, to gain any ground at all.
So that’s where it stands, not as a matter of hope or faith or wishing really really hard or running up the Philadelphia museum steps like Rocky, but in hard numbers: unless Clinton can win Pennsylvania tomorrow by 28 points, and make up a 17-point deficit to tie in North Carolina, and win 68% of all the remaining delegates, she simply can’t, by any reasonable analysis, catch up to Obama, let alone beat him, in the upcoming elections. And the first hurdle in that triple-jump comes tomorrow: again, if she doesn’t win Pennsylvania by 28 points, then she can’t win the election democratically; her only hope would be a near-unanimous sweep of the undecided Superdelegates plus a mass defection of many of the Superdelegates currently endorsing Obama – which ain’t likely. And if anyone believes there is a serious possibility of such a mass migration of Superdelegates, prepared to engineer an outcome opposite of the one chosen by their collective constituents, then we need to stop pretending that it even matters whether Clinton can “win elections” and re-focus the debate on whether it’s wise or proper for party officials to override millions and millions of its members.
“But wait!,” someone’s hollering at their computer, “what about Michigan and Florida?!?” A legitimate question; let’s talk about Michigan and Florida.
First, some practical politics. Like it or not, even Clinton's most ardent supporters have to admit there’s almost no chance that those delegations will be seated at the Convention in the way Clinton wants. Sure, they’ll be able to participate at the Convention – why alienate their voters more than we already have? – but with Howard Dean as Chair of the DNC and the Rules Committee unanimous in their earlier decision to disqualify them, any agreement to seat their delegations will be negotiated after the Supers wrap up the nomination contest in June – or they’ll be seated under an agreement to split their votes more or less evenly – or their votes will be counted after all the other states’ delegates and Superdelegates at the Convention instead of in alphabetical order, so that they don’t affect the outcome. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, just talking practical politics: there isn’t a snowball’s chance in heck Clinton will manage to get credit for all the delegates she claims she won in those states.
But even if it’s ridiculously improbable, let’s imagine it anyway: that those delegations are seated and that they give Clinton every vote she’s asking for. In Michigan, where Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot, that would mean a net Clinton gain of 18 delegates. In Florida – where Clinton told a crowd on election night (though she wasn’t “campaigning” there) that she had won a “tremendous victory” – her perfect outcome nets her 38 more delegates over Obama. How would those 56 additional Clinton delegates affect the math?
Answer: it would affect it significantly enough to make the Pennsylvania election more interesting, but probably not enough to make a difference in the outcome. Giving Clinton every delegate she’s claiming from Michigan and Florida, and additionally assuming that she can recover from her huge deficit to manage a tie in North Carolina, would reduce Obama’s lead from 162 to 106 with nine contests to go. Yet even with such incredible good juju, Clinton would still need to make up a 56 delegate deficit to catch up to Obama in the pledged-delegate count by winning 254 of the remaining 451 elected delegates, or 56% to Obama’s 44%. In other words, even with impossible breaks going her way, deus ex machina, Clinton could only win by managing a 12-point spread across all the remaining contests, starting (but emphatically not ending) with Pennsylvania.
The important thing about these numbers is that while the politicians are playing the expectations game, and the TV pundits will proclaim a stunning victory if Clinton wins by five or more, and Howard Wolfson will talk about how Obama’s on the ropes, the numbers will let us focus on the issues that matter, according to how well Clinton does in Pennsylvania:
If Clinton wins Pennsylvania by 28 points or more, then every Democrat should acknowledge that her candidacy is unquestionably viable and stop squawking at her to bow out, at least unless and until future elections changed the calculus.
If she wins Pennsylvania by more than 12 points but less than 28, then the only way she can win the nomination without some kind of Superdelegate gamesmanship – which almost certainly would have some blowback for the Democratic Party in November – is if the Michigan and Florida delegations are seated as-is. Even though I don’t think there's any chance that's going to happen, a Clinton win in the 12 - 28 point range would definitely put the debate over what to do with those two states back on the front burner, with the heat turned up high.
If she wins Pennsylvania by fewer than 12 points, let alone loses it, then Clinton can’t win the race for pledged delegates even if Michigan and Florida are handed to her on a platter. Pennsylvania’s one of her strongest states, with an immensely powerful pro-Clinton Democratic machine and where every significant politician but one has endorsed her; if she can’t make the necessary margin there, then she’s lost the "election." And if she can’t make that margin, but still doesn’t drop out, then her plan necessarily is to win the nomination by persuading Superdelegates – and maybe, according to her unusual interpretation of party rules, even some non-Supers pledged to Obama – to override the democratic choice, effectively making all of the primaries and caucuses utterly irrelevant. If that’s the case, we need to stop wasting our energy pretending that the elections actually matter, and stop talking about Michigan and Florida, and start focusing, hard, on the real issue, which is whether we’re OK with our nominee being chosen by aristocrats instead of voters.
My purpose in presenting this analysis isn’t to pick a fight with Clinton supporters. I considered publishing this post AFTER the Pennsylvania primary, showing why the outcome – assuming it doesn’t meet the 28-point margin I believe actually governs Clinton’s chances – means Clinton can’t win. But I’m not interested in playing “gotcha” with Clinton backers, who mean well, share most of my values, and hopefully will support any Democrat running against McCain in November. Instead, I’m interested in determining whether Clinton has a serious shot at winning, how she might win (democratically or with a Superdelegate override), and using tomorrow’s election results to help focus the discussion among different cadres of Democrats who need to resolve their differences and learn to work together so we can start the serious and vital business of whupping John McCain, in a unified way, as soon as our nominee is chosen. And if Clinton does manage to pull a stunning upset in Pennsylvania – which in my book requires her to win by 28 points, and in everyone’s book should require her to win by at least 12 points – then I’m perfectly willing to eat crow, admit she’s still in the game, and rethink my positions. Hopefully every Democrat who sincerely cares about regaining the White House, whichever side of this debate they’re on, will be willing to do the same.
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UPDATE, PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY DAY, APRIL 22: So far, it's looking like a Clinton win, as expected -- but the more numbers come in, the lower her margin gets. Again: if her margin's under 28%, she's losing ground -- and the spinmeisters, on MSNBC at least, aren't recognizing that fact. Hang on for more.
As politics junkies prepare for the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow, the pundit class and the candidates’ spinmeisters are endlessly debating what, exactly, would constitute a “win” for Clinton. Both campaigns are trying to manipulate people’s expectations; Clinton’s people are playing down her lead so that a 4- to 7-point victory will seem like a huge shift in her political fortune (and a double-digit victory, which polls consistently showed was well within reach until just a couple of weeks ago, will seem like a blowout), while Obama’s camp is portraying his support as being so low that anything under a 10-point win by Clinton will be anticlimactic.
But at this late stage of the Clinton-Obama primary, perception is not reality. Elections are a matter of counting votes, and counting is a matter of mathematics, not expectations or spin. Each candidate has won a precise number of delegates so far, and there are a finite number of delegates yet to be won. Instead of acting like Bush Republicans, responding to fear and greed and spouting bumper-sticker slogans and truthiness, Democrats can behave like real members of the Reality-Based Community, rejecting blind cries that “Clinton can still win!” or “There’s no way Clinton can win!” and crunching the numbers instead – in this case, analyzing the electoral data to determine what, precisely, would constitute a “win” for Clinton in Pennsylvania so that we can reject any spin, from any source, that isn’t grounded in reality.
Calculating Clinton’s necessary margin of victory is important for at least two reasons:
(1) Clinton’s ongoing, uphill battle for the nomination almost certainly is cutting into Obama’s yearlong lead over McCain in hypothetical head-to-head matchups; if her campaign isn’t actually viable, and she doesn’t actually have any realistic chance of winning the nomination, she should shut it down now so that Obama can focus on the general election. Conversely, if Clinton does have a good chance of a comeback, all Democrats should support her right to continue to fight. Objectively settling the “viability” issue would be a significant step toward resolving the question of whether Clinton should or should not bow out, and could reduce friction between the two candidates’ supporters.
(2) Even if the Clinton campaign’s viability isn’t conclusively resolved one way or another, the question of how she can and can’t win could be; in other words, her chances of winning the nomination with or without winning the popular vote, with or without Michigan and Florida, and with or without a counter-democratic “override” by Superdelegates could be winnowed down. If Clinton has no realistic chance of winning the elected-delegate race, then everyone should put much less emphasis on the final ten primary elections. If Michigan and Florida wouldn’t affect the outcome, then Michigan and Florida probably should be seated without alienating them further. If the only way Clinton can win is with a Superdelegate “override” of the popular vote, then we should be focusing like a laser on the principles and practicalities of allowing the candidate to be selected in contravention of the voters’ will – i.e., whether that outcome matches our democratic principles and how it might affect turnout by the disaffected candidate’s supporters in the general election, how it might affect independent and crossover voters’ perceptions of the nominee, and ultimately what the impact of a brokered outcome would be on the Democratic Party’s Presidential and Congressional chances in November. If Clinton still has a genuine chance of winning the majority of elected delegates, on the other hand, then no one has the right to question her right to continue her campaign. Evaluating the probability of the various combinations of scenarios will allow us to focus, hard, on the variables that actually will control the outcome – and to tell the spinmeisters to take a hike.
CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: So I’ve crunched the numbers, looking primarily at how big a win Clinton needs in Pennsylvania tomorrow to remain a viable candidate in the “democratic” portion of the election (because if she’s not viable in terms of winning the popular vote, then we all need to shift our perspectives and start seriously discussing the principles and the practicalities of her trying to override the popular vote with Superdelegates). And what I’ve learned is that Clinton needs to win 64% of the vote tomorrow to Obama’s 36% – beating Obama by a 28-point spread – to have any chance of winning the popularly-elected delegate count. The TV pundits and campaign spinners may be talking about the relative merits of a six-point, ten-point or even fifteen-point spread – but it’s all smoke and mirrors: hard numbers say anything under 28 points represents an overwhelming Clinton loss. Aggravating for Clinton backers? Of course – and, in all seriousness, I’m sympathetic. But those are the numbers. Here’s why:
Pennsylvania is the largest remaining primary state. It has 158 elected (aka “pledged” or “popular”) delegates – delegates assigned democratically by the votes of the people. TV talking heads keep mentioning the possibility of a ten-point spread. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania’s primary by ten points (i.e., Clinton gets 55% of the popular vote, Obama gets 45%), then she’ll get 87 elected delegates to Obama’s 71 – a 16-delegate gain for Clinton. Obama’s current 162-elected-delegate lead will be reduced to a 146-elected-delegate lead. If she wins Pennsylvania by ten point, the TV talking heads will blather endlessly about her tremendous win – but in reality, a ten-point win would be a terrible loss, putting Clinton mathematically even further behind than she is now.
As of today, before Pennsylvania, Clinton needs to capture 64% of all the remaining delegates (including Pennsylvania’s) to catch up to Obama. Every time she wins a state by less than that, she falls farther behind. After Pennsylvania, there will be nine remaining primaries carrying a total of 408 elected delegates. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania by only 10 points (55%-45%), then the mathematical reality is that she’ll have to win more than 277 of those 408 remaining delegates to beat Obama. That’s 68% – worse odds than the 64% she needs today.
Think of it like a hundred yard dash. Catching up to Obama after a ten point “victory” in Pennsylvania would be like standing on the starting line and expecting to win the race – with your opponent having a 36 yard head start. And every step you take that doesn’t gain you ground puts you closer to defeat: every time Clinton falls short of the requisite 64% or 68% or even higher margin, the margin she needs in the remaining states goes up even more. Or, as Richard Durbin put it, Clinton is “running out of real estate.”
Does Clinton have a rational chance of winning all the remaining contests by at least 28 points? Reality check: according to a pollster.com mashup of nearly 60 polls, Clinton has 48% of the Pennsylvania vote – 16% less than the 64% she needs just to avoid losing even more ground – and to make things worse, she’s been trending downward (though I expect her to get a bump tomorrow that’s not predicted in the polling data, as conservative Undecideds finally make up their minds for Clinton at the last minute):
Wait: it gets worse for Clinton than that. After Pennsylvania, the most delegate-rich primary is North Carolina on May 6, with 115 delegates. According to pollster.com’s mashup of 45 polls (24 in 2008 alone), Obama’s not just projected to win North Carolina, but to win it by over 17 points – AND he’s widening his lead over time:
It’s unrealistic to predict that Clinton go from an overwhelming loss in North Carolina (garnering only 36% of the vote) to winning it overwhelmingly (nearly doubling her base of support to 64%). In general, Obama closes gaps with her as elections near, not the other way around. But since we’re doing thought experiments anyway, let’s throw her a bone and say she somehow manages to come back from a 17 point deficit to tie in North Carolina, splitting those 115 delegates evenly with Obama. If she can tie North Carolina, then once again she’ll need to pick up 68% of all the remaining delegates, including Pennsylvania’s, to gain any ground at all.So that’s where it stands, not as a matter of hope or faith or wishing really really hard or running up the Philadelphia museum steps like Rocky, but in hard numbers: unless Clinton can win Pennsylvania tomorrow by 28 points, and make up a 17-point deficit to tie in North Carolina, and win 68% of all the remaining delegates, she simply can’t, by any reasonable analysis, catch up to Obama, let alone beat him, in the upcoming elections. And the first hurdle in that triple-jump comes tomorrow: again, if she doesn’t win Pennsylvania by 28 points, then she can’t win the election democratically; her only hope would be a near-unanimous sweep of the undecided Superdelegates plus a mass defection of many of the Superdelegates currently endorsing Obama – which ain’t likely. And if anyone believes there is a serious possibility of such a mass migration of Superdelegates, prepared to engineer an outcome opposite of the one chosen by their collective constituents, then we need to stop pretending that it even matters whether Clinton can “win elections” and re-focus the debate on whether it’s wise or proper for party officials to override millions and millions of its members.
“But wait!,” someone’s hollering at their computer, “what about Michigan and Florida?!?” A legitimate question; let’s talk about Michigan and Florida.
First, some practical politics. Like it or not, even Clinton's most ardent supporters have to admit there’s almost no chance that those delegations will be seated at the Convention in the way Clinton wants. Sure, they’ll be able to participate at the Convention – why alienate their voters more than we already have? – but with Howard Dean as Chair of the DNC and the Rules Committee unanimous in their earlier decision to disqualify them, any agreement to seat their delegations will be negotiated after the Supers wrap up the nomination contest in June – or they’ll be seated under an agreement to split their votes more or less evenly – or their votes will be counted after all the other states’ delegates and Superdelegates at the Convention instead of in alphabetical order, so that they don’t affect the outcome. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, just talking practical politics: there isn’t a snowball’s chance in heck Clinton will manage to get credit for all the delegates she claims she won in those states.
But even if it’s ridiculously improbable, let’s imagine it anyway: that those delegations are seated and that they give Clinton every vote she’s asking for. In Michigan, where Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot, that would mean a net Clinton gain of 18 delegates. In Florida – where Clinton told a crowd on election night (though she wasn’t “campaigning” there) that she had won a “tremendous victory” – her perfect outcome nets her 38 more delegates over Obama. How would those 56 additional Clinton delegates affect the math?
Answer: it would affect it significantly enough to make the Pennsylvania election more interesting, but probably not enough to make a difference in the outcome. Giving Clinton every delegate she’s claiming from Michigan and Florida, and additionally assuming that she can recover from her huge deficit to manage a tie in North Carolina, would reduce Obama’s lead from 162 to 106 with nine contests to go. Yet even with such incredible good juju, Clinton would still need to make up a 56 delegate deficit to catch up to Obama in the pledged-delegate count by winning 254 of the remaining 451 elected delegates, or 56% to Obama’s 44%. In other words, even with impossible breaks going her way, deus ex machina, Clinton could only win by managing a 12-point spread across all the remaining contests, starting (but emphatically not ending) with Pennsylvania.
The important thing about these numbers is that while the politicians are playing the expectations game, and the TV pundits will proclaim a stunning victory if Clinton wins by five or more, and Howard Wolfson will talk about how Obama’s on the ropes, the numbers will let us focus on the issues that matter, according to how well Clinton does in Pennsylvania:
If Clinton wins Pennsylvania by 28 points or more, then every Democrat should acknowledge that her candidacy is unquestionably viable and stop squawking at her to bow out, at least unless and until future elections changed the calculus.
If she wins Pennsylvania by more than 12 points but less than 28, then the only way she can win the nomination without some kind of Superdelegate gamesmanship – which almost certainly would have some blowback for the Democratic Party in November – is if the Michigan and Florida delegations are seated as-is. Even though I don’t think there's any chance that's going to happen, a Clinton win in the 12 - 28 point range would definitely put the debate over what to do with those two states back on the front burner, with the heat turned up high.
If she wins Pennsylvania by fewer than 12 points, let alone loses it, then Clinton can’t win the race for pledged delegates even if Michigan and Florida are handed to her on a platter. Pennsylvania’s one of her strongest states, with an immensely powerful pro-Clinton Democratic machine and where every significant politician but one has endorsed her; if she can’t make the necessary margin there, then she’s lost the "election." And if she can’t make that margin, but still doesn’t drop out, then her plan necessarily is to win the nomination by persuading Superdelegates – and maybe, according to her unusual interpretation of party rules, even some non-Supers pledged to Obama – to override the democratic choice, effectively making all of the primaries and caucuses utterly irrelevant. If that’s the case, we need to stop wasting our energy pretending that the elections actually matter, and stop talking about Michigan and Florida, and start focusing, hard, on the real issue, which is whether we’re OK with our nominee being chosen by aristocrats instead of voters.
My purpose in presenting this analysis isn’t to pick a fight with Clinton supporters. I considered publishing this post AFTER the Pennsylvania primary, showing why the outcome – assuming it doesn’t meet the 28-point margin I believe actually governs Clinton’s chances – means Clinton can’t win. But I’m not interested in playing “gotcha” with Clinton backers, who mean well, share most of my values, and hopefully will support any Democrat running against McCain in November. Instead, I’m interested in determining whether Clinton has a serious shot at winning, how she might win (democratically or with a Superdelegate override), and using tomorrow’s election results to help focus the discussion among different cadres of Democrats who need to resolve their differences and learn to work together so we can start the serious and vital business of whupping John McCain, in a unified way, as soon as our nominee is chosen. And if Clinton does manage to pull a stunning upset in Pennsylvania – which in my book requires her to win by 28 points, and in everyone’s book should require her to win by at least 12 points – then I’m perfectly willing to eat crow, admit she’s still in the game, and rethink my positions. Hopefully every Democrat who sincerely cares about regaining the White House, whichever side of this debate they’re on, will be willing to do the same.
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
Hillary Clinton's Plan for the Economy Isn't for Us; It's For the Superdelegates
(Update, April 3: More economic plans, no new news.)
SOME POLITICAL CANDIDATES come up with new ideas and new initiatives because they really want to help people. Yes, we've all become cynical -- but there are still some of that good kind.
Then there's the more pedestrian, and plentiful, kind of candidate, the one who will say things and present new initiatives not so much to help people (though that's a nice side effect), but to make him- or herself look good -- to give the impression that they're problem-solving go-getters instead of poll-tracking, focus-group-reading, self-seeking hacks.
Hillary Clinton claims Barack Obama is the second kind: all words, no substance. She's not just wrong; she even knows she's wrong, and is making those accusations just to win, but a lot of people still don't see it. I've been paying a lot of attention to this specific issue -- substance vs. posing -- even, unlike more casual bloggers, listening in and sometimes asking questions during both candidates' regular press conference conference calls and reading all their campaign press releases. I even initially had some reservations about Obama (feel free to search this blog for my older posts about Obama), but the more I see of him, the more I see that he is the real thing. And "the real thing," in politics, is so rare that sometimes we can't even remember what it looks like. And as the campaign drags on, I also see more and more proof that Clinton is the second kind of politician: one who only does things if they'll help her, who wants to win more than she wants to do good. But, as I said, that's hard to show.
But sometimes we get lucky:
Today both candidates are giving major economic addresses. But last Thursday, in an effort to counter Obama's excellent speech that morning about how the Iraq War is dragging down the economy, her campaign emailed me (and 8,600 or so other media outlets) a preview that demonstrates how Hillary Clinton really looks at things -- and how little she actually cares about the real people trapped by the foreclosure crisis.
The Clinton press release is titled, "Must Read: Business Week: Hillary Targets the Credit Crisis. She's stepping up with measures aimed at voters' pocketbook woes." And at first I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful! A major business magazine sees her as the candidate who's taking the lead to really help people facing hard times in a tough economy! But then I actually read it.
Clinton's press release consisted entirely of excerpts from an article in Business Week. Not the whole article, understand -- just the parts that the Clinton campaign thought it was must important for reporters to read -- the "must read" parts, in Clinton's terms. And I was brought back to the sad reality that all Clinton really cares about is the election.
Boiling it down, here are the two things the Clinton campaign people really, really wanted journalists to take note of (bold emphases are mine):
1. Clinton Is Only Helping Citizens In Order To Win Votes -- Of Superdelegates:
"Clinton plans to discuss the details of her stimulus plan in a speech on the economy set for Mar. 24. Further initiatives are likely in coming weeks. The idea, of course, is to show voters exactly what Clinton would do to head off the crisis if she were in the White House. ...
"With Clinton's emphasis on pragmatic plans and pocketbook issues, analysts say she could get a bump up if she can convince voters she's better prepared to handle the economy's deepening problems. With the next big primary set for Apr. 22 in Pennsylvania, 'she's got five weeks to show she can really dominate this issue,' says Daniel Clifton, a political analyst at investment firm Strategas Research Partners. 'This could be a huge opportunity for her to rack up big margins.'...
"The fight over Pennsylvania, which has a struggling industrial base, a large population of blue-collar workers, and rising foreclosures, will be critical. Even if Clinton tallies big victories in Pennsylvania or other remaining states, she will probably not emerge with a delegate lead. Yet by nurturing the perception that she's the one to save voters' jobs and homes, she could sway the critical superdelegates to her side. 'Her only case is: I've got the lunch-bucket votes, and we can't win in November without them,' says pollster John Zogby."
2. She's Not Doing Anything For the Economy That Obama's Not Doing, Too: As if to underscore the fact that Clinton's initiatives are just for show, the excerpts that Clinton chose to distribute make clear that there's no substantive difference between the candidates, who both are carefully watching the "Main Street" economy and supporting legislation to help unemployed people, homeowners, and local communities:
"Obama's advisers say that he, too, is studying further plans to address the economy's problems, including measures to extend unemployment benefits and aid communities that have suffered a loss of tax revenues through foreclosures. Like Clinton, he backs congressional plans to refinance homeowners who need cheaper mortgages. 'If conditions remain bad or worse, those are the things we'll push,' says Heather Higginbottom, Obama's policy director."
There's an important nuance here. The Clinton folks didn't write the Business Week article. But they did choose which parts of it they wanted to emphasize -- and they intentionally chose the parts that showed Clinton as a shrewd political operator (that unelected Superdelegates hopefully will think is a good match for John McCain), ignoring the parts that might have showed her as being a true stateswoman working for the common good.
Why would they choose to emphasize the "she's a manipulative politician playing the angles" parts? Because that's actually what her campaign wants the press to hint at -- that she's trickier than Obama. Why? So that despite the mathematical reality that it's statistically impossible for her to catch up with Obama in the popular vote, and despite the polls that confirm more Democrats want Obama to be the nominee than Clinton (polls she's working hard to change by slamming Obama at every opportunity), she can still snag the nomination in August by getting the Supers to ignore the voters and select her -- just like the Supreme Court ignored the will of the voters and selected Bush President in 2000.
I dislike the fact that Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, win-at-any-cost, last-generation, faux-progressive, pro-corporate pol whose chief campaign strategist is a pollster and who is jeopardizing the whole Democratic Party's chances of winning the White House by taking her husband's advice last December to "attack" Obama -- even if doing so means making false allegations; even if doing so means McCain will win in November.
But even more than that, I dislike the fact that she's not only not trying to hide her true nature, she's actually subtly bragging about it in order to win the over a small but critical subset of Superdelegates -- those who aren't just party activists, but party insiders who are so circumscribed by their Inside-the-Beltway worldview and so beholden to the Clinton machine's favors that they would actually ignore the popular will and broker the convention instead.
The first fact merely shows what she is; the second fact shows that she doesn't even have the decency to show some shame about it.
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
SOME POLITICAL CANDIDATES come up with new ideas and new initiatives because they really want to help people. Yes, we've all become cynical -- but there are still some of that good kind.
Then there's the more pedestrian, and plentiful, kind of candidate, the one who will say things and present new initiatives not so much to help people (though that's a nice side effect), but to make him- or herself look good -- to give the impression that they're problem-solving go-getters instead of poll-tracking, focus-group-reading, self-seeking hacks.
Hillary Clinton claims Barack Obama is the second kind: all words, no substance. She's not just wrong; she even knows she's wrong, and is making those accusations just to win, but a lot of people still don't see it. I've been paying a lot of attention to this specific issue -- substance vs. posing -- even, unlike more casual bloggers, listening in and sometimes asking questions during both candidates' regular press conference conference calls and reading all their campaign press releases. I even initially had some reservations about Obama (feel free to search this blog for my older posts about Obama), but the more I see of him, the more I see that he is the real thing. And "the real thing," in politics, is so rare that sometimes we can't even remember what it looks like. And as the campaign drags on, I also see more and more proof that Clinton is the second kind of politician: one who only does things if they'll help her, who wants to win more than she wants to do good. But, as I said, that's hard to show.
But sometimes we get lucky:
Today both candidates are giving major economic addresses. But last Thursday, in an effort to counter Obama's excellent speech that morning about how the Iraq War is dragging down the economy, her campaign emailed me (and 8,600 or so other media outlets) a preview that demonstrates how Hillary Clinton really looks at things -- and how little she actually cares about the real people trapped by the foreclosure crisis.
The Clinton press release is titled, "Must Read: Business Week: Hillary Targets the Credit Crisis. She's stepping up with measures aimed at voters' pocketbook woes." And at first I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful! A major business magazine sees her as the candidate who's taking the lead to really help people facing hard times in a tough economy! But then I actually read it.
Clinton's press release consisted entirely of excerpts from an article in Business Week. Not the whole article, understand -- just the parts that the Clinton campaign thought it was must important for reporters to read -- the "must read" parts, in Clinton's terms. And I was brought back to the sad reality that all Clinton really cares about is the election.
Boiling it down, here are the two things the Clinton campaign people really, really wanted journalists to take note of (bold emphases are mine):
1. Clinton Is Only Helping Citizens In Order To Win Votes -- Of Superdelegates:
"Clinton plans to discuss the details of her stimulus plan in a speech on the economy set for Mar. 24. Further initiatives are likely in coming weeks. The idea, of course, is to show voters exactly what Clinton would do to head off the crisis if she were in the White House. ...
"With Clinton's emphasis on pragmatic plans and pocketbook issues, analysts say she could get a bump up if she can convince voters she's better prepared to handle the economy's deepening problems. With the next big primary set for Apr. 22 in Pennsylvania, 'she's got five weeks to show she can really dominate this issue,' says Daniel Clifton, a political analyst at investment firm Strategas Research Partners. 'This could be a huge opportunity for her to rack up big margins.'...
"The fight over Pennsylvania, which has a struggling industrial base, a large population of blue-collar workers, and rising foreclosures, will be critical. Even if Clinton tallies big victories in Pennsylvania or other remaining states, she will probably not emerge with a delegate lead. Yet by nurturing the perception that she's the one to save voters' jobs and homes, she could sway the critical superdelegates to her side. 'Her only case is: I've got the lunch-bucket votes, and we can't win in November without them,' says pollster John Zogby."
2. She's Not Doing Anything For the Economy That Obama's Not Doing, Too: As if to underscore the fact that Clinton's initiatives are just for show, the excerpts that Clinton chose to distribute make clear that there's no substantive difference between the candidates, who both are carefully watching the "Main Street" economy and supporting legislation to help unemployed people, homeowners, and local communities:
"Obama's advisers say that he, too, is studying further plans to address the economy's problems, including measures to extend unemployment benefits and aid communities that have suffered a loss of tax revenues through foreclosures. Like Clinton, he backs congressional plans to refinance homeowners who need cheaper mortgages. 'If conditions remain bad or worse, those are the things we'll push,' says Heather Higginbottom, Obama's policy director."
There's an important nuance here. The Clinton folks didn't write the Business Week article. But they did choose which parts of it they wanted to emphasize -- and they intentionally chose the parts that showed Clinton as a shrewd political operator (that unelected Superdelegates hopefully will think is a good match for John McCain), ignoring the parts that might have showed her as being a true stateswoman working for the common good.
Why would they choose to emphasize the "she's a manipulative politician playing the angles" parts? Because that's actually what her campaign wants the press to hint at -- that she's trickier than Obama. Why? So that despite the mathematical reality that it's statistically impossible for her to catch up with Obama in the popular vote, and despite the polls that confirm more Democrats want Obama to be the nominee than Clinton (polls she's working hard to change by slamming Obama at every opportunity), she can still snag the nomination in August by getting the Supers to ignore the voters and select her -- just like the Supreme Court ignored the will of the voters and selected Bush President in 2000.
I dislike the fact that Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, win-at-any-cost, last-generation, faux-progressive, pro-corporate pol whose chief campaign strategist is a pollster and who is jeopardizing the whole Democratic Party's chances of winning the White House by taking her husband's advice last December to "attack" Obama -- even if doing so means making false allegations; even if doing so means McCain will win in November.
But even more than that, I dislike the fact that she's not only not trying to hide her true nature, she's actually subtly bragging about it in order to win the over a small but critical subset of Superdelegates -- those who aren't just party activists, but party insiders who are so circumscribed by their Inside-the-Beltway worldview and so beholden to the Clinton machine's favors that they would actually ignore the popular will and broker the convention instead.
The first fact merely shows what she is; the second fact shows that she doesn't even have the decency to show some shame about it.
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
It's Not "Still Up In The Air", It's Just Strung Out...
UPDATE, MARCH 24: While Clinton campaigns in Pennsylvania and Obama takes a well-earned rest day, both of their campaigns continue to trade press releases keeping the heat on each other -- and John McCain campaigns in California, a state Democrats should be able to win in November, without a clear Democratic frontrunner to contest him and ensure that those indispensable 55 electoral votes stay in the Democratic column. It's agonizing: individual ego may well cost Democrats the White House -- and enable a Republican to replace at least one or two of the three remaining Democrats on the Supreme Court with Republicans, making the Court 7-2 or even 8-1 Republican. Women supporting Hillary Clinton should think hard about the impact her extending her losing campaign all the way to August may have on women's rights, because it's not just the White House that's at stake.
UPDATE, MARCH 20: No matter how well Hillary Clinton does in Pennsylvania, it's increasingly clear that she can't mathematically win the popular vote, and will need to rely on "Superdelegates" overriding the will of the voters. Not good for the Party or the country, as discussed below...
ORIGINAL POST: It's not "still up in the air", as a CNN piece says; it's just strung out now, probably all the way to August, to the party's detriment and McCain's gain. In the past, Clinton's campaign itself has said repeatedly that it's not about the number of states, it's about the number of delegates -- and given how close the margins were yesterday, plus the fact that Obama may actually have WON Texas when the primary and caucus votes are combined (!), Clinton probably gained only four net delegates, not enough to cut deeply into Obama's roughly 100-delegate lead.
So the math hasn't changed, just the P.R. spin. And the only way the nomination is "up in the air", mathematically, is that there still is a possibility that Clinton will be able to broker the convention and receive the nomination even though Obama will win both the popular vote and the majority of "pledged" delegates chosen by the popular vote. (In a press conference today, Clinton's campaign manager said flat out that that's fine by him -- the popular vote doesn't matter and if they can get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated, or sway the "superdelegates" whose votes are equivalent to roughly 10,000 real voters', they'll consider that fair. Do you agree?)
UPDATE, MARCH 13: Readers shouldn't be fooled by Clinton's current pretense that all she wants is Florida and Michigan's voters to be heard. That isn't what she's said in the past, it isn't what she's said in her press releases or press briefings, and it isn't even what she's saying now, if you read carefully enough. What I wrote above, and immediately below, still hold true: Obama wants either the rules followed as-is or a real re-election held, and Clinton only wants those options that give her an unfair edge -- which is why she still calls the Michigan election "fair" even though Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot. And don't trust the MainStream Media (MSM) to tell the whole truth -- they can't fit nuance into soundbites!
UPDATE, MARCH 6: Clinton's campaign has repeatedly said that there's no need for Florida or Michigan -- which were disqualified by the Democratic Party by the DNC, with Clinton's assent, in which the candidates all pledged not to campaign, and in which, in one case (Michigan), Obama's name didn't even appear on the ballot -- to hold valid votes or caucuses. No -- Clinton wants those two states' delegations (even Michigan's) seated at the national convention WITHOUT fair votes. Why? Because those states' skewed primaries resulted in Clinton racking up big "wins" (of course -- how hard can it be, for instance, when your opponent's name isn't even on the ballot?). I've listened in on the press conferences, and they're not even trying to hide it. FURTHER UPDATE: Just one example of Clinton campaign's about-face here.
What everyone (but Clinton) wants, of course, is for both states to hold legitimate primaries or caucuses, decide for real which candidate they prefer, and take their rightful place at the national convention. One job of true patriots is to fight for this to happen, against those who would rather benefit from a rigged system than actually abide by the will of the people. There is, happily, some hope -- far from certain, but hope, according to a CNN piece -- of the establishment "machine" losing and the right thing actually being done. I'll have an action plan (including contact info for the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee members and other power brokers who will make the final decision) up here in a few days, so please bookmark and check back. Thanks!
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
UPDATE, MARCH 20: No matter how well Hillary Clinton does in Pennsylvania, it's increasingly clear that she can't mathematically win the popular vote, and will need to rely on "Superdelegates" overriding the will of the voters. Not good for the Party or the country, as discussed below...
ORIGINAL POST: It's not "still up in the air", as a CNN piece says; it's just strung out now, probably all the way to August, to the party's detriment and McCain's gain. In the past, Clinton's campaign itself has said repeatedly that it's not about the number of states, it's about the number of delegates -- and given how close the margins were yesterday, plus the fact that Obama may actually have WON Texas when the primary and caucus votes are combined (!), Clinton probably gained only four net delegates, not enough to cut deeply into Obama's roughly 100-delegate lead.
So the math hasn't changed, just the P.R. spin. And the only way the nomination is "up in the air", mathematically, is that there still is a possibility that Clinton will be able to broker the convention and receive the nomination even though Obama will win both the popular vote and the majority of "pledged" delegates chosen by the popular vote. (In a press conference today, Clinton's campaign manager said flat out that that's fine by him -- the popular vote doesn't matter and if they can get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated, or sway the "superdelegates" whose votes are equivalent to roughly 10,000 real voters', they'll consider that fair. Do you agree?)
UPDATE, MARCH 13: Readers shouldn't be fooled by Clinton's current pretense that all she wants is Florida and Michigan's voters to be heard. That isn't what she's said in the past, it isn't what she's said in her press releases or press briefings, and it isn't even what she's saying now, if you read carefully enough. What I wrote above, and immediately below, still hold true: Obama wants either the rules followed as-is or a real re-election held, and Clinton only wants those options that give her an unfair edge -- which is why she still calls the Michigan election "fair" even though Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot. And don't trust the MainStream Media (MSM) to tell the whole truth -- they can't fit nuance into soundbites!
UPDATE, MARCH 6: Clinton's campaign has repeatedly said that there's no need for Florida or Michigan -- which were disqualified by the Democratic Party by the DNC, with Clinton's assent, in which the candidates all pledged not to campaign, and in which, in one case (Michigan), Obama's name didn't even appear on the ballot -- to hold valid votes or caucuses. No -- Clinton wants those two states' delegations (even Michigan's) seated at the national convention WITHOUT fair votes. Why? Because those states' skewed primaries resulted in Clinton racking up big "wins" (of course -- how hard can it be, for instance, when your opponent's name isn't even on the ballot?). I've listened in on the press conferences, and they're not even trying to hide it. FURTHER UPDATE: Just one example of Clinton campaign's about-face here.
What everyone (but Clinton) wants, of course, is for both states to hold legitimate primaries or caucuses, decide for real which candidate they prefer, and take their rightful place at the national convention. One job of true patriots is to fight for this to happen, against those who would rather benefit from a rigged system than actually abide by the will of the people. There is, happily, some hope -- far from certain, but hope, according to a CNN piece -- of the establishment "machine" losing and the right thing actually being done. I'll have an action plan (including contact info for the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee members and other power brokers who will make the final decision) up here in a few days, so please bookmark and check back. Thanks!
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
Thursday, February 14, 2008
SuperDelegates and the Anti-democratic Perquisites of Power
UPDATE, Feb. 19: Hey -- bloggers make a difference? I'll bet Thomas Paine's pamphlets had some impact on the creation of our democracy, too. So pay attention, and please participate. (CNN overview of "supers" here.)
UPDATE: Feb. 15: USA Today and CNN on the Michigan and Florida delegates problem; Wall Street Journal on yet another reason Obama would be the better candidate.]
UPDATE: FEB. 14: Happy Valentine's Day from Sen. Clinton: with her campaign floundering, and losing both the popular vote and the specific constituencies (women, Latinos) she had considered her "firewall", she's now pushing for the flawed Michigan and Florida results to be included in the delegate vote tally.
This follows her earlier, but not well-publicized, statement defending the superdelegate system on the grounds that her inside-the-Beltway friends have better "knowledge of the candidates" than we voters do, and calling Obama's proposal (that the "supers" simply vote the way their constituents voted) "really contrary" to the way things are supposed to work.
Put the two positions together -- that we should count the two states that intentionally broke the rules and which even Hillary originally agreed should be disqualified (but where, unlike Obama or any other Democrat, she still campaigned), and that it's OK for a relatively small group of party insiders to override the popular vote -- and it's clear that Clinton has now officially abandoned any remaining pretense at (a) supporting small-d democracy, (b) playing by the rules, or (c) putting the Democratic Party's interests before her own drive for power. There's no question any more: she'll break the rules and shatter the party -- even have the nomination wind up being decided by the Supreme Court, a la Bush 2000 -- rather than even risk losing in a fair fight.
[Update, Feb. 14, 11:48 am Pacific: The Boston Globe has more damning detail about Clinton's outspoken disregard for the democratic process, and her self-serving flip-flop on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations:
The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged'' delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.
But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.
"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.
"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.
"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period," he added. ***
Clinton -- who initially joined other Democrats in opposing Michigan and Florida's decisions to go ahead with early primaries -- now wants the votes of those primaries counted. The Obama camp thinks that idea is unfair, since candidates were not allowed to campaign in those states, and Clinton alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot, meaning Obama did not have a chance at getting even provisional delegates.
Clinton's even trying to reframe the issue by changing our language; her campaign no longer refers to "superdelegates" (a term so well accepted that it draws 2.75 million Google hits), but will start calling them "automatic delegates" (which both downplays the fact that each of them has a vote worth 10,000 of ours, and implies that they don't actually have a choice who to support). Orwell would be proud. So would Joe Stalin, and especially Karl Rove.
So considering all this, ask yourself: does Clinton sound like an agent of change, or an establishment politician committed to winning at all costs, even if it means ignoring both the will of the voters and the rules she herself helped put into place?
David Sirota, writing today for the Huffington Post, echoes my analysis of what this means:
So that's the coordinated message: If democracy has been allowed to be trampled in the past, then we should all sit back and be fine with democracy being trampled now...as long as it is trampled in defense of the Clintons. Egomania knows no bounds and no loyalty -- not even to the founding principles of democracy.
At least the mainstream press -- here, here, here, here -- is finally catching on to what a big deal this is, though they're still focusing on the Superdelegates and less on the equally important -- and more deceptive -- issue of seating the Florida and Michigan delegations without pushing them to hold new caucuses or primaries that allow all candidates to compete and all voters to participate. The original post below explains why this news today is so significant, and why it puts Hillary Clinton in such a poor light. (Meanwhile, you can sign petitions here and here, and contribute to Obama here.)
ORIGINAL POST, Feb. 9:
After checking out CNN's primary watch page late last night, I pretty much know what I'm going to be doing for the next six months:
Yesterday there were three Democratic primaries/caucuses: Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana. Obama won all three states overwhelmingly: 68-31% in Washington, 68-32% in Nebraska, 57-36% in Louisiana. He also won the more complex race for delegates in those states: 35-14 in Washington, 16-8 in Nebraska, 23-15 in Louisiana. (All figures are as of midnight last night, with between 96% and 99% of precincts in all three states reporting.)
So Obama gained 74 or so democratically-elected, "promised" delegates yesterday, and Clinton gained only 37 of such delegates. And since (depending on who was counting) the candidates were either neck-and-neck or Obama had a slight lead in the "promised" delegate count heading into today's primaries, he should have about a 40-delegate lead overall, right?
Wrong. Here's CNN's leaderboard as of about midnight Saturday, after substantially all the day's results were in:
Look closely: according to CNN, Obama has 908 democratically elected candidates to Clinton's 877 -- a 31-delegate lead -- but Clinton is still over 70 delegates ahead overall, even after getting her tail whupped today, because she's won the loyalty of (read: campaigned and done favors for, made huge campaign donations to, and shared Bill's donor Rolodex with) 223 party insiders called "superdelegates", while the less-well-connected Obama has only lined up 131!
(UPDATE, FEB. 12: After Maine last Sunday and with the "Potomac primaries" underway today, Obama is continuing his winning streak, but the situation still hasn't changed. CNN reports: In total delegates, Clinton tops Obama 1,148 to 1,121, according to CNN estimates. The breakdown paints a slightly different picture, as Obama leads 986 to 924 in pledged delegates, and Clinton is winning among superdelegates 224 to 135. Does this sound democratic to you, or does it sound like a system designed to ensure that only "establishment", business-as-usual pols can be elected?)
Gain a sweeping victory in elected delegates and yet wind up farther behind because while you were diligently campaigning, your opponent was (much more fruitfully) bribing or twisting insiders' arms. It's our current DLC, Centrist, Clintonian, Democratic (but not democratic) party in a nutshell. And while Obama is asking the superdelegates to simply vote the same way as their states or districts -- a fair solution -- Clinton is defending the superdelegate system, supposedly because the "supers" know the candidates personally and therefore can make better decisions about them than we mere citizens can! It's hard to imagine a less democratic position for a "Democrat" to take: that the aristocrats in the House of Lords quite properly can override us commoners who don't know what we're doing when we vote.
Wait, it gets worse: there's also the Michigan/Florida question. When those states moved their primaries earlier in the calendar without the DNC's permission, the party told them that if they persisted their delegates wouldn't count. They persisted. Clinton sneak-campaigned in both states by making sure her name was on the ballot then buying regional TV ads that would air both in contested states and in the disqualified states. Clinton, unopposed, won big in both states. And now the DNC says, firmly, that those delegates won't be seated -- unless the party decides otherwise at the convention itself. Big loophole, that: two huge, influential states' delegations show up and demand to be seated, it's all the news will cover, it threatens to overshadow the party's message on the issues, and you don't think they'll cave in and seat them? Especially if Obama wins the popular vote, but admitting Michigan and Florida will swing the popular vote the other way and make it look like Hillary actually won?
Yeah, right. The ongoing impeachment proceedings of Bush and Cheney illustrate the degree to which the current Democratic Party leadership -- with, I hope, the exception of Howard Dean -- stands firmly for truth, justice, fair elections and the American Way.
I'm trying to remember the last time the people voted for one candidate, but the other candidate manipulated a small group of power brokers to gain the Presidency anyway. The whole situation just seems really familiar. Just give me a sec. Was it... was it... Bush-Gore 2000, where Gore won the popular vote but Bush won the five Supreme Court votes that really mattered?
So that's what we're coming down to: We The People vote for one candidate, power brokers pick the other, power brokers win. And it doesn't matter which well-connected candidate is pulling the strings, because both parties will roll over for the people with power.
It's offensive. It's undemocratic, and unDemocratic. If the superdelegates don't do the right thing and align themselves with the popular vote, there may be -- there should be -- uncontrollable protests at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August, a la Chicago 1968.
If Clinton wins the nomination unfairly, without huge protests from the roots, then regardless of the outcome of the general election it'll be a good time to check New Zealand's immigration rules. There's great mountain climbing there, the fly fishing is tremendous, the political system is only a little bit rigged -- and it's half a planet away from the former United States of America. But let's not lose faith. Instead, let's work to make sure that doesn't happen, because America's worth fighting for.
That's why I know what I'll be doing for the next sixth months: still doing my climbing on Mt. Hood, my fishing in the Deschutes and McKenzie -- and working to un-rig the Democratic Party's rigged and unfair primary system.
P.S. Feb. 12: Paul Abrams at HuffPo has a good idea for resolving the superdelegate controversy, and holds out hope for Florida and Michigan as well. Fingers crossed. And the Democratic Party is considering revamping its primary process -- but only after November, which is sensible but does us no good now. Meanwhile, though, Hillary still seems to have the lead overall despite falling farther and farther behind with primary voters. A little sunshine and a little progress shouldn't lull us into complacency...
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
UPDATE: Feb. 15: USA Today and CNN on the Michigan and Florida delegates problem; Wall Street Journal on yet another reason Obama would be the better candidate.]
UPDATE: FEB. 14: Happy Valentine's Day from Sen. Clinton: with her campaign floundering, and losing both the popular vote and the specific constituencies (women, Latinos) she had considered her "firewall", she's now pushing for the flawed Michigan and Florida results to be included in the delegate vote tally.
This follows her earlier, but not well-publicized, statement defending the superdelegate system on the grounds that her inside-the-Beltway friends have better "knowledge of the candidates" than we voters do, and calling Obama's proposal (that the "supers" simply vote the way their constituents voted) "really contrary" to the way things are supposed to work.
Put the two positions together -- that we should count the two states that intentionally broke the rules and which even Hillary originally agreed should be disqualified (but where, unlike Obama or any other Democrat, she still campaigned), and that it's OK for a relatively small group of party insiders to override the popular vote -- and it's clear that Clinton has now officially abandoned any remaining pretense at (a) supporting small-d democracy, (b) playing by the rules, or (c) putting the Democratic Party's interests before her own drive for power. There's no question any more: she'll break the rules and shatter the party -- even have the nomination wind up being decided by the Supreme Court, a la Bush 2000 -- rather than even risk losing in a fair fight.
[Update, Feb. 14, 11:48 am Pacific: The Boston Globe has more damning detail about Clinton's outspoken disregard for the democratic process, and her self-serving flip-flop on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations:
The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged'' delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.
But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.
"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.
"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.
"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period," he added. ***
Clinton -- who initially joined other Democrats in opposing Michigan and Florida's decisions to go ahead with early primaries -- now wants the votes of those primaries counted. The Obama camp thinks that idea is unfair, since candidates were not allowed to campaign in those states, and Clinton alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot, meaning Obama did not have a chance at getting even provisional delegates.
Clinton's even trying to reframe the issue by changing our language; her campaign no longer refers to "superdelegates" (a term so well accepted that it draws 2.75 million Google hits), but will start calling them "automatic delegates" (which both downplays the fact that each of them has a vote worth 10,000 of ours, and implies that they don't actually have a choice who to support). Orwell would be proud. So would Joe Stalin, and especially Karl Rove.
So considering all this, ask yourself: does Clinton sound like an agent of change, or an establishment politician committed to winning at all costs, even if it means ignoring both the will of the voters and the rules she herself helped put into place?
David Sirota, writing today for the Huffington Post, echoes my analysis of what this means:
So that's the coordinated message: If democracy has been allowed to be trampled in the past, then we should all sit back and be fine with democracy being trampled now...as long as it is trampled in defense of the Clintons. Egomania knows no bounds and no loyalty -- not even to the founding principles of democracy.
At least the mainstream press -- here, here, here, here -- is finally catching on to what a big deal this is, though they're still focusing on the Superdelegates and less on the equally important -- and more deceptive -- issue of seating the Florida and Michigan delegations without pushing them to hold new caucuses or primaries that allow all candidates to compete and all voters to participate. The original post below explains why this news today is so significant, and why it puts Hillary Clinton in such a poor light. (Meanwhile, you can sign petitions here and here, and contribute to Obama here.)
ORIGINAL POST, Feb. 9:
After checking out CNN's primary watch page late last night, I pretty much know what I'm going to be doing for the next six months:
Yesterday there were three Democratic primaries/caucuses: Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana. Obama won all three states overwhelmingly: 68-31% in Washington, 68-32% in Nebraska, 57-36% in Louisiana. He also won the more complex race for delegates in those states: 35-14 in Washington, 16-8 in Nebraska, 23-15 in Louisiana. (All figures are as of midnight last night, with between 96% and 99% of precincts in all three states reporting.)
So Obama gained 74 or so democratically-elected, "promised" delegates yesterday, and Clinton gained only 37 of such delegates. And since (depending on who was counting) the candidates were either neck-and-neck or Obama had a slight lead in the "promised" delegate count heading into today's primaries, he should have about a 40-delegate lead overall, right?
Wrong. Here's CNN's leaderboard as of about midnight Saturday, after substantially all the day's results were in:
Look closely: according to CNN, Obama has 908 democratically elected candidates to Clinton's 877 -- a 31-delegate lead -- but Clinton is still over 70 delegates ahead overall, even after getting her tail whupped today, because she's won the loyalty of (read: campaigned and done favors for, made huge campaign donations to, and shared Bill's donor Rolodex with) 223 party insiders called "superdelegates", while the less-well-connected Obama has only lined up 131!
(UPDATE, FEB. 12: After Maine last Sunday and with the "Potomac primaries" underway today, Obama is continuing his winning streak, but the situation still hasn't changed. CNN reports: In total delegates, Clinton tops Obama 1,148 to 1,121, according to CNN estimates. The breakdown paints a slightly different picture, as Obama leads 986 to 924 in pledged delegates, and Clinton is winning among superdelegates 224 to 135. Does this sound democratic to you, or does it sound like a system designed to ensure that only "establishment", business-as-usual pols can be elected?)
Gain a sweeping victory in elected delegates and yet wind up farther behind because while you were diligently campaigning, your opponent was (much more fruitfully) bribing or twisting insiders' arms. It's our current DLC, Centrist, Clintonian, Democratic (but not democratic) party in a nutshell. And while Obama is asking the superdelegates to simply vote the same way as their states or districts -- a fair solution -- Clinton is defending the superdelegate system, supposedly because the "supers" know the candidates personally and therefore can make better decisions about them than we mere citizens can! It's hard to imagine a less democratic position for a "Democrat" to take: that the aristocrats in the House of Lords quite properly can override us commoners who don't know what we're doing when we vote.
Wait, it gets worse: there's also the Michigan/Florida question. When those states moved their primaries earlier in the calendar without the DNC's permission, the party told them that if they persisted their delegates wouldn't count. They persisted. Clinton sneak-campaigned in both states by making sure her name was on the ballot then buying regional TV ads that would air both in contested states and in the disqualified states. Clinton, unopposed, won big in both states. And now the DNC says, firmly, that those delegates won't be seated -- unless the party decides otherwise at the convention itself. Big loophole, that: two huge, influential states' delegations show up and demand to be seated, it's all the news will cover, it threatens to overshadow the party's message on the issues, and you don't think they'll cave in and seat them? Especially if Obama wins the popular vote, but admitting Michigan and Florida will swing the popular vote the other way and make it look like Hillary actually won?
Yeah, right. The ongoing impeachment proceedings of Bush and Cheney illustrate the degree to which the current Democratic Party leadership -- with, I hope, the exception of Howard Dean -- stands firmly for truth, justice, fair elections and the American Way.
I'm trying to remember the last time the people voted for one candidate, but the other candidate manipulated a small group of power brokers to gain the Presidency anyway. The whole situation just seems really familiar. Just give me a sec. Was it... was it... Bush-Gore 2000, where Gore won the popular vote but Bush won the five Supreme Court votes that really mattered?
So that's what we're coming down to: We The People vote for one candidate, power brokers pick the other, power brokers win. And it doesn't matter which well-connected candidate is pulling the strings, because both parties will roll over for the people with power.
It's offensive. It's undemocratic, and unDemocratic. If the superdelegates don't do the right thing and align themselves with the popular vote, there may be -- there should be -- uncontrollable protests at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August, a la Chicago 1968.
If Clinton wins the nomination unfairly, without huge protests from the roots, then regardless of the outcome of the general election it'll be a good time to check New Zealand's immigration rules. There's great mountain climbing there, the fly fishing is tremendous, the political system is only a little bit rigged -- and it's half a planet away from the former United States of America. But let's not lose faith. Instead, let's work to make sure that doesn't happen, because America's worth fighting for.
That's why I know what I'll be doing for the next sixth months: still doing my climbing on Mt. Hood, my fishing in the Deschutes and McKenzie -- and working to un-rig the Democratic Party's rigged and unfair primary system.
P.S. Feb. 12: Paul Abrams at HuffPo has a good idea for resolving the superdelegate controversy, and holds out hope for Florida and Michigan as well. Fingers crossed. And the Democratic Party is considering revamping its primary process -- but only after November, which is sensible but does us no good now. Meanwhile, though, Hillary still seems to have the lead overall despite falling farther and farther behind with primary voters. A little sunshine and a little progress shouldn't lull us into complacency...
BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
GUEST BLOGGER: CHUCK PENNACCHIO, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR SENATE FROM PENNSYLVANIA
UPDATE, MARCH 26, 2008: This essay dates back to 2006, but it couldn't be more timely or topical. As Pennsylvania's voters compare Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton, it should be helpful to understand why Hillary is gaining so many endorsements from leading Pennsylvania Democrats -- and why that fact, properly understood, should hurt her, not help her.
Pennsylvania -- sorry, Pennsylvanians! -- is a "Democratic Machine" state, run by party insiders who are hostile to upstarts from outside their network like Pennacchio (and Obama). Clinton played a significant role in ensuring that "Establishment" Democrats in PA beat out true Progressives in their primaries; now they're returning the favor. But don't take my word: You can't get a better overview of how the Inside-the-Beltway, Old Boy (or Girl) Network functions than Chuck gives here. At least think about what he has to say. (And when you're done, please feel free to visit VichyDems' home page to see more current news, analysis, and action plans -- like today's "Tax Fax" grassroots campaign (also on the Huffington Post) to fax Clinton our own (redacted) tax returns to encourage her to do the same sooner rather than later -- so that Pennsylvania voters actually have time to digest whatever secrets they contain before they vote.)
(Visitors from Memeorandum: the post on Democratic data-mining is here.)
An Introduction to Chuck Pennacchio
An ongoing theme here at VichyDems has been that the centrist-accommodationist philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Conference and similar organizations was successful at electing a Democratic President -- Bill Clinton -- but has been disastrous for the Democratic Party as a whole, in both electoral and ideological terms. Under Clinton, Democrats' historical hold on Congress was completely destroyed; his accession to Republican programs like NAFTA and welfare reform have proved disastrous to the American populace and have wiped out the blue-collar and middle-class workers who used to be the backbone of both American society and the Democratic party; and his lack of coattails set the stage for the current Republican control of every branch of government. As Sam Smith has pointed out in historical detail, "running to the center" has been a disaster for the Democratic Party and for America.
Exacerbating the problem is the existence of Democratic Party "machines" that make a mockery of party primaries and instead select our candidates for us. As I've written before, we'll never succeed in electing progressive Democrats to public office if our own party won't even allow them to compete for the party's nomination. Again and again, the Democratic Party's "machines" have selected their preferred candidate and kept viable alternative candidates out of the limelight, if not off the ticket: Sherrod Brown over Paul Hackett in Ohio (more here), Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont in Connecticut (though Lieberman has finally ruffled enough feathers that that may be changing), and Bob Casey -- a pro-life conservative who supported Sam Alito -- over Chuck Pennacchio and Alan Sandals in Pennsylvania. And, as my most recent post on this topic explains, they're trying to do the same thing on a national level, rigging the 2008 Presidential primary in Hillary Clinton's favor even before she announces her candidacy. (The last person to power-broker his way into a guaranteed nomination that way was George W. Bush, who emerged from obscurity to announce his candidacy with a larger war chest already in the bank than any Presidential candidate in history.)
Fortunately, we still have intelligent, savvy, committed, liberal candidates in the Democratic Party -- candidates like Chuck Pennacchio, who wants the nomination to challenge Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum for Senate next November. Unfortunately, such candidates have to spend more time, energy and money fighting their own party than they do fighting their nominal opponents. That's especially frustrating when the end result is candidates who aren't well-known or well-supported by the Democratic base and who actually stand a worse chance of beating the Republican than their primary opponents would have been; for example, a persuasive Zogby poll shows that Pennacchio would be a better candidate against Santorum than Casey is, but that doesn't sway the party's power brokers.
I've written quite a bit about Pennacchio's uphill battle: about Hillary Clinton's strong, premature support for Bob Casey (and the Pennacchio campaign's eloquent response to that development); about Charlie Crystle's eloquent endorsement of Pennacchio and indictment of the Pennsylvania party machine; and about the difficulty pro-choice groups are having getting the media to report that Casey is pro-life and that there are pro-choice alternatives in the race. In addition, Natalie Davis' excellent recent interview with Pennacchio can be found here, and a diary at DailyKos about Casey’s promise-breaking when it comes to debates can be found here.
But there's nothing like hearing from the candidate himself, and I'm pleased that Dr. Pennacchio has been gracious enough to agree to write a Guest Blog for VichyDems. Without further ado: Chuck Pennacchio, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate from Pennsylvania:
*****
Who Owns Our Party?
by Chuck Pennacchio
I've been asked by VichyDems to guest blog about Democratic Party bosses like New York Senator and DSCC Chair Charles Schumer, who has tried to force his personal pick, Bob Casey, Jr., through Pennsylvania's May 16 primary without debate, discussion, or democracy. And given the buy-in from virtually all of the establishment politicos, press, pundits, pollsters, PACs, professional fund raisers, Beltway consultants, and Wall Street financiers, he's has plenty of help advancing his autocratic agenda.
Before turning to the larger consequences of Schumer's strongarm tactics on Democratic -- and democratic -- politics, let's pause for this delicious irony: not only is Schumer antidemocratic, but the methods he employs today would have precluded his own rise to the U.S. Senate. If not for an open primary system in New York, party favorite Elizabeth Holtzman would have been the Democratic candidate to take on Alphonse D'Amato in 1998. If Schumer had been subject to the boss "rules" he seeks to impose on Pennsylvania Democrats, good ol' Chuck would still be stuck in the House.
So, what's the problem with Schumer and company choosing Senate candidates? The easy answer is that it's wrong to leave Pennsylvania's Democratic voters out of a decision that by right and by law is theirs. But it's also self-defeating to take power from the electorate, and deny the party its single best chance to build numbers and organization. In the end, voters are very good at sniffing out corrupt deals and bad candidates, which is probably why our party has lost 10.5% of its voter turnout since 1998, and why the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in particular has lost 14 consecutive full-term US Senate elections dating back to 1964!
If Democratic voters were interested only in return on investment, like the coalition of the well-heeled and the narrow-minded that defines the right wing of the Republican Party, the whole back room, top down, executive decision-making thing might work. But Democratic voters are not looking for tax cuts, earmarks, or corporate welfare; they're not obsessed with controlling the lives of their fellow citizens. What they're seeking, in addition to honest representation, is protection of our Constitutional rights -- like choice, like privacy, like equal rights -- and genuine solutions for our nation's critical problems -- like universal health care, a living wage, and an immediate end to the Iraq War.
I know Pennsylvania. I was born here, lived here as a child, returned after my schooling to start a family. Over the last two years I've travelled to every part of my state; 263 campaign events since the 2004 elections. Democrats here don't respond well to paternalism, as they have proven in the past. Think Klink 2000 (a social conservative who lost badly to Santorum). For that matter, think Bob Casey, Jr. He had the Democratic Party's endorsement, labor's backing, and an enormous war chest in the 2002 Gubernatorial primary, and with all that he blew an 17-point lead over Ed Rendell and lost the primary by 12 points.
Even if my fellow citizens could stomach party paternalism, Charles Schumer is not Pennsylvania's daddy. The sum total of his knowledge about Pennsylvania is a James Carville witticism: two big cities with Alabama in between. Absolute rubbish. While the countryside is mostly red, Pennsylvania's many historic cities and towns have deep and abiding blue roots. What I hear over and over, from Altoona to Dingmans Ferry, from Lancaster and York to Allentown and Wilkes Barre, is that a couple decades ago, local Republicans got aggressive and started issuing threats. They told local business men and women to change party or at least shut up, or they'd be put out of business. And people got cowed, and shut up. They stopped talking about politics to their patrons, to their coworkers, to their neighbors; but their hearts never changed.
They held to their progressive convictions, just quietly. The Bush administration and its insane excesses changed all that. Everyone's had enough and the time for being quiet is over. What Democrats all across the Commonwealth are discovering is that they are not alone; they were never alone. So they meet in coffee houses and brew pubs, in places with names like Aroma Borealis, and they organize. In the last election, Lancaster City swept out its Republican Mayor, City Council and lower level officers and replaced them with a bunch of upstart citizens, most of whom had never held public office. Dover, in York County, jettisoned its "intelligent design" school board. These events are neither isolated nor coincidental.
To put this all in the perspective of the moment, I'm writing in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 8th, and it's already been a crowded week. On Monday, South Dakota outlawed abortion, and an invitation arrived in the mail from "Pragmatic Progressive Women for Casey." They're asking $1000 a plate for the privilege of honoring a guaranteed vote against choice at a dinner featuring Madeleine Albright. Included is a letter of encouragement from 9 Democratic Senators (Boxer, Cantwell, Clinton, Feinstein, Landrieu, Lincoln, Mikulski, Murray and Stabenow). These women are part of what's wrong. You don't defend Roe v. Wade, nor return a meaningful Democratic majority to Congress, by struggling to elect a candidate who is anti-choice, opposes embryonic stem-cell research, shares George W. Bush's position on Iraq, has no solution for the health care crisis, won't touch the living wage, and takes money from hundreds of the same PAC donors as Rick Santorum.
Also on Monday, our campaign filed 4212 petition signatures collected by 220 volunteers in 32 counties. No paid circulators, no help from the party bosses; just ordinary citizens who understand that the way forward isn't backward. You don't effect change by giving in; if you want change you have to push back and fight. I'm not going to the Senate to be bipartisan; I'm going to the Senate to be a pain-in-the-ass -- you know, rattle the cage -- on behalf of regular people, because that's what this historical moment demands. Nothing less. Thomas Jefferson often said that each generation must wage revolution anew and, you know, he was right. We've grown complacent. Our government has grown complacent and it long ago stopped representing the interests of the average citizen. Unlike my future colleagues, I have not, do not and will not take PAC money, so I don't need to worry about offending my sponsors. Our Senate has 63 lawyers, a nice assortment of former CEOs and CFOs, but not a single trained historian like myself. And it shows. We need to stop taking short cuts and start taking the long view.
The bottom line is this: you can't change politics without changing politics. Our nation, our Constitution, and our world is in crisis. But all great societies know that from crisis comes opportunity. Before us, in this primary, is the opportunity to reject the fear-driven boss politics of Charles Schumer and friends, and more importantly, to embrace the people-first politics of true-blue progressive Democrats. You remember those folks from the history books . . . well their politics have, and once again will, protect and extend civil liberties, promote genuine security, and restore accountable, wise, and efficient government.
Count on it. Because that's what real American democracy looks like.
*****
Final note from Thersites: you can learn more about Chuck Pennacchio at his campaign website, and you can contribute to the Pennacchio campaign here.
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Pennsylvania -- sorry, Pennsylvanians! -- is a "Democratic Machine" state, run by party insiders who are hostile to upstarts from outside their network like Pennacchio (and Obama). Clinton played a significant role in ensuring that "Establishment" Democrats in PA beat out true Progressives in their primaries; now they're returning the favor. But don't take my word: You can't get a better overview of how the Inside-the-Beltway, Old Boy (or Girl) Network functions than Chuck gives here. At least think about what he has to say. (And when you're done, please feel free to visit VichyDems' home page to see more current news, analysis, and action plans -- like today's "Tax Fax" grassroots campaign (also on the Huffington Post) to fax Clinton our own (redacted) tax returns to encourage her to do the same sooner rather than later -- so that Pennsylvania voters actually have time to digest whatever secrets they contain before they vote.)
(Visitors from Memeorandum: the post on Democratic data-mining is here.)
An Introduction to Chuck Pennacchio
An ongoing theme here at VichyDems has been that the centrist-accommodationist philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Conference and similar organizations was successful at electing a Democratic President -- Bill Clinton -- but has been disastrous for the Democratic Party as a whole, in both electoral and ideological terms. Under Clinton, Democrats' historical hold on Congress was completely destroyed; his accession to Republican programs like NAFTA and welfare reform have proved disastrous to the American populace and have wiped out the blue-collar and middle-class workers who used to be the backbone of both American society and the Democratic party; and his lack of coattails set the stage for the current Republican control of every branch of government. As Sam Smith has pointed out in historical detail, "running to the center" has been a disaster for the Democratic Party and for America.
Exacerbating the problem is the existence of Democratic Party "machines" that make a mockery of party primaries and instead select our candidates for us. As I've written before, we'll never succeed in electing progressive Democrats to public office if our own party won't even allow them to compete for the party's nomination. Again and again, the Democratic Party's "machines" have selected their preferred candidate and kept viable alternative candidates out of the limelight, if not off the ticket: Sherrod Brown over Paul Hackett in Ohio (more here), Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont in Connecticut (though Lieberman has finally ruffled enough feathers that that may be changing), and Bob Casey -- a pro-life conservative who supported Sam Alito -- over Chuck Pennacchio and Alan Sandals in Pennsylvania. And, as my most recent post on this topic explains, they're trying to do the same thing on a national level, rigging the 2008 Presidential primary in Hillary Clinton's favor even before she announces her candidacy. (The last person to power-broker his way into a guaranteed nomination that way was George W. Bush, who emerged from obscurity to announce his candidacy with a larger war chest already in the bank than any Presidential candidate in history.)
Fortunately, we still have intelligent, savvy, committed, liberal candidates in the Democratic Party -- candidates like Chuck Pennacchio, who wants the nomination to challenge Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum for Senate next November. Unfortunately, such candidates have to spend more time, energy and money fighting their own party than they do fighting their nominal opponents. That's especially frustrating when the end result is candidates who aren't well-known or well-supported by the Democratic base and who actually stand a worse chance of beating the Republican than their primary opponents would have been; for example, a persuasive Zogby poll shows that Pennacchio would be a better candidate against Santorum than Casey is, but that doesn't sway the party's power brokers.
I've written quite a bit about Pennacchio's uphill battle: about Hillary Clinton's strong, premature support for Bob Casey (and the Pennacchio campaign's eloquent response to that development); about Charlie Crystle's eloquent endorsement of Pennacchio and indictment of the Pennsylvania party machine; and about the difficulty pro-choice groups are having getting the media to report that Casey is pro-life and that there are pro-choice alternatives in the race. In addition, Natalie Davis' excellent recent interview with Pennacchio can be found here, and a diary at DailyKos about Casey’s promise-breaking when it comes to debates can be found here.
But there's nothing like hearing from the candidate himself, and I'm pleased that Dr. Pennacchio has been gracious enough to agree to write a Guest Blog for VichyDems. Without further ado: Chuck Pennacchio, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate from Pennsylvania:
*****
Who Owns Our Party?
by Chuck Pennacchio
I've been asked by VichyDems to guest blog about Democratic Party bosses like New York Senator and DSCC Chair Charles Schumer, who has tried to force his personal pick, Bob Casey, Jr., through Pennsylvania's May 16 primary without debate, discussion, or democracy. And given the buy-in from virtually all of the establishment politicos, press, pundits, pollsters, PACs, professional fund raisers, Beltway consultants, and Wall Street financiers, he's has plenty of help advancing his autocratic agenda.
Before turning to the larger consequences of Schumer's strongarm tactics on Democratic -- and democratic -- politics, let's pause for this delicious irony: not only is Schumer antidemocratic, but the methods he employs today would have precluded his own rise to the U.S. Senate. If not for an open primary system in New York, party favorite Elizabeth Holtzman would have been the Democratic candidate to take on Alphonse D'Amato in 1998. If Schumer had been subject to the boss "rules" he seeks to impose on Pennsylvania Democrats, good ol' Chuck would still be stuck in the House.
So, what's the problem with Schumer and company choosing Senate candidates? The easy answer is that it's wrong to leave Pennsylvania's Democratic voters out of a decision that by right and by law is theirs. But it's also self-defeating to take power from the electorate, and deny the party its single best chance to build numbers and organization. In the end, voters are very good at sniffing out corrupt deals and bad candidates, which is probably why our party has lost 10.5% of its voter turnout since 1998, and why the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in particular has lost 14 consecutive full-term US Senate elections dating back to 1964!
If Democratic voters were interested only in return on investment, like the coalition of the well-heeled and the narrow-minded that defines the right wing of the Republican Party, the whole back room, top down, executive decision-making thing might work. But Democratic voters are not looking for tax cuts, earmarks, or corporate welfare; they're not obsessed with controlling the lives of their fellow citizens. What they're seeking, in addition to honest representation, is protection of our Constitutional rights -- like choice, like privacy, like equal rights -- and genuine solutions for our nation's critical problems -- like universal health care, a living wage, and an immediate end to the Iraq War.
I know Pennsylvania. I was born here, lived here as a child, returned after my schooling to start a family. Over the last two years I've travelled to every part of my state; 263 campaign events since the 2004 elections. Democrats here don't respond well to paternalism, as they have proven in the past. Think Klink 2000 (a social conservative who lost badly to Santorum). For that matter, think Bob Casey, Jr. He had the Democratic Party's endorsement, labor's backing, and an enormous war chest in the 2002 Gubernatorial primary, and with all that he blew an 17-point lead over Ed Rendell and lost the primary by 12 points.
Even if my fellow citizens could stomach party paternalism, Charles Schumer is not Pennsylvania's daddy. The sum total of his knowledge about Pennsylvania is a James Carville witticism: two big cities with Alabama in between. Absolute rubbish. While the countryside is mostly red, Pennsylvania's many historic cities and towns have deep and abiding blue roots. What I hear over and over, from Altoona to Dingmans Ferry, from Lancaster and York to Allentown and Wilkes Barre, is that a couple decades ago, local Republicans got aggressive and started issuing threats. They told local business men and women to change party or at least shut up, or they'd be put out of business. And people got cowed, and shut up. They stopped talking about politics to their patrons, to their coworkers, to their neighbors; but their hearts never changed.
They held to their progressive convictions, just quietly. The Bush administration and its insane excesses changed all that. Everyone's had enough and the time for being quiet is over. What Democrats all across the Commonwealth are discovering is that they are not alone; they were never alone. So they meet in coffee houses and brew pubs, in places with names like Aroma Borealis, and they organize. In the last election, Lancaster City swept out its Republican Mayor, City Council and lower level officers and replaced them with a bunch of upstart citizens, most of whom had never held public office. Dover, in York County, jettisoned its "intelligent design" school board. These events are neither isolated nor coincidental.
To put this all in the perspective of the moment, I'm writing in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 8th, and it's already been a crowded week. On Monday, South Dakota outlawed abortion, and an invitation arrived in the mail from "Pragmatic Progressive Women for Casey." They're asking $1000 a plate for the privilege of honoring a guaranteed vote against choice at a dinner featuring Madeleine Albright. Included is a letter of encouragement from 9 Democratic Senators (Boxer, Cantwell, Clinton, Feinstein, Landrieu, Lincoln, Mikulski, Murray and Stabenow). These women are part of what's wrong. You don't defend Roe v. Wade, nor return a meaningful Democratic majority to Congress, by struggling to elect a candidate who is anti-choice, opposes embryonic stem-cell research, shares George W. Bush's position on Iraq, has no solution for the health care crisis, won't touch the living wage, and takes money from hundreds of the same PAC donors as Rick Santorum.
Also on Monday, our campaign filed 4212 petition signatures collected by 220 volunteers in 32 counties. No paid circulators, no help from the party bosses; just ordinary citizens who understand that the way forward isn't backward. You don't effect change by giving in; if you want change you have to push back and fight. I'm not going to the Senate to be bipartisan; I'm going to the Senate to be a pain-in-the-ass -- you know, rattle the cage -- on behalf of regular people, because that's what this historical moment demands. Nothing less. Thomas Jefferson often said that each generation must wage revolution anew and, you know, he was right. We've grown complacent. Our government has grown complacent and it long ago stopped representing the interests of the average citizen. Unlike my future colleagues, I have not, do not and will not take PAC money, so I don't need to worry about offending my sponsors. Our Senate has 63 lawyers, a nice assortment of former CEOs and CFOs, but not a single trained historian like myself. And it shows. We need to stop taking short cuts and start taking the long view.
The bottom line is this: you can't change politics without changing politics. Our nation, our Constitution, and our world is in crisis. But all great societies know that from crisis comes opportunity. Before us, in this primary, is the opportunity to reject the fear-driven boss politics of Charles Schumer and friends, and more importantly, to embrace the people-first politics of true-blue progressive Democrats. You remember those folks from the history books . . . well their politics have, and once again will, protect and extend civil liberties, promote genuine security, and restore accountable, wise, and efficient government.
Count on it. Because that's what real American democracy looks like.
*****
Final note from Thersites: you can learn more about Chuck Pennacchio at his campaign website, and you can contribute to the Pennacchio campaign here.
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