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Hillary's Distorting the TRUTH Once AGAIN -- She was FOR Stripping Delegates Before being Against It
While most of this information comes from another source, I feel the urgent need to pass along these 'facts' about Michigan and Florida votes. Hillary's distorting the TRUTH once again.
Don't let her fool you Florida and Michigan.
Hillary has known all along what the rules were. Her campaign strategist, Harold Ickes, and her operatives on the DNC rules committee, were directly involved in the stripping of Michigan and Florida's delegates. If you have any doubts please go read the facts.
On Aug. 25, 2007, when the DNC's rules panel declared Florida's primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules. Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida's defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. In doing so, the DNC essentially committed itself, for fairness' sake, to strip the similarly defiant Michigan of all 156 of its delegates three months later. Clinton held tremendous potential leverage over this decision, and not only because she was then widely judged the likely nominee. Of the committee's 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them—most notably strategist Harold Ickes—voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)
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Also, Hillary is claiming the pledge she and other presidential candidates took to not "campaign" in these States was just that, no campaigning.
THEREFORE, I (Hillary Clinton), Democratic Candidate for President, pledge I shall not campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as “campaigning” is defined by rules and regulations of the DNC.
From law.com:
participate
v. to invest and then receive a part or share, as in business profits, payments on a promissory note, title to land, or as one of the beneficiaries of the estate of a person who has died.
Hillary's current demands that Florida and Michigan votes be counted says that she is now trying to "receive a part or share of the votes she won.
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Hillary said in October, 2007 before the Michigan primary:
"It's clear this election they are having is not going to count for anything"
Be sure to watch the video of her saying this.
There is lots more information...please go read it all.
Comments (28)
My personal opinion is it's simple. She is just trying to stay in this until the convention. Once there, we will see the remanining tricks she will pull out of that hat. Keeping her supporters hopes up by playing games with FL and MI are just part of the plan to stay alive. Oh, and by the way, if she gets to that convention.......it's going to be painful.
May 22, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
You have to believe with the public case Hillary is making that she knows that the RBC is likely ruling against her as she is trying to get public pressure on them and on her side. Obama on the other hand seems to be fighting this in the backrooms and through the proper channels.
May 22, 2008 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I sincerely hope he is fighting it and not giving into her demands. He's got the upper hand here. She's LOST.
He's taken on the DEM establishment as a relative unknown. He took on the two most powerful Dems in the country (Clintons) and with a lot of smart hard work - he's won the majority of elected delegates, 33 of the 50 primaries and caucuses, is within 61 votes of winning the needed DNC rules count of 2026 delegates and currenly holds the majority of votes that are legal.
Keep in mind that if he'd known this was about the POPULAR vote, you can bet your sweet bippy BOTH candidates would have ran their campaigns differently....it wasn't however...it's about DELEGATES as Hillary said in the beginning.
CONTACT YOUR SUPERDELEGATE OR ANY OTHER STATES SUPERDELEGATES BY EMAIL (free) OR FAX (for $5 donation) --> HERE http://lobbydelegates.com/
May 22, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I, Hillary Clinton, your future president, am in fact very much against stripping delegates.
Leading the stripper vote!
Leading the popular vote!
Leading you all!
Much Love,
Hillary.
May 22, 2008 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Having seen some of the delegates, I personally am going to take a very strong stand *against* stripping delegates.
May 22, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary apologists,
I still haven't seen a "Mid-Nomination Rule Change Manifesto," wherein all of your reasons for wanting to change the pre-agreed upon rules in the middle of the contest are laid out and defined for close scrutiny.
And furthermore, the reason(s) why I and the rest of Obama's supporters should accept these rule changes that are all only favorable to the other candidate, in the middle of a contest, when the outcome is in question, when such a change might swing the outcome of an already decided election. Does this not appear unethical to you? Try to think of an analogous situation (little kids playing a game; one kid who's losing wants to rewrite the rules mid-game so that they favor his/her chances of winning), so that you are not biased by your partisanship for your candidate.
Of course, the reason we'd like to see a Manifesto of all the reasons why Hillary's moving targets are better than the pre-agreed upon ones is to refute it soundly, once-and-for-all.
May 22, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
that should say "And furthermore, I'd like to see the reason(s) why..."
May 22, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Their biggest straw man (at least for Florida) is that Obama had TV spots broadcast when it was agreed they would not campaign there.
They will not listen to reason though.
Obama bought National TV spots. He could not pick and choose what states they played in. He realized this might be a problem and contacted the DNC before they aired and was told it did not violate the rule since it was a National TV buy and OK'd it.
That bit of logic does not fly with Hillary supporters though. No campaigning means no campaigning. Since he aired TV spots, they reason, he broke the rules so why can't we?
The hypocrisy goes even farther in regards to MI. Especially back in 2004 when Terry McAuliffe was head of the DNC and fought Carl Levin D-MI when they tried to move up the MI primary for that election.
Terry said to Carl:
"They will not get a credential. The closest they'll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it."
http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/Mark%20Nickolas/blog/&blogId=1950
May 23, 2008 12:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's spots were simply spots he placed on national TV, not anything he bought for that market. He did not violate the "no campaign, no participation" agreement.
May 23, 2008 2:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmUVr_Qt2Wg
After watching this, someone explain to me how Hillary Clinton is not a hypocrite!
May 22, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I found this press release particularly damning dated September 1, 2007:
Clinton Campaign Statement on the Four State Pledge
The following is a statement by Clinton Campaign Manager Patti Solis Doyle.
"We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process. And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar."
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=313...
May 22, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pantala.....
I know your being serious and I agree with you 100%....
On a not so serious note, but still serious because I believe this is her logic:
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/32617-campaign-logic
May 22, 2008 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Politicians are realists and the Clintons are not fools. Why continue the argument over FL and MI at this date? Even with the absolutely best case scenario, Senator Clinton will need over 70% of the super delegates to win the contest. It's just not realistic. So why fight? Because politics is also about returning favors.
Right now there are a number of powerful Democratic leaders from FL and MI that are not going to attend the convention. Not just pledged delegates, but super delegates as well. Senator Clinton may be making the rational choice to negotiate on their behalf in order to gather chits for her supporters.
This is about the only positive spin I can put on her actions.
May 22, 2008 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
So why fight?
I agree that it makes no sense for the DNC or the Obama campaign to fight seating the full number of delegates from both states in the proportions of the actual votes. The DNC spit in the faces of FL/MI voters while giving passes to IA, NH and SC. These are 2 states democrats cannot write off.
May 22, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why fight? Piss off enough 50+YO resentful women and mebbe extort a place on the ticket as VP for some other woman.
This is the matching piece to the strained and tendentious claims of sexism (sexism did indeed appear on the predictable right-wing cable schlock shows), but HRC is trying to tag Obama with it.
HRC and her mouthpieces injected race into the campaign time and again, and her remark about the "hard-working people, white people," whose subtext was that blacks are lazy welfare recipients, is far more egregious than anything Obama has said.
May 23, 2008 2:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
At what cost to the party though. If at the cost of turnout, that hurts the party, the people, and it is what the Republicans need to steal elections. Low turnout. The Super Dels should understand this, I think they do, if they are willing to play with voter turn out though, it will be a decision they make that they have to live with.
May 22, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can someone explain to us how continuing this has been a good idea?
Rachel Maddow, one if the few good pundits has said over & over Hillary is not quitting EVER, Hillary herself has told us that.
What now? How can you help but feel impending doom ? Time does not stand still, this is hurting our party, to deny that is folly.
May 22, 2008 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama was FOR Jeremiah Wright before he was against him.
May 22, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain for was FOR the vets before he was against them.
He was FOR Hagee before he was against him,
He was FOR Parsley before he was against him.
You guys picked the WRONG man for you GOP race. He's got a BAD history.
May 22, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
He was the only Republican around with a human face, you can't blame them for trying, LOL.
May 23, 2008 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain does have a bad history: on the other hand, he will move the Republican Party left while Obama moves the Democratic Party to the right.
Obama was not able to get the black vote without raising phony charges of racism against Hillary:he chose do do so. I am unable to imagine McCain doing anything of the kind. It is not even a close call -- I am voting McCain over Obama even though I disagree with about 80% of McCain's policy positions. I have been amused at the condescending assumption by Obama supporters that I am unaware of their respective records.
Sweetiegate just confirmed what many of us had suspected -- Obama is irredemiably sexist.
May 22, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
irredeemable is a strong adjective. i guess i should say that irredeemably is a strong adverb.
when did you become the redemption judge?
May 22, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
You'll deserve what you'll vote for and more, you just won't (sob!!) get it.
Wanna buy some Ginsu knives???
May 23, 2008 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
A wise decision.
After all, who wants to see a bunch of naked delegates?
May 22, 2008 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The best response to all this is Arianna Huffington's
"Stop Yelling at Hillary to Stand Down and Start Yelling at the Superdelegates to Stand Up"
Check it out: she has the list of all the SD's who are still whimping it out
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/stop-yelling-at-hillary-t_b_103135.html
May 22, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yesterday, after reading what Hillary said about taking this fight to the convention, I got angry. In fact, I was REALLY angry. So what I decided to do was to go through my emails from the last year and see exactly what was said and what happened. After finishing my investigation, I was shocked and awed. If anyone wants to know what I found, let me know here or any of my blog posts. You will be shocked and awed too.
LaKeisha Chestnut
May 22, 2008 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg Sargent did a Veracifier vid on this. I don't share his rosy outloook though. The problem is, as Rachel Maddow stated today, that once the rules meeting sits down, the nuclear option has begun. Whatever they decide, Hillary can, by the rules, appeal the decision. This starts off a snarly road, with more meetings with more and more subsets of the DNC. That will effectively drag this all the way to the convention.
The only way for this to end is if all the superdelegates Obama has in his pocket come out NOW!!!! Before the rules committee meeting, to push him over the top without MI and FL.
Then when the committee gets started and Hillary gives her "I want the votes to be counted as is" Obama can say "Fine". Case closed. No appeals. Obama wins!
Anything other than that will indeed condemn us to Hillary's nuclear option. History speaks for itself. If a primary fight goes to convention, that party's candidate looses the election.
Period. Voters hate infighting.
May 23, 2008 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary is NOT ahead in the popular vote. Even if you factor in the two annulled Florida and Michigan primaries she is still not ahead. One has to also disregard the four caucus states as well. THEN Hillary wins the popular vote.
Look, I am growing tired of the demonization of Senator Clinton and her supporters. (Admirably, I have yet to see any of that in this thread.) If she stays in the race until June 3rd, by which time I do believe Obama will have clinched the nomination, fine with me.
But...
If she keeps it going until the convention--Which I don't think she'll do--then my respect for her flies the hell out the window.
Cheers,
Robert
May 23, 2008 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
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