Clinton Svengali Harold Ickes just held a conference call, apparently to try to stop the media story line that Hillary is hemmorhaging.
You can read about it here on First Read. Partly they think they're going to start to win some states, partly they're still banking on votes from superdelegates and the seating of the delegations from Florida and Michigan.
We enjoyed this part of the story where Ickes explains why he voted to strip the two states of their delegates as a member of the DNC last year, but it's not inconsistent for him to try to seat them as a Hillary operative. Didn't say we understood it, just enjoyed it:
"On Florida and Michigan, the campaign again said voters in those states should not be 'disenfranchised' and that the states were important to the Democratic Party's fortunes. Ickes also said Clinton didn't vote on the DNC rules.
"But Ickes did. And he voted in August to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates as a sitting member of the Rules and Bylaws Commission.
“ 'There’s been no change,' Ickes said, adding that he was then acting as a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee 'not acting as an agent of Sen. Clinton. We had promulgated rules -- if Florida and Michigan violated those rules' they’d be stripped of their delegates. 'We stripped them of all their delegates in order to prevent campaigns to campaign in those states.'
"In fact, however, that was not why Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates. They were stripped of their delegates because they violated party rules by moving up their contest dates before Feb. 5. A pledge to not campaign...
.... in those states did not come about until one was put forward by the four early states allowed to go before Feb. 5 by the DNC -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Clinton was the last to sign this pledge.
" 'Those were the rules, and we thought we had an obligation to enforce them,' Ickes acknowledged today on the call even while trying to convince members of the media that Florida’s and Michigan’s delegations should not only be seated at the convention, but should also have full voting rights and that delegates should be allocated based on voting that took place in those states -- even though in Michigan, Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot and uncommitted got 41% of the vote to Clinton’s 55%."
Get it?
Comments (3)
Poor Ickes, he has backed the wrong horse in this race. He does not understand that Bill is supporting OBAMA, But Hillary Soprano does have the support of Ann"Hissy Fits" Coulter, and the BIMBOS OF THE RIGHT. How like a GOOD LAWYER Ickes say one thing one day and another thing the next. But in the end ther can only be one who was president not two.
Yes ICKES, IT'S BILL NOT HILLARY SOPRANO.
So pack up your YELLOW LEGAL PAD. and say these words
I AM A LOOOOOOOOOOSER, JUST LIKE Mark "The Loooooser" Green. and his side kick Ed "The Knife" Koch of the NEW YORK ONE WISEGUYS
VJ Machiavelli
I do not pretend to understand the rules of the DNC but I do think the people in florida voted and their votes should be counted rather or not they held their primary early or not. AS for Michigan, that is a little trickier since not all the candidates names wer on the ballot but clearly, Hillary got the majority there as well. I have seen a concerted effort on the part of the MSM, the Obama camp and the Republicans to "pile on" Hillary and frankly it is tiresome to watch. I have also noted a trend, admitted by republicans on a politcal board I frequent, to skew the polls and in open primaries vote for Obama. I can only assuem the Republicans would do this because they feel certain that McCain will be able to defeat Obama come November whereas Hillary would be a little tougher. Pretty slick if you ask me. I have nothing personal against Obama and unlike some of his supporters, I will not attack him as they have Hillary, and if he gets the nomination I will vote for him. But I still think that if Obama gets the Democratic nomination we ensure a Republican will be seated in the WH in 2009!
Ickes was very telling when he said that his vote to strip FL and MI of their delegates was when he was "not acting as an agent of Sen. Clinton." In other words, his current argument that the delegates now should be seated he's making AS an agent of Sen. Clinton, and that this argument is a nakedly self-serving political ploy on the part of her campaign.
As for all those that say that the votes should be counted, guess what? The votes WERE counted, and the results were reported. Going in, FL and MI knew that, as scheduled, their states would be granted zero delegates, and yet chose to move forward in order to exert their influence through an expression of opinion. Basically, both states opted to hold non-binding referenda, so as to affect the selection process through reporting in the media instead of through the convention. Which is exactly what happened. So they've had their say, and now it's time to move on.