It is Wednesday, so you know what that means- another opportunity for Lanny Davis to make a contorted and stupid argument about delegates and humiliate himself before the general public. To save him some time, I have come up with a few arguments for him. Here are some arguments he should advance before the Rules Committee this weekend:
1. The Gender Gap apportion: As we know, Clinton often cites the statistic that women only earn 69-77% of what men. Due to the rampant sexism and misogyny of the media, the Rules Committee should level the playing field and punish Obama (hey- Hillary’s supporters are going to punish Obama in the fall for the media’s behavior, why can’t the DNC?). To level the playing field, Obama should only get 77% of the pledged delegates that he earned, the other 23% should be awarded to Hillary.
2. The Legacy Vote: States that Bill Clinton won in 1992 and 1996 and that Hillary won in 2008 shouldhave their delegates count twice. Why? Because they really, really, really like the Clintons. And after all, since we are no longer paying attention to delegates and are making all sorts of other stupid arguments about why Clinton should win, isn’t that as good a reason as anything?
3. A Michigan Plan: To solve the Michigan crisis, I propose we award Hillary all the delegates she “won” in the primary she said would not count, and then give her the majority of the delegates who voted against her in the primary she said would not count. That sounds fair. {Oops. My bad. Lanny actually already proposed this. -ed.}
4. Count all the votes!: All of them. Every vote for dogcatcher, judge, state Houses and Senates, and everything should count- against Obama. Because, let’s face it, if they were not voting for Obama, we might as well count it as a vote for Hillary.
5. Seat ALL the Delegates: Everybody keeps talking about seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan, but for some reason are missing the real elephant in the room- what about all the Republican delegates from the fifty states. As of right now, none of them are being seated at the DNC, and that is a damned outrage. Everyone knows there is no way we can win in the fall without Republican votes, so I don’t know why we want to risk alienating millions of Republican voters in all fifty states. Since Hillary is clearly more popular with conservatives, Fox News, and Republicans, and since the Republicans run winner-take-all primaries, all of the delegates should be seated for Senator Clinton.
I think Lanny should test drive some of these proposals, because, as you all know, if we can not unify the party behind Senator Clinton’s inevitable nomination, we may lose to McCain in the fall.
Sleeper
Unfortunately, it seems that the Democratic Party is not going to seat all of the delegates.
That could mean a Credentials Committee fight at the convention. Which means the Summer of Campaign Hell.
Of course, anything could happen in June.
jibeaux frmrly Jen
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Punchy
What’s disturbing is, this morning, I had on CNN. I have no idea what Lanny Davis looks like, and he’s on the TV going on and on about how Clinton really won this thing. I thought the guy was a CNN political analyst, and I’m thinking, “damn, this guy is really pushing Clinton”.
No where that I saw did they mention that this guy is Clinton’s advisor/mouthpiece. Ordinary folk MUST have been left with the impression that “political experts” think Clinton could/should win. Extremely confusing and clandestine way to run an interview and leave peeps thinking Clinton had this whole thing stolen from her…
I’m now convinced that she will NEVER, EVER quit this. Just no way. They’ve gone delusional.
SnarkyShark
A modest proposal-
No longer call it Calvinball, it is now Lannyball!
A new shorthand for bullshit will be Lanny, as in, “thats a some real Lanny your trying to shovel there pardner.”
I mean, the man deserves some recognition for the heights of
absurdity he is trying to scale here.
Just a thought.
Crusty Dem
The key if for MUP to get to 2205 w/superdelegates and w/o Michigan and Floride (or to agree to some irrefutable divide of MI and FL that will guarantee him 2205). That is the only conceivable way to get HRC to drop out before the convention..
Krista
Yeah, I had to go bang my head against the wall a few times when I found out they wanted to give Clinton a bunch of the “Uncommitted” votes from Michigan. Um…dumbasses? If they’d wanted to vote for Clinton, they would have voted for Clinton, ’cause her name was on the freaking ballot!
I’d like to think that nobody’s stupid enough to think that Davis’ suggestion is fair and makes sense. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don’t give a sweet damn about that — they only care about whether it helps or hurts their candidate.
If this primary goes on much longer, I’m going to turn into a complete misanthrope.
vishnu schizt
John, you forgot the most obvious argument:
6. The would have voted. It is quite obvious that Obama was suppressing the vote for Clinton by following the rules in FL and MI. By not participating he denied voters the ability to vote against him and thus vote for Clinton. It is obvious that this was a coordinated vote suppression effort. Those who would be motived to vote against him were intentionally discouraged from voting. Would you go to the bowling alley if you knew there was no one there? We can’t let these voter suppression efforts win. As such Clinton should get all the delegates in both states.
Dreggas
According to DNC lawyers seating more than half the delegates from each of those states would be illegal….get ready to go to court.
Joe
Awesome post.
I think you should propose a contest to see who can come up with the most Clintonian sounding plan to award the delegates to Clinton.
Key requirements:
1. Plan must result in a crushing victory for Clinton.
2. Plan must contain at least 1 major falsehood and 3 conveniently vague facts from at least 10 years ago.
3. Plan must contain code words that convey the following messages to her supporters:
* I hate blackie, just like you.
* I am a greasy, out of work laborer who drinks a case of beer a day and who has a cousin with a meth lab in his manufactured home. I like my dog, Jesus, and my wife’s sister, in that order.
4. Plan must use base-6 arithmetic.
Egilsson
Don’t forget that Obama is left-handed. It is extremely unlikely that a majority of 90% of Americans who are right-handed will be willing to vote for a left-handed candidate.
Can we really risk offending that constituency?
Cassidy
Cage matches dammit! Fights to the death! That’s how it should end. Someone call Spike TV.
Bob UK
So we have DNC lawyers saying seating more than half would be illegal.
Has Hillary brought out the paid lawyers to argue that legality yet?
I could suggest Jack Thompson, a lawyer more than happy to go on Fox News and lie, cheat and ignore actual facts, though he’s only keeping his licence till mid-June probably so Hillary better hurry.
Even if Hillary won the Popular vote, and I know thats a touchie subject after 2000, thats not actually the rules of the game.
Suitable sport analogy being a team claiming winning a Season due to scoring more goals even though they didn’t win the most games. – good point, but not relevant. Win the games, most goals scored is for a DRAW.
if she feels so strongly, she should stand down from this, and spend the next four years committing her life to sorting out the nomination process for the next Primary season.
Hell it sure needs some work !!!
Delia
McCain is left-handed. Bill Clinton is left-handed. George H. W. Bush is left-handed. I am left-handed. WE LEFTIES WILL NOT BE DENIED OUR TRUE VOICE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. WE WILL OVERCOME.
Bruce in Norte California
The McCain camp has suggested that Dems should field both candidates for POTUS in the general election. This would be fair and would not disenfranchise any voter
Doug
As a McCain supporter, I am sitting back enjoying the democrats self-implode. This is beginning to shape up like 1968 … Deju Vu all over again