Monday, March 3rd, 2008...7:22 am
You’ve Got to Have a Fiddle In the Band
So, let’s say the commissioner of baseball pitches a game, thinks he’s about to strike out the batter, only to discover that the foul the batter hit that should have been his third strike doesn’t count? I think we’d all say, dude, that has been a rule since the 1890’s, you ought to know the rules, and in a way, you help write the rules.
(Notice how I didn’t use soccer as a reference there…)
I feel much the same way about some of the background murmuring about a possible lawsuit regarding the turducken contest in Texas. The Texas Democratic Party has been running its contest in this bizarre manner since 1976 (to help Lloyd Bentsen’s presidential bid, no less). All of a sudden, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has found out about this and won’t stand for it.
Now, here’s the funny part, they seem to know enough about the rules that they sent a training manual to organizers so that they can in essence, lock Barack Obama supporters out of that evening’s caucus precedings.
This is similar to the silliness that happened in Nevada, where the Clinton campaign complained about the legitimacy of the contest because of at-large caucus sites in Clark County. But, after they won those caucuses, you heard nary a peep out of them. By the way, there was also a “training manual” that showed how organizers could manipulate the Nevada rules to their advantage.
To their credit, the Clinton campaign has dialed back on the lawsuit threats, only asking for a clarification of rules. Rules that have, by the way, been in place for thirty years. Rules that her husband’s campaign seemed to understand and not have a problem with when he won the both the primary and the caucus in 1992.
Now, unlike many Obama supporters, I’m not going to complain about the training manual. If the rules are written in a certain way, I’d expect both campaigns to do all they can within the rules to win every delegate they can.
Here’s what bugs me: the constant complaining about the nature of the contests as if the whole process is weighted against the poor, disadvantaged Clinton. Whether it’s their complaints about the Nevada and Iowa caucuses, the claims that Florida and Michigan should count after all or the complaints about “unfair” delegate distribution in close contests.
The shape of the nomination contest was decided by the Democratic National Committee months ago. The DNC approved not just the calendar, but the rules that the individual states worked under. This approval isn’t just a fomality; Arizona, for example, had to change its “regional” contests to “district” contests to get approved in a past cycle. It is hard to argue that the DNC, the definition of the party establishment, was somehow biased against the woman who was at the time the prohibitive Democratic nominee. One of the big players in this process was Harold Ickes, a longtime Clinton friend. The decision, for example, to allow Nevada to have an early contest over Arizona and other states was largely the work of Ickes. Heck, many of these state parties that wrote these rules, including Texas, were controlled by folks that, at the time at least, were leaning towards Clinton.
Next: I expect to hear that Charles Darrow is angry that he has to pay so much rent for landing on Boardwalk and that Gary Gygax is complaining that his first level illusionist has too few hit points.
NB - The description of the Texas contest as a “turducken” comes from New Republic writers Adam Blinick, Cara Parks, and Barron YoungSmith.
7 Comments
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Whoa there, Ted. Combining primary politics and D&D in one blog post pushes the geek factor way, way too far. I’m afraid that anyone who even reads this post will have a hard time getting laid for at least six months.
As a witness to Hillary’s Nevada operation, while there were isolated incidents of some shady dealings, I think for the most part, the activity sanctioned by her campaign was above-board. Now, it was very aggressive, and perhaps in some ways violated the spirit of the rules (actively overthrowing Obama-supporting temp chairs for example), but didn’t violate the rules themselves.
And it is, as Wactivist points out, some good conditioning for the fight we’re in for in November.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
The bad news is that Hillary is ahead of Obama in Ohio in almost all of the polls done in the past couple of days. I haven’t seen any really good analysis of any of these polls so I am somewhat skeptical. The Texas polls are showing Obama slightly ahead or even with Hillary.
Apparently because of the good poll numbers, Hillary expects to win Ohio and, with money in the bank, sees no reason to quit before the Pennsylvania primary.
I’m beginning to think that Hillary will move into the Oval Office whether she wins or not.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Liza, I fear you are right. Hillary intends to take this fight to the bitter end. And as it gets uglier and uglier, both sides are really just handing campaign material to McCain.
Andrew, I KNOW you are right about getting laid. But then, that comes with 16+ years of marriage.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
The Pennsylvania primary is not until April 22. If Hillary stays in for that primary and keeps up this relentless attack on Obama, I think she might be handing the election to McCain.
I guess we’ll know more tomorrow, that is whether or not her negative campaigning has paid off. If she wins Ohio, she will conclude that what she is doing works and she will just keep doing it.
Hillary Clinton has quite obviously declared war on Barack Obama, just viciously tearing this man apart with no concern for the consequences. Now she has stated that she has a “lifetime of experience”, McCain has a lifetime of experience, and Obama by comparison has one speech given in 2002. She has aligned herself with McCain. If I were McCain I would take exception because Hillary has only been in the Senate for seven years.
If Hillary is allowed to do this for another five or six weeks, and I suspect she will, does anyone out there think that Obama will be electable? The party elders want it to end and seem to fear the consequences, but no one will dare stand up to the Clintons.
Hillary, of course, believes that she will be the nominee so it doesn’t matter what she does to Obama. And she figures to win against McCain in much the same way.
Leave it to the Democrats to wrestle a defeat from the jaws of victory. I think they are hopeless.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:44 am
This article about Ohio from the LA Times this morning is very interesting:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-ohio4mar04,0,4401271.story
I hope that Obama’s delegate lead is still in the triple digits at the end of today. All of “analysts” seem to think that there will be tremendous pressure put on Hillary to make as graceful an exit as she can if Obama is still way ahead of her.
Check out this “Yes, we will” video on YouTube of Hillary stumping in Ohio. There are a lot of versions of this but this one is very short:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMQytRKk4Ig
March 4th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Got a death-touch, Tedski?
You make an obscure reference to someone, and shortly thereafter, he turns up dead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gygax.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Yeah…I’m trying to think of who I should mention next.
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