Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelevant"

[greydog]

Sounds like the Clinton camp has it in the bag...why bother having any more
primaries and caucuses , and voting delegates.... a big waste of time and $$$.

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > POLITICS
Top Clinton Adviser Says Superdelegates Will Decide Election, Obama's Victories 'Irrelevant'
Saturday, February 16, 2008

A top Hillary Clinton adviser on Saturday boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by rival Barack Obama would be "irrelevant" to their decision.

The claims no doubt will escalate the war of words between the campaigns, as Obama continues to argue superdelegates should vote the way of their districts. But the special class of delegates, which make up about 20 percent of the total delegate haul, are not bound to vote the way of their states and districts, as pledged delegates are.

Obama leads handily in the pledged delegate count and has won more states but trails Clinton in superdelegates, making them potential and controversial deadlock-breakers if the race ends up a dead heat come convention time.

Harold Ickes, a 40-year party operative charged with winning over superdelegates for the Clinton campaign, made no apologies on Saturday for the campaign's convention strategy.

"We're going to win this nomination," Ickes said, adding that they would do so soon after the last contest on June 7 in Puerto Rico. "You're not going to see this go to the convention floor."

Ickes predicted Clinton and Obama would run "neck and neck" in the remaining states and that there would be a "minuscule amount of difference" between the two in pledged delegates.

But he said superdelegates would determine the outcome and side in larger numbers for Clinton, as they "have a sense of what it takes to get elected."

Even though averages of head-to-head polls on RealClearPolitics.com show Obama beating presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in a general election and Clinton losing, the Clinton camp is stressing the electability argument.

Ickes said superdelegates must "exercise their best judgment" about who can win the White House.

In essence, he argued the party's 795 superdelegates (Connecticut Independent-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman recently was stripped of his superdelegate status) were in a better position to assess electability and suitability for the presidency than party regulars who will attend the national convention in late August as pledged delegates.

He also said Michigan and Florida, which voted for Clinton, should have delegates seated at the convention even though the national party stripped them for holding early primaries.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe on Saturday blasted Clinton for the strategy.

"The Clinton campaign just said they have two options for trying to win the nomination — attempting to have superdelegates overturn the will of the Democratic voters or change the rules they agreed to at the eleventh hour in order to seat non-existent delegates from Florida and Michigan," he said in a statement.

"The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats' ability to win the general election."

Many top Democrats, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said superdelegates should follow the will of voters expressed through primaries and caucuses and not trump those votes.

The Obama campaign also circulated a Bloomberg story from Friday quoting Pelosi, who said Michigan and Florida should not decide the race since they broke party rules.

Though he predicted the superdelegates basically would turn the election, Ickes in the same phone call Saturday said he objected to the term because it implied they had too much power. He said from here out, he's calling them "automatic delegates."

"The Fourth Estate created the term 'superdelegate,'" Ickes said, though Democrats have used the term widely in the roiling debate of their allegiances and responsibilities in the increasingly competitive and high-stakes battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"They don't have super powers," Ickes said. "It's one person, one vote. They have no more power than any other delegate. But they do have a sense of what it takes to get elected."

Superdelegates consist of members of Congress, former presidents, governors and other party officials and insiders. The class was created in 1982 to take power away from activists and hand it to party insiders. Rarely have their votes decided the nominee.

"They are closely in touch with the issues and ideas of the jurisdiction they represent and they are as much or more in touch than delegates won or recruited by presidential campaigns," Ickes said.

Obama currently leads Clinton by 136 in pledged delegates but trails by 95 in superdelegates, according to calculations given by both campaigns.

"Hillary will end up with more automatic delegates than Obama," Ickes said, and the number of elections won by Obama is "irrelevant to the obligations of automatic delegates."

That support, however, could be eroding for Clinton, as recent reports have said some black superdelegate supporters are reconsidering their endorsements since their districts voted mostly for Obama.

FOX News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.

 

[noah617]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Here's another story about that same advisor:

Feb 17, 4:32 AM EST

Clinton aide wants Mich., Fla. delegates
By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign who voted for Democratic Party rules that stripped Michigan and Florida of their delegates, now is arguing against the very penalty he helped pass.

In a conference call Saturday, the longtime Democratic Party member contended the DNC should reconsider its tough sanctions on the two states, which held early contests in violation of party rules. He said millions of voters in Michigan and Florida would be otherwise disenfranchised - before acknowledging moments later that he had favored the sanctions...

Ickes explained that his different position essentially is due to the different hats he wears as both a DNC member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting. Clinton won the primary vote in Michigan and Florida, and now she wants those votes to count.

"There's been no change," Ickes said. "I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. We had promulgated rules and those rules said the timing provision ... provides for certain sanctions, automatic sanctions as a matter of fact, if a state such as Michigan or Florida violates those timing provisions."

"With respect to the stripping, I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them," he said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEMOCRATS_DELEGATES?SITE=INEVA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

This kind of double talk and politics as usual are a big part of why Obama supporters are so fired up. It will be hard for Senator Clinton to convince people that she is an agent of change when she's trotting out the same old insider politics.

 

[tommyj]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Typical Clinton position. We WILL be the nominee whatever anyone else says cause we deserve it. While the superdelegates (excuse me, automatic delegates) are free to vote whoever they want, and I am for that position, it is such an arrogant statement, harkening back to the inevitable nominee junkspeak of a year ago.

 

[tommyj]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

The Michigan-Florida scenario will get ugly as Clinton sees this as her only hope of surpassing Obama in pledged delegates, which will influence the superdelegates as pundits are saying. This is California challenge 1972 and Kennedy challenge 1980 all over again. Say NO to rule changes after the fact.

 

[MystikWizard]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Typical arrogance from the Clinton camp.

 

[tmb1]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Leave it to the Clintons to build up and then DESTROY the democratic party!

 

[wahoo6pac]

PA and Ohio Superdelegates will trash your vote!

The old fart Democratic thinkers in Ohio and PA ( 2 States where the population continues to fall ) will vote in Clinton for the nominee with their superdelegates. They are old thinkers, old party line cronies that will prove to be a huge liability for the Dem party. Time for change is not time for Clinton which is really more of the same. Leave it to the old dem party members in the rust belt to not listen to the rest of the country!

 

[PabloZed]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

I think all this bluster from the Clinton campaign is going to scare off voters who don't want more drama. Obama is ahead and has similar policy positions as Clinton without all the chaos. Word is also slipping out that party elders are not in favor of the Clinton strategy, causing superdelegates to reconsider their support of Clinton. The only remaining question is whether the Clintons can lose with grace and dignity.

 

[tommyj]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

That was the subject of an editorial page commentary in todays Phila. Inquirer: Lose gracefully or win ugly? It essentially predicted the latter (TRY to).

 

[naked gent]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Mrs. Clinton has said the most important thing is that we put a democrat in the WH come November.

I wonder of she'll stick to that if it becomes apparent that she will not be that democrat.

I also wonder if she understands that if they steal the nomination with either superdelegates or the Fla and Mi disputed delegates she'll probably loose the black vote and doom her party chances of winning come November.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

This demonstrates pretty clearly that the Clintons don't care about democracy, just about power.

 

[lancelva]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

There are 18 states in the union in which voters haven't cast a single ballot. And yet Obama and his followers are the ones saying that he has it in the bag. People on this forum are even calling on her to drop out of the race. The fact is that she has won a majority of the popular vote among Democratic voters thus far and, if you count the people of Michigan and Florida, she is leading in the delegate count. So which campaign is saying that the voice of the people doesn't matter? Which campaign tried to claim credit for winning Nevada based on the delegate count when they lost the popular vote by six points? And also remember that Senator Clinton is winning the most democratic process--the primary--whereas Obama does better in the least democratic caucus, which disenfranchises a majority of voters. Yes, there is a double standard. And you guys are the one practicing it.

 

[construct]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

Lance,

Could you, please, explain the popular vote totals I'm finding here?

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

There are 18 states in the union in which voters haven't cast a single ballot. And yet Obama and his followers are the ones saying that he has it in the bag. People on this forum are even calling on her to drop out of the race. The fact is that she has won a majority of the popular vote among Democratic voters thus far and, if you count the people of Michigan and Florida, she is leading in the delegate count. So which campaign is saying that the voice of the people doesn't matter? Which campaign tried to claim credit for winning Nevada based on the delegate count when they lost the popular vote by six points? And also remember that Senator Clinton is winning the most democratic process--the primary--whereas Obama does better in the least democratic caucus, which disenfranchises a majority of voters. Yes, there is a double standard. And you guys are the one practicing it.

There are no delegates from Florida and Michigan.

You dodge the facts nicely: from that article, it's evident that she intends to make an end-run around the actual will of the people as expressed in the lawful systems for selecting delegates.

While we're at it -- care to explain those precincts in New York, primarily black, in which Obama reportedly had no votes for him?

 

[lancelva]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^Interesting you mention the "will of the people" when you want to ignore it in Michigan and Florida.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^Interesting you mention the "will of the people" when you want to ignore it in Michigan and Florida.

The will of the people was already expressed in Michigan and Florida: through their officials in the Democratic Party, they chose to ignore the rules of the association they freely chose. As a result, they get no voice.

The Democratic Party, you see, is not the government, is not a branch of the government -- it is a private organization, with rules. By those rules, the people of Michigan and Florida chose to not have delegates.

You seem to want to have actions without consequences -- otherwise called lawlessness.
If Clinton wants those people seated, she's demonstrating that she's lawless, that her preferences prevail over what's proper, over following even the rules she subscribed to.
No surprise, there.

 

[lancelva]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^So if you believe that, then you also agree that the delegates from Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina should not be seated as well?

 

[syntax]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^So if you believe that, then you also agree that the delegates from Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina should not be seated as well?

This is the latest argument from Sen. Clinton and her supporters. It has to do with rule #11. I'm sure that Harold Ickes, who was the original force behind disbarring votes in MI and FL, can explain it better than LanceVA can.

 

[lancelva]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^It's not an argument it's a fact. If you want to enforce Rule 11, why just enforce it on Michigan and Florida alone?

 

[syntax]

Re: Clinton advisor says, Obama victories "irrelev

^It's not an argument it's a fact. If you want to enforce Rule 11, why just enforce it on Michigan and Florida alone?

I don't know. Maybe because it props up Sen. Clinton's campaign?