Ickes: Hillary May Contest the Less-Than-Three-Fifths Compromise
Hillary Clinton supporter Harold Ickes says Clinton may end up challenging the Florida/Michigan Less Than Three-Fifths Compromise:
Clinton’s campaign objected to the rules committee decision on Michigan’s delegates, saying it had arbitrarily taken four delegates away from the former first lady and awarded them to Obama. As a result, officials said she may seek a decision on the issue by the convention credentials committee, which meets shortly before the convention opens in Denver.
Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Clinton, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” no decision had yet been made.
“I have not had a chance to talk with Senator Clinton at any length about it, and obviously this will be a big decision. But her rights are reserved,” he said.
He’s dead right about the arbitrariness of the decision on the Michigan delegation. Awarding Obama delegates in Michigan is based, not on what Michigan voters actually said, but what party officials want to see happen.
Nobody told Obama he had to take his name off the ballot in Michigan. Candidates signed a pledge that required them not to “campaign or participate” in certain states, including Michigan, but it did not explicitly require them to take their names off the ballot.
Why did some of Hillary’s opponents take their names off the ballot, then? Because they knew she would win anyway, and judged it better to question the legitimacy of the election, rather than participate and lose. As Bill Schneider explained it, Hillary’s opponents “don’t want a Clinton victory in Michigan to count.”
Well, that’s not how they decided to handle it. They decided to make it count — and then just arbitrarily give Obama some delegates, too.
As for what the vote actually said, that was brushed off as a trivial detail.
I hope she does contest it.
UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter for noticing that I mistakenly used the word “supporters” when I meant “opponents.” The error has been fixed.
— Hillary’s supporters “don’t want a Clinton victory in Michigan to count.” —
.
Likely Hillary’s opponents want that outcome.
cboldt (3d73dd) — 6/1/2008 @ 12:55 pmUh, right. Thanks.
Patterico (cb443b) — 6/1/2008 @ 1:07 pmThis is absolutely an injustice to Hillary! She should fight it all the way to the convention.
You go girl!
daleyrocks (d9ec17) — 6/1/2008 @ 1:07 pmShe should fight it all the way to the convention and, if she does not win then, she should challenge it in court. This thing does not have to end at the convention.
huey (9558ff) — 6/1/2008 @ 1:23 pmHow about calling it: “The Three-Sixths Compromise”?
It’s shorter and more descriptive, and sounds more like the name it’s parodying.
Daryl Herbert (4ecd4c) — 6/1/2008 @ 1:25 pmYou know who this helps? Mitt Romney.
Kevin (834f0d) — 6/1/2008 @ 2:13 pmThat’s quite a system the Dems have there. They just make sh*t up as they go along. Now they have a candidate that has earned delegates in a race he didn’t participate in. Makes sense to me!
the wolf (3cd7f8) — 6/1/2008 @ 2:32 pmLet’s review, shall we.
(1) When the DNC originally voted to take the voting rights from Michigan and Florida delegates, not only did Hillary not oppose it, her people voted for for it, including Harold Ickes of all people. Link
(2) Hillary signed a written pledge not to participate in the Michigan primary.
(3) When asked in light of her pledge, why her name was still on the ballot, she said, “I personally did not think it made any difference whether or not my name was on the ballot. You know its clear that this election they’re having is not going to count for anything.” Link
And now it is supposed to be great injustice that Hillary does not get the advantage of her clever tactical decision of blatantly lying? Patterico, I would worry a little less about Joe Biden being Secretary of State and a little more about having a President who sees integrity only as a weakness that other people have.
Counterfactual (3ef059) — 6/1/2008 @ 3:03 pmCounterfactual, your moniker serves you well.
Hillary was not the only one on the ballot; it included Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. The Three Musketeers, Obama, Silky Pony and Richardson knew that Hillary was cleaning their clocks so they joined hands and decided to remove their names from the Michigan ballot although not required to do so. Obama’s campaign knew that sooner or later, Michigan was going to start screaming about now being seated at the convention and not having a voice with their primary. What better way to discount that election completely by being able to say “but my name was not even on the ballot”? Never mind that Kucinich was the only one to campaign in Michigan, it didn’t stop the Silky Pony and Obama from teaming up, sending in their campaign workers and handing out hand bills telling voters to vote “non-committed”. Seems to me if you send in your troops, you are in the war. But the Howlin’ Howie run DNC didn’t see it that way.
Yesterday at the dog and pony show held by the DNC, Obama’s spokesman said that Senator Obama agreed that the Michigan delegates should be seated, all of them, and the fair thing to do was split them 50-50 because no one can deny that the uncommitted votes would have gone to Senator Obama. Now not only can the Obamassiah walk on water, he can read the minds of Michigan voters.
And even with Obama’s advance guard in Michigan telling them to vote non-committed, Hillary still took the vote by over 100K. Seems not all Michigan voters were “non-committed”.
I am not a Hillary fan. I think she and Bubba should have been sitting in a jail long before he ever ran for POTUS. But I don’t like the way the media has been in the tank for Obama and portray Hillary as a racist bigot while never once chastizing Obama for sitting in a church with an anti-American racist minister for 20 years.
Hillary has the popular vote. No matter how you spin it. So if any Democrat thinks their votes matter, this should be the wake-up call from Hell. The Democratic nominee has been chosen by the DNC elite and the media. And now with all the Hillary supporters who are going to jump the DNC ship because they feel they have been disenfrancised, you can only see more dissention in the future.
And we conservatives are lovin’ it.
retire05 (5af99b) — 6/1/2008 @ 5:36 pmretire05 – You ask ‘What better way to discount that election completely by being able to say “but my name was not even on the ballot”?’. You seem to have missed that the main point of my post is that we have a better way. We have Hillary’s direct quote about her name remaining on the ballot, “I personally did not think it made any difference whether or not my name was on the ballot. You know its clear that this election they’re having is not going to count for anything.” (sorry to quote it again word for word again since it was in my original post, but you seem to have overlooked it completely)
Now, if you care to explain in light of this statement by Hillary, how that she has the slightest grounds to complain that she is not getting her proper reward for keeping her name on the ballot, I would very much like to see you attempt this extraordinary feat. Since none of your 5 paragraph response made the slightest effort to respond to this main point of my post, I have to think you do recognize how difficult it is. Perhaps arguing something along the lines that the lie she told was such a whopper that she deserves a reward for its sheer size and audacity …? I leave you to fill in the details.
Counterfactual (3ef059) — 6/1/2008 @ 6:25 pm#8
love2008 (5189d2) — 6/1/2008 @ 6:38 pmAnd now it is supposed to be great injustice that Hillary does not get the advantage of her clever tactical decision of blatantly lying? Patterico, I would worry a little less about Joe Biden being Secretary of State and a little more about having a President who sees integrity only as a weakness that other people have.
My point exactly counterfactual. You are so correct. Could not have put it better. At a point we begin to lose our sense of justice and moral soundness, all in the name of political obfuscation and media manipulation. It’s only in politics that people who play by the rules are vilified. As much as I know some people here want the democrats’ house to be in a fracas so as to become weak and toothless by the fall election, we must not lose our sanity and sense of justice and truth.
Counterfactual, I don’t deny Hillary said what you claim. But what I do understand is that she was trying to ride the fence by remaining on the ballot while not appearing to disagree with her own party. Not exactly something new in the New Socialist Democratic Party of America.
She chose to stay on the ballot, as did Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel. So what? Obama and Silky Pony were not required to remove their names. Why do you not hammer on them for not giving Michigan voters the option of voting for them, even though they could not campaign there. Oh, wait, they did campaign there telling their supporters to vote “non-committed”. It was a calculated political move and you seem to have no problem with Edwards and Obama tag teaming another candidate.
Do you deny this was the same tactic used on Alice Palmer? If so, you know little about Obama and his “Chicago way” styled politics. But that would not be surprising; most Obama supporters know very little about He Who Would Be POTUS.
And if you want to point out lies, can we start with “I can no more distance myself from Rev. Wright than I can my own black community”? Not until the attacks by Wright became personal.
I told you, I am no fan of Hillary Clinton. But it is fun to watch the Democrats decide just which crooked politician they are going to nominate. And yes, Hillary has gotten a raw deal by the DNC committee yesterday. Or do we now assign delegates to those who are not even in the race because Howard Dean has already chose the nominee?
retire05 (5af99b) — 6/1/2008 @ 7:11 pm#12
love2008 (5189d2) — 6/1/2008 @ 7:31 pmWhy do you not hammer on them for not giving Michigan voters the option of voting for them, even though they could not campaign there.
Why is it too difficult for you to understand what CounterFactual is saying here? What use would it have been to have his name on the ballot since they all knew that Michigan would not count? Even Hillary said so. (And I am going to repeat again for you Hillary’s very words on this issue. I will lift it from CounterFactuals comment. Incase you did not read it well) “I personally did not think it made any difference whether or not my name was on the ballot. You know its clear that this election they’re having is not going to count for anything.” Hillary Clinton. Why not ask yourself why all of a sudden, counting michigan in has become very important to her? Why the sudden swicth? Political expediency. She does not care about Michigan or the rules. All she cares about it is winning, no matter what needs to be done to achieve that. And whats all this talk about the Hillary being dealt a bad hand by the media and her party? Give me a break! She did it to herself. She pulled the race card, the sexism card, the assassination in June card, the underdog card and every freaking card in the deck! She has no person to blame for her woes except the person she sees in the mirror.
I am LMAO thinking about a Democrat party sponsored election, with ZERO names on the ballot – which is the outcome if all of the candidates had followed the lead of Obama and Edwards.
.
At least nobody would be disenfranchised.
cboldt (3d73dd) — 6/1/2008 @ 8:14 pmretire05 – If Hillary got a raw deal, it was not from the DNC since she dealt the cards herself. She did not ‘ride the fence’ as you put it. Her people on the DNC voted to take away Michigan’s vote. She said the election would count for nothing and she pledged not to participate in it. She put herself wholly on one side of the fence. There are some people who have a legitimate grounds for complaint. Those are the people who opposed the decision at the time and never pledged to follow it. Hillary is not one of those people.
And, yes, I do know something about Chicago style politics, having lived there for 6 years. Did ya hear the one about the two Chicago poll workers taking down names of dead people from cemetery headstones to vote for Democratic candidates? One of the guys walks past a headstone without writing down the name. The other asks why he skipped that one and the first guy says the name on it was hard to read. The second guy says indignantly, “Go back and write that guy’s name down, he has just as much right to vote as anybody in here.” Ba-da-bum.
So why didn’t I talk about Obama and his preacher or Alice Palmer. Because Patterico’s post wasn’t about them. If you want to know, I am troubled by his relationship with his preacher and how he as handled it. But what does that have to with Patterico writing a post about Michigan that seems to lack knowledge of some basic points and cries out for correcting, or at least an alternate point of view? When Patterico writes a post about those other things that leaves out basic facts which leads him to an incorrect conclusion, then I will write a comment about them.
Counterfactual (3ef059) — 6/1/2008 @ 8:30 pmCounterfactual, yes, I understand that Hillary made those comments. How clear do I have to be on that? Obama also said he would take public financing. Ooops. You seem to forget that ALL politicians say what is opportunistic at the time.
And the cemetary comment was done by the very same ACORN that Obama was greately involved in. His connections to ACORN are legend.
You seem to want to put a disconnect between the political tactic that removed Alice Palmer from the ballot and the tactic that Obama used in Michigan. They are not exclusive of each other and in fact, if you want to see shady tactics on the part of the Obama campaign, you have to look no further than Texas where Hillary won the popular vote but lost the delegate count.
I think think that I also need to make you aware that Patterico sets no rules for what someone says in a response. Nor shall you. You are not the “subject” police.
love2008, while you cry how Hillary has played the race card, perhaps you would like to comment on Michelle Obama’s slamming down the race card last year when she was interviewed on national TV and asked if she worried about her husband’s safety because he was running for POTUS. Her response was that “as a black man, I worry about Obama everytime he goes to the gas station.”
Yeah, Hillary has gotten a raw deal from the media. Everything she says is twisted, convoluted and taken out of context. But not for the Obamassiah, whose tank you are obviously in.
I can only assume you are a product of the public school systems that allowed you to fall through the educational crack or a product of the type of indoctrination, not education, that is the bane of our public universities.
How else can you explain your obvious support for a man who lies, associates with far left radicals that would see the United States in flames, PLO operatives, crooks and racist, hate mongering ministers?
retire05 (bbbff5) — 6/2/2008 @ 7:00 amGood morning retire05. You are right, I do draw a disconnect between the Alice Palmer case and the Michigan case. This is because before the signature gathoring was done, Obama never said that nobody cares how people sign their petitions and we all understand that even signatures that are not done according to the rules will still be counted. If he had, then the cases would be the same and he would be as blameworthy on it as Hillary is on Michigan.
The Texas set-up is an example of Obama being shady!? I agree that the Texas way was screwy, but how in the world is that Obama’s fault? He just followed the rules as Texas laid them out. What else in the world could/should he have done?
How do I explain my support for Obama? Well, since I voted for McCain in the CA primary, I am not quite sure how to answer this. Perhaps by pointing out my comment was not support for Obama, it was support for his position on the Michigan delegates. Patterico made a post which seemed to show he was unaware of some basic facts about the matter under discussion (namely that Hillary’s people had voted for stripping the delegates and that Hillary had explicitly said it made no difference whether her name was on the ballot because everyone knew it was not going to count for anything), so I pointed them out.
I also believe that Hillary’s comment about the Robert Kennedy assasination was misinterpreted by a lot people, and that she did mention it only as a time marker event and not to specifically say that Obama might be assassinated. So I defend her against criticism on that one. Does that mean I now have to explain my obvious support for a woman who … etc., etc.? I call each case as I see it. Just because I think someone is right (or wrong) in one instance doesn’t mean I have to think they are right all the time.
P.S. I am the subject police. Proud graduate of the Northern Missouri Subject Police Academy, class of ’04. Our proud motto – ‘Keeping commentators on topic since 1999’.
Counterfactual (3ef059) — 6/2/2008 @ 7:46 amBaracky was too cute by half in MI, and any votes he gets from there should be classified as gifts. Taking himself off of the ballot was a calculated political choice he made.
As for Hill/Baracky/MI/FL – The DNC chose to punish these states, only until it became obvious that taking the vote away from the voters in 2 of their most important states was not such a great idea. Iowa and New Hampshire moved their primaries, that is the rule that MI and FL broke, but they were forgiven to protect their early status.
This is a self inflicted wound by the campaigns and the DNC. Their attempts to fix it are beyond parody. As is, the MI and FL voters would think the 3/5 Compromise to be an improvement.
JD (75f5c3) — 6/2/2008 @ 8:06 amThe Michigan and Florida decision was a carefully orchestrated way to try to appear somewhat neutral, while helping Obama (the preferred candidate of Nancy Pelosi, a queen bee who certainly doesn’t want any woman to replace her as the highest ranking woman politician). How else could one explain the fact that the DNC found it”necessary to punish” Michigan and Florida for moving up their primaries in violation of the rules, but felt no such “necessity”to punish, in any way, Iowa, New Hampshire, and/or South Carolina–all three of which violated the same exact DNC rule by moving up their caucus/primaries to dates earlier than those allowed (even earlier in January than the January dates DNC gave them permission to move their caucus/primaries to)? Clinton can’t bring this disparate treatment up because she doesn’t want to disenfranchise voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, even though–to her great disadvantage–voters in Florida and Michigan are being counted as one-half persons by the DNC. Slaves, by the way,were counted as 3/5 persons for representation purposes under the Constitution. But the DNC has no problem counting them as less than slaves to obtain the desired outcome. I never voted for any Republican for president before, but I now consider the DNC so corrupt that I’ve lost all respect for it. I can’t say I’m anxious to vote for McCain because of his policies, but at least I have respect for his ethics.
Bob S (faf8a6) — 6/2/2008 @ 8:10 amCLINTON SUPPORTER VOTING FOR MC CAIN
There are millions of us Clinton supporters who
totally agree with Harriet Christian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACQuZVAE3s
Howard (0c14d8) — 6/2/2008 @ 10:17 am