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Clinton Floats Michigan Model to Solve Primary Impasse [SATIRE]

Arlington, VA—Hillary Clinton today put forth a new plan for resolving the lengthy and increasingly contentious Democratic presidential nomination process. Instead of conducting costly "do-over" votes in Michigan and Florida, she proposed, the Democratic Party should decide its nominee by counting only those delegates chosen in the Jan. 15 primary in Michigan. The plan also calls for canceling all future primaries and caucuses.

"I've fought like a wolverine to win this nomination," said Sen. Clinton (D-NY). "But the time has come to put aside our differences and to support a system that will bring the party together."

The Democratic National Committee voted last year to disqualify delegates elected in both Michigan and Florida, after legislatures in those two states opted to break the party's rules by holding their primaries before the Super Tuesday primary on February 5.

All candidates for the party's presidential nomination, including Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), agreed before the start of the primary season to abide by this party ruling. In addition, Obama and all other candidates besides Clinton complied with the decision to disqualify Michigan by removing their names from that state's primary ballot.

Michigan voters who went to the polls on Jan. 15 preferred Clinton to "Uncommitted," the only other name on the ballot, by 55 percent to 45 percent. If that result were to become official, it would yield 73 delegates for Clinton, compared with 55 delegates for Uncommitted. Under the new Clinton plan, the Michigan tally would give her the nomination.

Clinton said that in the spirit of party solidarity, she would ask Uncommitted to be her running mate in her general election campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican Party nominee for president. Uncommitted was unavailable for comment.

"The Democratic Party consists of people who are already committed to me, and people who have waited to commit to me," Clinton said. "This unity ticket will appeal to all constituencies in the party that really matter."

Asked to comment on the Clinton plan, DNC chairman Howard Dean said, "Yeaarrrrggggh!" Dean, who is a physician, then prescribed a sedative for himself.

The Obama campaign, responding to the proposal, appeared to shake its collective head in bemused sorrow. "What are you gonna do?" campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.

In recent weeks, Clinton has proposed a series of often-conflicting arguments as to why she could and should be the party's nominee. In response, Obama and his team have struggled to strike a balance between fighting back against Clinton's claims, on the one hand, and providing a wide berth to a fellow human being who is undergoing a mental health crisis, on the other.

According to unofficial tallies compiled by various news organizations, Obama leads Clinton in the pledged delegate count by 140 or more delegates, with less than 600 pledged delegates yet to be chosen. In the overall delegate count, which includes "super delegates”--party officials who are not bound by voter preference--Obama enjoys a lead of 100 or more delegates. Those figures reflect voting in the 43 primaries and caucuses that have taken place so far in 40 states and 3 U.S. territories. They do not include results from the unapproved Florida and Michigan primaries.

In a press conference at her campaign headquarters here today, Clinton outlined the benefits of her new plan. "The Michigan primary vote offers a model for how our party should conduct all of its elections," she said. "It fits the party like a glove. Or should I say, like a nice warm mitten?"

Contests with multiple candidates give undue advantage to people who are not named Clinton, Clinton charged. Such elections "systematically undermine my core strengths as a candidate, and as the next president of the United States," she said.

Among those strengths are marriage to a popular former Democratic president and the ability to express sympathy-garnering emotion on camera at decisive moments. "In elections where opponents are given free rein to campaign, the focus turns to matters such as persuasion and grass-roots organization--that is, matters that have nothing to do with voters."

Moreover, elections in which people challenge her "invariably devolve into squalid debates over tangential issues such as the war in Iraq and the role of judgment in the making of U.S. foreign policy," she said. "It becomes a regular 'serious season' out there on the campaign trail."

By contrast, Clinton noted, the Michigan primary gave voters "a forum to display the one essential skill that a citizen of a great democracy must have, and that is name recognition."

When a reporter asked Clinton whether her one-candidate-one-vote plan might bear comparison to a Soviet-style election, or an election of the type that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used to hold, she dismissed the notion with glassy-eyed conviction. "Vicious red-baiting should have no part in our nation's politics," she said.

Clinton's comments today amounted to her most thorough rejection yet of the established rules for choosing the Democratic presidential nominee. Previously, Clinton and officials in her campaign have argued that various kinds of states should not count in the selection process.

Traditionally "red" states--those in which a majority of people vote Republican--should play no part in the primary process, Clinton spokespeople have argued. "No Clinton has ever won in states such as Idaho or Wyoming," campaign manager Howard Wolfson said. "I mean, the electoral votes of those states don't even count in November, right? Right?"

Campaign officials have also contended that Clinton is at a disadvantage in states where she cannot engineer a provocative media event in the days right before voters go to the ballot box. "You have all of these states that favor speech-giving over tear-shedding," said Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist. "That's no way to choose our next commander-in-chief."

Finally, the Clinton campaign has dismissed the long-standing caucus format, which gives preference to highly informed voters who care about issues, as undemocratic. "After all," said Harold Ickes, a close associate of Clinton's, "the word 'caucus' is an old Native American term that means 'not fair to big squaw.'"

Ickes, who leads the Clinton effort to rally delegates to her side, noted that the Michigan plan would have the additional advantage of making his job practically meaningless.

At her news conference, Clinton also defended a recent statement by Geraldine Ferraro, a prominent supporter of her candidacy. Ferraro suggested in an interview that Barack Obama had fared well in the primaries because he was "lucky" enough to be an African-American man. In 1984, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale chose Ferraro to be his vice-presidential running mate, in part to appeal to women voters in his campaign against President Ronald Reagan. Ferraro underwent an irony-lift procedure in 2005 that reportedly had the side effect of severely impairing her self-awareness.

Clinton echoed Ferraro's comment about Obama by pointing to his relative inexperience in the field of victimization. "I bring many years of experience of standing by my two-timing man," she said. "Senator McCain will bring five and a half years of experience in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. But all that Senator Obama brings is the legacy of two and a half centuries of North American chattel slavery and one century of Jim Crow racism."

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