Moving the goalposts

Today the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee is meeting to determine the status of primary election delegates from the states of Florida and Michigan. Those two states were stripped of their delegates after their state Democratic Parties went back on their agreement to hold primaries no earlier than February 5.

All of the presidential candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, and the voters in those states were told that no delegates would be seated. Before Michigan held its primary January 15, four of the candidates removed their names from the ballot, leaving only Hillary Clinton, who declined to do so, Chris Dodd, who did not have the resources to withdraw his name, and Dennis Kucinich, who presumably thought he would have received the same number of votes either way. There was relatively low turnout compared to the number of Democrats who voted in other primaries, which is understandable considering that everyone knew at the time that it wouldn't mean anything. DailyKos urged Democrats to vote in the Republican primary and rejuvenate the floundering campaign of Mitt Romney to disrupt Republican campaign. The contributors to that blog were not happy when Republicans did the same to the Democrats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. At any rate, 56% of the Michiganders voted for Clinton, while 31% marked "uncommitted."

Florida held it primary on January 29. Hillary Clinton won 50% of the vote, Barack Obama garnered 33%, and John Edwards barely missed winning a delegate with 14%. It was accepted by all parties that the primaries would not count because they violated the schedule set by the DNC. The Clinton campaign did not care, for the most part, because they believed that they would have a lock on the nomination by Super Tuesday. Unfortunately for them, Obama performed well that day and won a series of 12 victories thereafter because Clinton had no campaign infrastructure in any of the subsequent states. Clinton began to push to have the primaries from Florida and Michigan legitimized.

The RBC has a number of options before it after it hears testimony from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. It could refuse to seat any delegates, seat all of the delegates from both states but allow each only half a vote at the convention, or seat half the delegates from each state. The Committee does not have the authority to grant either state more than half its votes at the convention. It might split Michigan's 108 delegates evenly or it might assign 69 to Clinton and 56 to Obama, giving him the uncommitted delegates.

If the DNC has any integrity, it will not seat any delegates from either state. Everyone was explicitly notified in January that the votes would not count. The Clinton campaign has no respect for the rules, and the Obama campaign doesn't have much to gain by standing up for them, so they are pushing for a compromise. This fiasco is a major blow to the credibility of the Democratic Party, if that party can be said to have any credibility to begin with. Not only is their selection process arcane and antidemocratic, allowing high-level party officials to weigh against a candidate with popular support in their role as superdelegates; the DNC also tolerates relocation of its goalposts at the very end of the primary game.

None of the proposed solutions provide any remedy for the people in both states who sat out the vote because they were told it would not count. Clinton loyalist Howard Ickes insists that Obama should not receive any delegates from Michigan, essentially punishing Obama for following the rules. This is the level of hypocrisy that I have come to expect from her and band of inept crooks. Michigan was completely expendable to them until Obama pulled ahead of them. Now they are pushing to change the rules in hopes of surviving.

As a registered Democrat, I feel slighted by the attempt to count invalid votes. My vote in the Pennsylvania primary was valid, as far as I know, and now it will likely be debased by the inclusion of votes from a pair of sham elections. This is precisely the kind of behavior that made me resist registering with this party in the first place. If democracy mattered to these people, they would have pushed for another set of primaries so that every Democrat's vote could be counted. Instead they are left with a bitter and divisive episode which will necessarily disenfranchise someone.

The RBC will likely seat at least some of the delegates from the two states, placating the bitter supporters of the losing candidate. The best possible outcome for Clinton still leaves her
chances very slim, so this abrogation of the party's rules will have little meaningful effect. Come to think of it, many of her supporters will still refuse to vote for Obama once he wins the nomination, regardless of what concessions are made to them.

The notable exception might be Clinton's installation on the bottom half of the Democratic ticket. This would unite the party, but it would lose my vote. Obama's political brand, built upon the notion that he is separate from the Washinton politics that have flourished under Bush and Clinton, already strains my suspension of disbelief. Taking Clinton, whom he has decried as an exemplar of that kind of politics, under his wing would dramatically undermine that image. Almost nothing could persuade me to vote for Clinton in any capacity.

Clinton claims effervescent victory

As things stand right now, Hillary Clinton has claimed victory in the Indiana primary, though the New York Times considers the race too close to call. Her lead is less than 2% with 91% of the precincts reporting their results.

I expressed hope in my last post that Clinton would give up and go home after tonight, but her untimely declaration of victory seems to preclude that possibility. I could dig through some amateur number-crunching right now if I wanted to, but I'd rather wait until the professionals make their rounds in the morning. Suffice it to say that Clinton has very little chance of pulling off this nomination. As long as Obama's name is on the ballot in the remaining primaries, he's virtually guaranteed 15% of the pledged delegates. That puts him within striking distance of the 2,025 he needs to lock up the nod; it looks to me that Clinton can only win if the infamous superdelegates decide she deserves to be the Democrats' horse in the 2008 race. And even that seems less likely by the day.

BBC Radio is putting an interesting spin on tonight's primaries. Barack Obama has "claimed victory" in North Carolina, they say, while Hillary Clinton "says she won" Indiana. That really doesn't convey the difference between Obama's 14-point lead in the final results in NC and Clinton's 1.8-percent lead in IN, which is not yet final. I guess she has the power of suggestion working for her.

Menendez disses economists

It seems that everyone from the Clinton campaign and all of their surrogates now disavow the field of economics. Defending the campaign's embarrassing gas tax proposal, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey expressed his newfound disdain for anyone who understands how taxes work. Asked by an anchor on CNBC this morning to name one economist who supports the proposal, Menendez replied, "Thank God that we don't have economists, necessarily, making public policy." Never mind that a lot of economists do make public policy.

I want to point out one more time that the opposition to the tax holiday is not motivated by contempt for the poor. It is motivated by the fact that the scheme won't work. It isn't going to do anything to help poor people; the potential savings under the plan are minuscule, and the harm it would do is considerable. Clinton and her retinue are smart enough to know how this works. The whole proposal is predicated on the assumption that the public is too dumb to understand what's going on.

I have no problem voting for someone who thinks highly of their own intelligence; in fact an intellectual president is precisely what this country needs. But Clinton and her camp have demonstrated the height of anti-intellectualism. With any luck, Clinton will be forced out of the race soon and the left in this country can start dealing with facts again.

Clinton disses economists

In an interview yesterday with George Stephanopoulos, Sen. Hillary Clinton defended her proposal to suspend the federal gas tax this summer by dismissing the opinions of economists, who universally agree that the idea is bogus. You can see the video here- she says at 3:55, "I'm not going to throw my lot in with economists,"as though they were some cult that would ruin her electability if she were associated with them. She insists that her policy will work if we just do it right. Barack Obama knows better; he voted for a gas tax holiday when he was in the Illinois State Senate. It was a dumb idea then as now; it didn't work and, like an adult, Obama admits his mistake.

Obama derides the tax holiday as a measure which will save the average consumer $30, or the price of half a tank of gas. Even that is generous. The price of gasoline is at a national average of $3.60 a gallon because that is what the market will bear right now. If we lifted the 18.4-cent federal gas tax, companies could sell the same volume at the same price and pocket the extra $9 billion which the tax is projected to collect this summer. If Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) knows what he's talking about, oil refineries in America are operating at 85% capacity right now. To me, that says that oil companies have projected what amount of gasoline is going to maximize their profits, and that's the amount they're going to put on the market. Lifting the federal tax is no incentive for them to lower prices and forgo a larger potential profit.

So far as I have heard, the unanimous opinion of economists is that there is no chance the tax holiday will work. Faced with the opposition of people who know what they are talking about, Clinton went into full-blown W-style denial. In her interview with Stephanopoulos, Clinton justified her flat-earthism by complaining about the Bush administration's pro-corporate elitism. She is disturbed by their disdain for the average person, but she embraces their disdain for facts. She contends that our government has relied on "elite opinion" which cares nothing about the little guy. I have to wonder whether or not the elites she is talking about include the economists who have long agreed that "trickle-down economics" does nothing to help the poor or the scientists who have warned with increasing urgency about the danger global warming poses for the world's poor. She can talk all she wants about helping the less fortunate, but if she plans on continuing the White House aversion to facts, she's not going to do anyone any good.

What really surprised my about this whole episode was how quickly Clinton threw Paul Krugman under the bus. Krugman, a New York Times columnist, Clinton supporter, and economist, argued last week that the tax holiday is a ludicrous proposal, though he focused more on Sen. John McCain's support for it and soft-pedaled his criticism of Clinton. When Stephanopoulos pointed out Krugman's dissent, it elicited a wickedly supercilious dismissal.

Clinton's no-facts-necessary style is most disappointing in view of the larger themes of her campaign, which bear a stultifying resemblance to the imagery and tactics employed by Republicans in recent years. It's dangerous for Clinton to cast Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with working-class voters and as weak on national security. Along with the lack-of-experience argument, these are the lines McCain would advance against her in the general election if she won the nomination. As things stand, she's making his case for him. Obama may not be great, but at least he will be somewhat different from the disaster we have now. And at least he has some grounding in reality.