And so it begins...
The RBC decision wasn't an hour old before some very angry Democrats proved that "unity" requires a whole lot more than noble speeches and lofty rhetoric:
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Miramar (FL) - who is a respected congressman - will not attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver, as a "matter of protest":
"Now, on May 31, 2008, a group of elitist insiders of the DNC have effectively said that some of my ancestors’ progeny equal only 1/2 and that men and women in Florida who voted on January 29th are 1/2 also. For a Party which will crown its historic nominee on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the DNC’s decision today is tragically ironic."
Even Florida superdelegates, surrogates for the two campaigns and state Democratic Party leaders can't see eye-to-eye:
A group of public officials -- allies of both Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Barack Obama -- walked out of the hearing room to discuss their willingness to come together on a plan to seat all their delegates, each voting at half-delegate status, but representatives of the Clinton campaign from outside Florida interrupted their press conference to dispute the idea that the Clinton campaign agreed with the plan.
[snip]
[Sen. Ben] Nelson [FL] noted that he was speaking "on behalf of the voters of Florida," not on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
"They're misrepresenting our stance," [Lanny] Davis said repeatedly.
[snip]
This was more than Florida DNC member Ausman could apparently take. "I can say they're being generous," Ausman said of the Obama campaign, "and I'm the one who filed the petition."
[snip]
"We don't expect that the Obama campaign will be so 'generous' as to 'give' us the 19 delegates," [Stephanie Tubbs] Jones [a Clinton supporter] continued. "It is in fact more generous and more appropriate to count all the votes as they were cast."
And inside the hotel, things took a turn for the worse when Rep. David Bonior - representing Barack Obama - implied that 600,000 voters in Michigan should just have stayed home on primary day:
"This event that happened on Jan. 15 was not anything close to a primary election and cannot allocate delegates in a normal fashion," said former Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., on behalf of Obama.
His proposal to "solve" the problem? Splitting the delegates 50/50, even though Hillary Clinton won 60% of the vote in Michigan and in spite of the fact that Barack Obama's name wasn't on the ballot because he voluntarily removed his name. Clinton supporter and superdelegate Tina Flournoy laid into Bonior:
"What is being proposed here is that you go into a voting booth and at some point later down the road someone decides that your vote is for someone else," Flournoy said. "If we’re going to do that, let’s cancel 2012, and let’s divide all the delegates in all the states."
Unity?
Big Tent Democrat has some thoughts on fallout, too (on the Michigan decision especially):
If the rules REALLY mattered, then the RBC had three choices. NO delegates for Michigan. Half of the delegates based on the January 15 primary. Or All of the delegates based on the January 15 primary.
The rulebook was completely thrown out on this one...
And here is BTD's blistering commentary about Barack Obama's attitude in all of this:
But the biggest mistakes today were made by Barack Obama ... he should have argued for full seating of both delegations based on the primary results, taking the Michigan uncommitted delegates. Even in the unlikely event the RBC would have agreed to that, that would have only cost him 57 delegates net.
And it would have unified the Party. It would have been a wonderful gesture to the Clinton Wing of the Party. It would have shut everyone up when he wins the nomination. What did Obama do instead? He fought to take 4 delegates from Clinton in Michigan ...To piss off every Clinton supporter and keep the Party divided?
I disagree with the part about "when he wins the nomination," of course, because I think superdelegates are smart people who want to do the right thing for Democrats and the people (you know, the voters)!
It is Clinton loyalist Harold Ickes, however, who gets the vote for angry-and-incredibly-articulate-pin-dropping-moments in which he told it like it is:
If Barack Obama is the nominee and continues to throw matches into the fuel, his "unity" party is going to get very small, very fast because there is a TON of anger at Obama, his campaign, his surrogates, his supporters, and Democratic Party "leaders" that have done nothing but give Clinton supporters the impression that 'da rules' are selectively established, interpreted and enforced - mostly in favor of Barack Obama.
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