DNC Rules Committee Selects Obama as Nominee

I love it, a bunch of Republicans trying to stir up outrage in the Democratic party and slap each other on the back over it

As if it hadn't already been pointed out, both Hillary & Obama's campaigns agreed to the compromise.

Obama will be the nominee - that's been pretty much inevitable for weeks now, regardless of the outcome of this deal.

Frankly, with the elevated 'sensitivity' of Florida and Michigan voters at the time, they were fully aware that by staging their votes as they did, they made themselves mute to the electoral process.

The REAL fault is with the leadership that allowed (and perhaps even encouraged) that to happen. I recall that in Florida the amendment made to allow this debacle to ensue was attached as a rider on some transit bill, I don;t know if similar machinations were undertaken in Michigan.

Sadly, it makes little difference in terms of 'hope'. Some of you have obviously adopted (wholeheartedly it seems) the TV 'personae' being sold to you as our candidates. My condolences to you in advance. Perhaps many of you are young voters who haven't endured the 'revelation' that comes a few years after the election and the candidate you thought you had so carefully scrutinized appears to perform a 180 degree turn in character. If you think you 'know' Obama, good luck, and I hope I'm wrong. If you haven't seen what the Clinton legacy left behind for what it is, then your potential zeal for her to 'finish the job' is fairly in the realm of self-induced ignorance, and good luck to you.

The DNC, like any organization fat, lazy, and chomping at the bit for their turn at the head of the table, has virtually stopped playing the 'patriotic voters' game and is simply trying to deal with the nasty mess it allowed itself to be thrust into. It is impossible to pretend now, at this point in time, that they are victims in any way.

[edit on 1-6-2008 by Maxmars]

All I can say is...

Between now and the presidential election, beware mods of the GOP persuasion...

'nuiff said...


Peace

reply to post by jamie83


He didnt get any votes in Michigan b/c he was not on the ballot. Who is to say he would not have won in michigan?

Michigan is Hillary's demographic, and if a primary were to be held today, Hillary would probably win by a larger margin.

Maybe I am wrong, but I though super delegates had until the convention to make up their minds, and if that is true, then this race is still very much on.

I think Hillary could win a third party run, especially if Obama's numbers continue to shrink. If the repub attack machine changes a large number of people minds about Obama, and the DNC still refusse to give Hillary the nomination after she has won the popular vote, then she should run as a third party candidate.

In addition, if you are a Hillary supporter in the district of a super delegate that winds up supporting Obama over Hillary, I think you should remember that in the voting both. From my understanding, many of the super delegates supporting Obama received large amounts of cash for their vote.

The DNC should not get by with rigging this election the way they have.

It's striking that the party awarded delegates to Obama where his name wasn't on the ballot; another primary would have made more sense there. In the other instances party voters are being hurt by decisions made that they had no say over (moving the date of state primaries). Of course the whole notion of super delegates is to ensure there isn't too much democracy in the primaries.
Hillary will draw the process out and use every opportunity to destroy Obama's election chances. This way she can run against McCain in 2012 instead of having to wait until 2016 to throw her hat into the ring again. The question is, will she openly contribute to the mudslinging at Obama or discretely leak information to interested parties.

Originally posted by poet1b
If the repub attack machine changes a large number of people minds about Obama, and the DNC still refusse to give Hillary the nomination after she has won the popular vote, then she should run as a third party candidate.

What exactly does the popular vote have anything to do with winning the nomination, other than it could theoretically help you win the most states and therefor delegates - which hasn't happened in Hillary's case.

This isn't an election, it's a party nomination. Popular vote isn't a deciding factor, delegates are.

Since Hillary's chances started getting lower and lower, Hillary and her supporters seem to have forgotten - or wish to ignore - the rules.

First Michigan and Florida, now with this 'popular vote' thing.

I don't support either candidate and I don't care which one gets the nomination, but lately all this nonsense from the Clinton campaign and supporters is starting to get annoying.

The rules haven't changed, they've always been the same since the beginning of the primaries. Deal with it Clinton supporters, it seems your candidate is not going to win.

Originally posted by xmotex
As if it hadn't already been pointed out, both Hillary & Obama's campaigns agreed to the compromise.

No, they didn't agree. The Hillary campaign wanted all the votes to count. This is why Ickes was so pissed. And this has ZERO to do with party politics or with who you support. This has everything to do with the validity of election results.

Here's why Ickes was so pissed and said it was a hijacking of Democracy...

For elections to have ANY validity and meaning, there must be a chain of evidence that links individual citizens and their votes to the ultimate results. From a legal standpoint, to validate a vote, the courts need to be able to follow the will of the voters from the voting booth and connect the votes to the final result.

What the Rules Committee did was totally throw out that process. You have to understand that the delegates are ACTUAL PEOPLE who are elected by a vote of the citizens. The Rules Committee threw out the votes of 600,000 people in Michigan and appointed the delegates themselves. This is what Ickes referred to as the 30 people in the room casting aside the will of the 600,000 who voted in Michigan.

From a practical standpoint, it might make sense. But from a legal standpoint, and from the standpoint that every citizen gets their vote counted, it made NO sense.

You also have to understand that many people take their privilege to vote very seriously, The DNC wrongly flushed that privilege down the drain to start with re the whole Michigan and Florida debacles, and then added insult to injury by reinstating 1/2 the delegates and hand-picking which delegates counted.

What's really so blatantly disgusting about the whole process is that it was done after the election was over and was carried out to achieve a political goal rather than to do what was right and just. The goal, as many of the committee members said over and over, was to unify the party (and end the election). The goal wasn't to see that democracy was served.

Get the facts right...

The vote was NOT according the democrats regulations, it was held before Clinton was allowed to call it, and by that way she also managed to cheat Obama and some other nominees from getting votes (their names were not even on the ballots).

This resulted in that Clinton would either get 1/2 of the votes, or she would recieve no votes, because she called this vote before it was illegal to do so.
She knew this and got caught, fair and square.

Just when I thought the Democrats had it together. I was going to vote democrat this election. What’s with these DNC advertisements. “ every vote counts, get out and vote” looks like they just lied and lost the National Election again. When will the DNC ever learn? Giving votes to someone who was never on the ballot that is a slap in the face to all Americans. If Obama accepts these votes he not the man I thought he was . I wonder how many votes the democrats will lose from republicans like me who were going to vote democrat this election and chaqnged there mind because of this DNC. BS.

[edit on 1-6-2008 by SJE98]

I would hate to engage in any game or contest that just as soon as someone sees that they are about to lose they change the rules, they have Hillary on record completely contradicting her current stance on the delegates and the importance of Michigan.

These rules have been around for a long time, now just because Hillary is about to lose legally by delegates she wants to suddenly undermine the process by trying to claim that she is ahead on the popular vote which by all accounts is very debatable.

In all fairness because of the mis vote and unreliable outcome on all of the numbers , no candidate should have gotten any of the delegates in either state, but the DNC should have allowed the delegations from each state to attend the convention and fully participate.

There is beginning to be a thin line between being a whiner, sore loser and someone that can play by the rules and suck it up and face the facts according to how the game is played and see that the handwriting is clearly on the wall to get that final speech ready, instead of selfishly dragging this thing out by trying to make a nonsensical case of why she is more electable, hell there are so many republicans that hate the Clintons they are sure to drag even dead republicans to the polls to vote.




[edit on 1-6-2008 by phinubian]

Let's face it. We have all been betrayed by our chosen parties--unless you're independent, of course. The Democratic party has screwed this election and screwed the democratic voters. The Republican party essentially paid off McCain with the nomination because he was willing to flip flop on torture in order to the get the nomination. And the media has been complicit in all of this, allowing it to continue without revealing the truth of the system to the American people. Instead, the media touts this all as if our votes really count. They know better. Our votes are meaningless. Our voices are meaningless. In the end, it's all about what they tell us to think or what they tell us to do. As a country, we are screwed because there are too few of us who think for ourselves now.

This whole nonsense of Clinton supporters saying they would rather vote for McCain than Obama, and Obama supporters saying the same about Hillary is sickening.

If they had incredibly different proposals and ideas, I could understand it, but they don't. Even the candidates themselves, who like to distance from one another, have admitted that they propose similar things.

Why in the hell would you rather vote for someone who stands up for everything that, in theory if you're supporting either Obama or Hillary, you're against?

So, making the opponent of your candidate of choice lose - even if he/she is from the same party - is more important than the future of your country?

Maybe America really does deserve a 3rd Term Bush...

Originally posted by jetxnet
Funny too, if it were the other way around and Hillary got the 55 delegates and Obama had 4 taken away, there would be a huge uprising among Black people and their lame religious leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. It would be a HUGE deal.

The DNC should not get away with such BS.

Do you ever get tired of saying the same "if it were the other way around...Sharpton, Jackson!" thing? Blacks in Florida were disenfranchised and Sharpton and Jackson didn't rectify that issue. Please no whining. Put this tired rhetoric to bed.

On-topic: Finally...now the Democratic Party has decided to act on this issue that REPUBLICAN Governor Charlie Crist, and DEMOCRATIC Governor Jennifer Grisholm (Hillary Clinton's highest-profile supporter in Michigan) created for political reasons. Their decision to allow their State to blatantly break DNC party rules despite warnings was very regrettable and disrespectful to the party and the voters. It is fortuitous for Hillary Clinton that her name remained on the ballot while Obama supporters merely were made to check undecided. I've even seen those in the media claiming Obama was responsible for perpetuating the fiasco this has caused yet Obama agreed to follow the rules. You should also be aware that Hillary gave her written consent to abide by the decision of the DNC as well. Hillary sang a different tune when she was far ahead of her rivals.

"It's clear, this election [Michigan is] having is not going to count for anything."

On Sept. 1, the Clinton campaign issued this ringing statement:

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.
Fair-Weather Wolverine, Slate.com

Now she recants, reshuffles and reworks her opinion. Now the States urgently matter. Her name was on the ballot after all and she should get those votes counted. Who cares if the voters of the other candidates don't count she wants them all. DNC rules be damned.

Absurd, unfair and unrealistic.

The DNC needs to consistently take charge of situations like this. The rules are there for a reason (as Hillary stated) and to ignore them is to lose control of the party. Most supporters of McCain would love to see this fight keep going but I am glad this mess is put to bed. The Democratic party has been looking quite foolish of late and with candidates threatening to continue this fight all the way up to August it will inevitably implode.

I mean what would you have them do?

I should add though that I don't think most of the people posting here give two licks about who the Democratic nominee is as most have already expressed hard-right leanings to begin with. They...like Gov. Crist....like the Rush Limbaugh’s of the media world...want to see the in-fighting continue and the Democrats tear themselves apart. At which point the Republicans will finish off the remains come election time.

Hillary, Obama, and the limping DNC were playing right into their hands but hopefully this chapter will have somewhat cooled off so we can actually focus on the real issues.

I doubt most of the outraged conservatives in this thread plan to vote for a Democrat in November regardless of who it may be.

This is of course to keep the flames hot till the striking time.

- Lee




[edit on 2-6-2008 by lee anoma]

Hillary did not fully support the disenfranchisement of Florida from the beginning. Hillary was the last to agree, and lobbyied behind the scenes to allow those states to keep their delegates. If florida and Michigan had been allowed to vote, Hillary would have wrapped up the nomination in February. The DNC handed this election to Obama on a silver platter, and now at the end, when Obama has failed to secure the popular vote, the DNC is trying to force Hillary to back out of the race.

This whole thing has been rotten from the start, and people have been pointing this out from the start.

The twisted logic to not count the voters in Michigan and Florida is a bunch of drivel created by people determined to fix this election against the will of the people. It stinks.

By the way, McCain was popular with a great many Clinton supporters long before this primary season, which is why many Clinton supporters will go for McCain, such as myself. I think McCain is a moderate, while Obama is far left, much further left than Hillary. The Clintons have always been moderates, and Hillary is the only candidate speaking directly of supporting the middle class. Obama attends a church that thinks middle class aspirations are a waste of time, and that puts me greatly at odds with Obama's beliefs.

reply to post by lee anoma


Read what is said in the quote you posted. No where does Hillary state that she thinks Florida and Michigan delegates should be taken away. What she states, between the lines, is that she does not want to piss off the other states, because that would be political suicide.

Hillary was forced to sign the four state pledge by back door political arm wringing. Hillary was the last candidate to agree. She knew that Floida and Michigan would have put her over the top early on.

What is clear is that the whole primary schedule needs to be reshuffled so that different states get to be first, that there should be some rotating schedule so that every state gets a chance to be first now and then.

Originally posted by lee anoma

On-topic: Finally...now the Democratic Party has decided to act on this issue that REPUBLICAN Governor Charlie Crist, and DEMOCRATIC Governor Jennifer Grisholm (Hillary Clinton's highest-profile supporter in Michigan) created for political reasons. Their decision to allow their State to blatantly break DNC party rules despite warnings was very regrettable and disrespectful to the party and the voters.

This is just total bs.

Charlie Crist had nothing to do with it. Florida's legislature, including every Democrat, voted to move up the primary date. Even if Crist would have vetoed it, the legislature would have overridden the veto, and Crist would have been accused of obstructing what the Democrats wanted.

What everybody who's talking about "rules are rules" is forgetting is that the DNC made up phony "rules" from day 1. They made up the "rule" that four states got preferential treatment.

So all this self-righteous talk about the requirement to follow immoral (and possibly illegal) rules that party insiders arbitrarily made up is total nonsense.

Worse, the DNC showed a TOTAL disregard for the voters in Florida and Michigan by making the punishment for the actions of the state party leaders be the disqualification of the individual voters' right to participate in the process. This proved once and for all that the DNC cared more about maintaining their monopoly on the control of the Party and does not care about what the voters want.

And these are the same people who want to run our government? No wonder the government's so screwed up. What this episode showed is the true colors of the people involved. THEIR priorities come first; the will of the people doesn't matter if it interferes with what the insiders want.