Cue the histrionics.

I would love for them to try this argument with the voters. I was for it before i was against it.

I agree with the "why now?"

Moreover, I don't understand why the Clinton campaign is courting this sort of disaster. In all likelihood, they'll win Florida. Odds are they'll also win on Super Tuesday. They don't, in any obvious way, need to do this, and they certainly don't need to do it this far out.

It seems clear to me that it puts Obama on the defensive, where the Clintons would prefer he remain for eternity.

if they think this will put obama on the defensive then they are miscalculating. josh marshal isn't some insurgent type, nor is ezra. that should tell you something. the facts just looks bad for them.

It seems clear to me that it puts Obama on the defensive, where the Clintons would prefer he remain for eternity.

That, and all Hillary cares about, and by extension so does Bill, is getting into the White House, no matter whose back she has to step on or stab to get there.

Jake: """It seems clear to me that it puts Obama on the defensive"""

All Obama has to say is that he agrees with Hillary, that the candidates should give those delegates a voice and Hillary can do that simply by giving that delegate one of her super-delegate votes. That fixes the problem, Hillary gets the Michigan/Florida delegate, they get enfranchised and the playing field remains level. The Hillary superdelegate sits out and the state delegate gets the vote.

Then that puts Hillary on the defensive because she either has to refuse to honor those states delegates or she has to argue that she must follow the DNC rules on superdelegates -- then the question is why do you demand the DNC rules be followed for one thing and not the other???? When Obama and Edwards are arguing follow the rules from the beggining...not just when it helps Hillary...

Moreover, I don't understand why the Clinton campaign is courting this sort of disaster. In all likelihood, they'll win Florida. Odds are they'll also win on Super Tuesday. They don't, in any obvious way, need to do this, and they certainly don't need to do it this far out.

"Why am I doing this? Because I OWN you, b**ch! I OWN you! Say it! Say my name!!"

In all seriousness, though... they probably figure that their campaign is in their element when there is some bloodbath fight on the table. Obama is not allowed to be hopeful while people are zipping around snatching the cheese from right in front of him.

You know what? I think it's a good test for Barack. It's as if Hillary is saying "hope this, buddy. It's a harsh world out there."

If Obama can't come up with a way to deal with people who act imperious and pull stunts/tricks to get elected, he'll have trouble with the republicans anyway.

So now Hillary wants every vote to count, after she tried to ensure that wouldn't happen in Nevada?

Look, I know that a lot of liberals are enchanted with the idea of a Democrat that might play dirty against the Republicans. I totally share that feeling. I think negative campaigning gets a bad rap--it's dishonest campaigning that bothers me. But at some point a lack of scruple has got to worry us. After all, she's willing to disenfranchise voters, use right-wing attacks on progressive principles (which garnered little attention after the blogosphere went batshit on Obama for not even really doing the same thing), bring up racial stuff, etc. How can we trust her to defend liberal principles when she seems to lack those principles herself? And if she does indeed possess them, shouldn't that be reflected in how she behaves?

Maybe the "Dems for Mitt" strategy wasn't such a good idea.

strike that "why now" I wrote earlier...is it not timed to background Super Tuesday (and after) in chaos of posings and perhaps even legal briefs; hmm, maybe Bill cand handle that stuff...hasn't it been established that the "safety/security" voters among Democrats poll Clinton? an exquisitely-timed distraction that both Obama and Edwards will have to respond to while HRC gets to stay on message

(applauds)

but still voting for Edwards

Real question here: could Obama say "Yeah, sure. Of course, since no one was campaigning in those states when they held those elections, we should schedule a new primary election there sometime after Feb 5."

It sure looks like the delegate count is going to be close, so the votes would still count. Thoughts?

I have my doubts about Obama. But as this thing as gone on, the more I hope he wins and rids of the Clintons. The "leadership" of the Democratic Party, the Dinosaurs, needs to be swatted away one by one. That goes for the Clintons, hell that goes for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, although it might not be possible.

I think the "why now" question is answered with the "Obama on the defensive" answer - he gets the ugly choice of saying he doesn't think either delegation should be seated, or agreeing that they should - and it'll be hard to say "I think they should, but under some condition where no one has an advantage" - I mean, it's worth a try, but it's not something he's necessarily arguing from strength. If he's smart, I think he can still rise above and say "this was deicded by the DNC and I woud abide by that decision" and leave it at that.

The point, though is that on the one hand this may be moot - if she gets the delegates she needs for the nomination, then they get seated but it makes no difference. The only way it's a threat is if the total delegate picture is very divided, with Obama either slightly behind or with a bare majority. Then she becomes a champion of two unrepresented states, and that's when it gets hard. And I'm not saying I think the two delegations should be seated... but I do think this is a dilemma that could have been predicted all along, and frankly, as nervy as it is, I can't say it makes it impossible for me to support Hillary Clinton. It's strikes me more as an "all's fair" type argument, and something that the DNC has to decide about, and take her on, if that's what's required.

Weboy, why not have Obama and Edwards say that they agree to seat the delegates, provided everyone gets 1/3 of the delegates, and that those delegates may not switch their votes?

..well I CAN say that it makes it even More impossible for me to support her. She provides 1 shining example after another of why we should not elect her. Yet every time her devotees argue that we should overlook this 1 last time. Doesnt bode well for her potential presidency.

This act alone says volumes. She made a deal, and signed a contract. The whole time she skirted the spirit of the deal she made and signed onto.

No the agreement didnt explicitly outline that she could not keep her name on the ballot. Just as the constitution didnt clearly outline the president shouldnt lie us into war. Thats what terms like fraud were made for, to collectivize this kind of dishonesty and make it punishable.

Now that she has gone through with a good percentage of the 'game' she has seen what the potential results are in those unseated states. Now is the time she chooses to try and win them back..
Why? the money is spent, the votes in michigan cast.. She can only win.. Thats why.

Do it 3 weeks ago, and she risks other candidates spending money there and winning at least some of those delegates.

So when people envisions her as president which deal or promise is it that they hold so dear that they naively believe she will keep? What contract or oath is it that she will maintain after signing her name?

This is pure and simple a lack of integrity being showcased, and so few are willing to call her on it.

Ive never been a big clinton basher (bill).. But their actions on this campaign does seem to legitimize many of the criticisms that have been laid against them in the interim years.

david b,

Once you get over being so shocked (shocked!) why don't you read this and let us know what you think:

www.talkleft.com/story/2008/1/25/183713/960

Looks to me like the usual BTD rant in favor of Clinton. Unimpressive and mediocre. As usual, no sources cited, simply BTD's over-inflated ego babbling on.

The apparent 'strategy' behind this is to say that Obama is defending the disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida voters by their own state parties.

Instead, it looks like Hillary's diving into the Rove playbook to claim the Michigan win and Florida contest.

It's just scuzzy politics, and threatens to carry a stench over to the general election campaign.

What pieces of slime Billary are.  I was happy to vote for any of the top Democratic candidates.  No more.  I will not, under any circumstances, vote for her now.  May the Clintons disappear from American politics forever.

I get sick of Ezra writing anti-Clinton rants that favor Obama...

but I have to agree with him here.

That said, Iowa and New Hampshire going first is not only total bs...

It hurts the Democratic party.

I know the Obamabots will chasten me for not following their Lord.

My suggestion to Obamabots...

Get a life, Obama is just an ordinary dog looking for some easy meat.

I'm starting to get Clinton fatigue again... It comes half from defending them and half from wondering if their critics might be right.

Re-do is the only fair way. Just like grade school kickball, re-do.

If nominee has not been decided by June 3rd (last day of currently scheduled primaries) and Michigan and Florida still want to be re-enfranchised, then they must each schedule primary elections within x number of days (well before August convention), giving all remaining candidates ample time to campaign.

States screwed up, so they have to nullify early elections and pay for the re-do election, if they want it. DNC agrees to honor results and seat delegates determined at re-do elections.

So we can count Ezra Klein among those who say Florida should not have a vote because they are too darn close to New Hampshire. I guess he didn't mean all that he wrote about the undue influence of small, white states.

Um the first one to mention being 'shocked' was yourself there DK. In fac tquite the opposite, as you'll note from the tone of my post.. this is more of what I expected from the hillary campaign.

Yes I went and read your example post. ..it goes on to guess at the motives for various actions by all the candidates. Now and then supported by a fact or 2.

The important part of that post to pay attention to is 1. the only major candidate in Michigan that did not remove her name from the ballot was Hillary. They all had the ability to do so..

As an aside the article infers that Kucinich is a whitehat in all this, and that his actions should be construed as a purity test for the rest. In fact the Kucinich did publically aknowledge trying to remove themselves from the ballot. (good)

(http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-09-2007/0004678870&EDATE)
After that move failed, for unknown reasons.. they proceeded to both visit and campaign in michigan, in violation of the agreement. (bad)

Why did no one hear of this? No one cares, he was a meaningless player. ..but It is a distraction from the discussion about the candidates that did have potential meaning in this race.. H. E. and O.

So then we move on to Florida.. Where the article clearly states the candidates were unable to remove themselves from the ballot by Florida law without dropping completely from the race. So remaining on the ballot was in florida was not a choice as it was in Mi, but unavoidable circumstance by virtue of just being in the race.

So the pro hillary argumnents on this sound fine.. until you actually know the facts. Like much of the rest of her campaign.

I think the missing angle of this story is how this affects Clinton's superdelegates. Those superdelegates are, after all, big time muckety mucks in the Democratic party, and they probably won't like seeing the party disrespected like this.

The option to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates has always been there. (approval by majority of all the convention delegates?)

Obama and Edwards made tactical mistake in Michigan because they did not want to upset IA and NH. Clinton didn't care nor does she in FL which she will most likely win handily.

I think the best Edwards and Obama could get would be 1/3 of the district delegates each with the at-large delegates split by vote total in some kind of deal.

She's not stupid, so she knows she can't win this debate. Therefore, she's not playing to win the debate.

I think she's starting this debate, in the hopes that Obama tries to finish it. Then it becomes easy to paint Obama as for voter disenfranchisement. Which then blurs the issue of voter disenfranchisement, as Hillary's campaign has some fairly serious accusations of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement against it.

She's hoping that Obama will take the bait.

Where is Dean's statement and why didn't he come out with one right away? This was his fight to begin with; he needs to defend the DNC's decision and beat back HRC forcefully.

Jeremy,

I think you're right. Did you ever read David Foster Wallace's Up Simba? Its his outstanding account of the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary.

Wallace follows McCain around and watches the campaign react (or perhaps overreact) to the Bush smear campaigns The game Bush was playing wasn't about convincing voters, it was rather, turning off voters.

The moderate good government voters (goo-goos as they're called) supported McCain because of his reformer image. The Bush crew knew they couldn't win these low-information moderates over, the smears were designed to anger McCain into responding harshly. The idea was to make him look like just another politician to the goo-goos and discourage them from coming out to vote (since it appeared be a choice between deedle-dee and deedle-dum). McCain lost that primary when responded with a tough (for a GOP primary) ad comparing Bush to Bill Clinton in his lack of truthfulness.

I think the Clinton's are playing the same game this year. There are a lot of goo-goos who like Obama's reformer image and the idea is to muddy the waters so low-information voters who want to vote for a reformer decide Obama is just another hack politician, so why bother voting?

Up Simba is definitely worth reading, it was originally published in Rolling Stone but was reprinted in Wallace's anthology, Consider The Lobster.

Typical of the Clintons they simply move onto the next big lie while people are still trying to correct the record of their last big lie.

Bill Clinton declared that it was Hillary who was the first Senator to declare Darfur genocide. What crap. I have friends deeply involved in Africa charities and who regularly contact members of Congress to get them to speak out on Darfur, Hillary was completely non-responsive to their pleas for over a year.

It was Senator Feingold who was the first Democrat to
label Darfur genocide.

In fact the first legislation calling the crises genocide was Senate Resolution 124 introduced by Senator Brownback 1n July 2004.

They couldn't even get Hillary to be a co-sponsor.

What utter crap these people pull.

The WHY NOW question is pretty easy to answer:

1. If she came out for Michigan and Florida BEFORE Iowa and New Hampshire she would have allienated voters in those states who had not had their caucus and primary yet. So she got to tell them she supported them as first in the nation.

2. Once the Iowa and New Hampshire votes were done, she could tell them to go to hell you stupid, naive dolts. How could you have been so dumb as to actually believe me in the first place?? Duhhh

3. She didn't have to do it before the Michigan voting because she made sure only her name was on the ballot, therefore the election was already rigged to be overwhelmingly in her favor.

4. She had to do it before the Florida voting so as to send a message to the Florida voters that if they vote for her, their vote will have meaning since she wants to seat their delegates.
This is because the other candidates names will appear on the Florida ballot because it was too late by Florida law to remove them.

THAT IS THE 'WHY NOW'. Its all about Hillary winning, anything I said or did yesterday or will say or do tomorrow means nothing.

What happens if Obama goes into the convention with the delegate lead, but is short of the number needed to secure the nomination? Even though it doesn't look like he will have won either Florida or Michigan he certainly will earn some delegates from each state. What if that number of delegates could wind up securing the nomination for him? After this episode he has no ability to actually take advantage of those delegates because he has spoken out against the reinstatement of them. No one knows what will happen in the future, but the longer Democrats continue to shit on the people of Florida and Michigan the more damage they do to themselves in a general election. And since no one knows how things will shake out in the primary they should all be coming out right now and be supporting doing the right thing.

The bottom line here for all the Hillary supporters is that Hillary and her campaign leadership (the same people that want to govern the nation) had a orchestrated plan to lie to the country, to lie to the voters of Iowa and NH, to lie to the DNC and had been planning all along to use these delegates.

This is Hillary's I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT WOMEN campaign. A deliberate lie to the party and the people to save her own political future. Its pretty sick and she can be expected to do the same thing when in office.

She's lied for 6 months, she had her staff lie for six months, she intentionally didn't remove her name in Michigan and then LIED about it being simply a staffer oversight.

She stood toe to toe with voters, with reporter and looked them in the eye and had no qualms about sincerely lying through her teeth directly to them on a daily basis.

She is completely contemptous of you and all other voters...period.

Indeed, each agreed not to campaign in either of these states, again implicitly agreeing to the decision not to seat the delegates.[...]

I guess it depends on what your definition of "agreed" is.

Don't know if this is possible, but couldn't Howard Dean and the DNC forbid Super delegates from voting for any cannidate that does not abide by the DNC rules on Michigan and Florida. If Dean can get the party apparatus to make Hillary back down, it could actually be a good thing.

I find this sleazy, but I think it plays well with the democratic base, who will see it has evidence of canniness and ruthlessness that a democratic president could use against republicans. They want a democratic version of George Bush to ram new social welfare programs down the country's throat using whatever tools are available. This move plays to that desire.

This is so inside baseball. It won't have any influence on even one vote. outside the blogosphere it won't register, inside, it is meaningless; the hyper-ventilating Obama supporters can't hate Hillary anymore than they already do. And nobody else cares one way or the other.

never will get someone posting so say something doesn't matter except on a blog that they happen to be posting on.

Ezra, the DNC rules allow these delgations to be seated by a simple majority vote of the convention delegates. Hillary is simply invoking those rules and pre-committing to asking her delegates to seat them.

Also, it is a brilliant tactical move coming a few days before the Florida primary. It raises the profile of the primary, focuses media attention on it, and curries favor with Florida voters. We are all talking about it, aren't we?

It also boxes Obama in. If he says he is against seating it hurts him with Florida voters both in the short-term and in the long-term. If he says he agrees with it, then he provides more attention to an expected Hillary win.

He has chosen to be against the seating of these delegations and that will lose him support among Florida voters.

Ezra, also where is the downside to Hillary in this gambit? I don't see any downside. Who is going to be against paying attention to the wishes of voters in Florida and Michigan? Two critical states in the fall. I think you have the politics of this completely wrong.

It is an expedient but brilliant politics!

If you don't understand why the Clinton campaign is doing this, you are too stupid to breath on your own. Please stop covering politics until you grow up.

Never assume the Clinton's are making a tactical mistake, they are rather better at this game than the average blogger.

Hillary will win this one because she simply cannot lose. We will know by May 5th if there is going to be a brokered convention or not. If the Florida delegates are going to tip the balance Team Hillary will say 'either agree to seat our delegates as is or agree to a do-over and Florida votes again'.

Can you see the DNC being able to back down on that?

Raising the profile of Florida is good for Hillary all round. By raising the issue now she forces Obama to tell his supporters to come out to vote for him even though is is going to play a Katherine Harris and stop their vote counting.

Obama and co simply does not think things through, they are playing the game two or three moves behind Hillary.

Why do people imagine Obama is going to stand up to the Republicans if he won't stand up to the DNC?

never will get someone posting so say something doesn't matter except on a blog that they happen to be posting on.

I don't think it's as paradoxical as it might seem. I think it's worth pointing out if internet people like ourselves are working up a frenzy over something most people won't give two shits about.

I don't take it as a reprimand ('Stop talking about this!') but rather as a reminder that this will not, in any way, actually affect the decisions of voters. (Assuming that's true.)

What's Hillary's position on redrawing Congressional districts in the middle of the decade?

I was only saying that they know no more than I do or Ezra what will affect voters. Hell, I just talked to some guy who said he can't support Edwards because he lost his Senate race in 2004. What will or will not catch on in the media, what will or will not affect voters- that's a crap shot. Even with this it depends on how the facts are spun by the media. And given the CLinton's track record, I wouldn't be as sure that it will be spun nicely.

TN, the downside is that she's pissing people off who already dislike her, and that she actually needs their vote if she has any intention of winning the general election. Right now, it just looks like she wants to win the nomination and then go down in a blaze of anti-glory to whoever

No matter how fractured Republicans seem now, they are never fractured on election day. We hold our our grudges, primarily because the winners never makes peace with the losers and instead rely on a misguided belief that party unity means anything to most democrats. It doesn't, we believe what we believe. We don't do as we're told like Republicans do.

You people are fools.

The last 4 Presidential elections could have been altered by changing a few thousand votes in a dozen or so counties. The last 2 could have been been altered by changing a few hundred votes in 1-3 counties. Keep telling yourselves it doesn't matter how many voters Hillary pisses off. After-all, it's just a drop in the bucket...

"""Never assume the Clinton's are making a tactical mistake, they are rather better at this game than the average blogger."""

Agreed, but they are only good at taking care of what's best for the Clintons, not the party, not the Democrat Congress, and not the country.

You would think the Democrat led Congress would want to stay in power and not have what happened under Clinton when the country made him a lame duck after his second year.

"""Ezra, also where is the downside to Hillary in this gambit?"""

1. Take a look at the blogs, the commentators, the posting voters...she's pissed a whole lot of people off.

2. She confirmed clearly that she will lie to everyones face for months to get her way. Reminds everyone of the I did not have sex with that women.

3. She pisses off the entire DNC staffand members she will need to help win if she is nominated.

4. She pisses of Obama and Edwards and their supporters, many to the point of saying there is no way they will support her now.

5. And don't forget the Obama and edwards supporters in Florida and Michigan who may not take to kindly to the Clinton con to screw them out of their voice so she could get all the delegates.

How is that for downsides???

If you were an Obama supporter in Michigan, you going to show up for Hillary come November??