The Clintons Go All Out for Obama

To the untrained eye, they seem to be overspreading the Democratic Convention like those kudzu vines that grow a foot every day to eventually blot out everything in sight, but the Clintons insist they are doing it all for Barack Obama.

Hillary will speak one night and Bill will hold forth the next after, if all goes according to their plan, Clinton supporters get "catharsis" by nominating her and, in her words, "yell and scream and have their opportunity."

In the Denver streets outside, a grassroots group will be marching and holding a festival "to celebrate Clinton's achievement and advocate for women's rights."

All this, according to Hillary, is for the benefit of Obama: “We do not want any Democrat in the hall or in the stadium or at home walking away saying, ‘I’m just not satisfied, I’m not happy.’ That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

The two former rivals for the nomination issued a joint statement yesterday: "At the Democratic convention, we will ensure that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected and our party will be fully unified heading into the November election."

Meanwhile, the former President extolled Obama this week with a ringing statement, "I think he should win, and I think he will win." With oratory like that, Bill Clinton is likely to stampede the convention to fever pitch.

Opening John Edwards' Back Door

Like nature, scandal abhors a vacuum. Ignored by the MSM for weeks, the John Edwards illegitimate child story is oozing into sight with debate over his role at the Democratic convention.

"If there is not an explanation that’s satisfactory, acceptable and meets high moral standards...he would not be a prime candidate to make a major address to the convention," Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chair, tells the Charlotte Observer.

"He absolutely does have to (resolve it). If it's not true, he has to issue a stronger denial," says a Democratic strategist who ran Edwards’ 1998 Senate race. "It's a very damaging thing.

"The big media has tried to be responsible and handle this with kid gloves, but it's clearly getting ready to bust out. If it's not true, he's got to stand up and say, 'This is not true. That is not my child and I'm going to take legal action against the people who are spreading these lies.' It's not enough to say, 'That’s tabloid trash.'"

No, it isn't and Edwards' continuing silence, while understandable on the personal level, does not bode well for his reputation and any future role on the national political stage.

Hell's Grannies for Hillary

The war for the Democratic nomination replayed a scene out of Monty Python yesterday with women of a certain age venting their rage at the decision to allocate delegates in a way that leaves Hillary Clinton short of the votes she needs.

“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Harold Ickes threatened, and his words drew cheers from Clinton supporters yelling “Denver! Denver! Denver!” to urge fighting on to the convention in late August.

AP reports, "Proponents of full seating continuously interrupted the committee members as they explained their support of the compromise, then supporters of the deal shouted back.

"'Shut up!' one woman shouted at another.

"You shut up!' the second woman shouted back."

With all that's at stake this year, the last thing Democrats need is a rerun of the Hell's Grannies skit to counter the Republicans' Upperclass Twit of the Year. Can't they just settle on John McCain as the Dead Parrot?

Superdelegate Scorecard

As Barack Obama sweeps through the primaries and caucuses, Hillary Clinton is still leading among the party faithful by an estimated 60 votes among the more than half of the 796 superdelegates who have made a commitment.

While the candidates are virtually tied among governors and members of Congress, the Clinton lead comes almost entirely from the Democratic National Committee, the insiders who set the organization's rules, raise the money and are likely to have long-standing ties to a family that gave them power in the 1990s.

"Change" is not the most appealing theme for this group but, if they turn out to be the deciders at the convention in August, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plea that they not overrule voters in choosing the nominee, Chairman Howard Dean will have a mess on his hands.

According to The Hill today, "Acrimony gathering inside the party has spurred some Democrats to begin discussing reforming the nominating process and perhaps getting rid of superdelegates altogether."

But as for now, most superdelegates are standing firm about their choices. One of them, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri vows to stick with Clinton and "would vote for her unless he died first."

If he does and she loses in November, his constituents may arrange for his political funeral later.

Scenes from the Titanic

As the Obama wave rises, Hillary Clinton is busy rearranging the deck, changing campaign chairs, throwing NBC cable overboard and lending herself millions to keep the victory party going.

Yesterday's loss in Maine with a massive turnout, added to Saturday's setbacks, makes the tip of the iceberg more visible. The Potomac primaries tomorrow won't bail out her campaign, leaving Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania as the last lifeboats.

But, to run the maritime metaphor into the ground, will the Democratic Party be able to weather the coming storms over seating Florida's and Michigan's illegal aliens and the role of Super Delegates at their convention?

It all recalls what Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher of the FDR era, said: "I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat."

Democratic Trainwreck Scenario

Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 campaign, says flatly about the Super Delegates, "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this."

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a Clinton supporter, predicts a "potential train wreck" over disputed delegates from Florida and Michigan, states that were stripped of them by the Democratic Party for scheduling their primaries too early.

Candidates were honor-bound not to stump in the states, but the Clinton campaign did not stop operating in Florida, according to the Obama people, and while Obama withdrew his name from the Michigan ballot, Clinton did not. She won the outlaw vote in both and immediately began efforts to seat their 366 delegates.

If one or the other candidates had a clear lead before the late August convention, none of this would matter. But that is not going to happen.

As a result, generations of younger Americans who think of political conventions as boring talkathons that the networks refuse to cover in full may get a taste of what they used to be like--with floor fights, accusations, recriminations, walkouts, parliamentary maneuvering and lots of overheated language.

The TV networks and the Republicans will love it.

Clinton-Obama: Loser Takes All?

With Barack Obama's Saturday sweep, are the Democrats headed for their own version of Bush-Gore 2000 in which the candidate with the most popular votes ends up losing?

Using the latest available tallies from CNN and Time, my calculator shows Obama ahead of Clinton by 168,721 votes of 15,854,593 cast on Super Tuesday and in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nebraska, Louisiana, Kansas, Washington, Nevada and the Virgin Islands. (He won in Iowa, too, but the popular vote there is a mystery.)

If this trend continues, as it may very well do, Hillary Clinton could lose in the popular voting but win the Democratic nomination as a result of what 796 Super Delegates decide, just as George W. Bush moved into the White House in 2001 based on what nine members of the Supreme Court ruled.

In a year of strong feelings, would such a situation lead to a contentious convention like the one in 1968 that tore the Democratic Party apart and led to the election of Richard Nixon by less than one percent of the vote in November?

I was there as an alternate delegate in Chicago to be tear-gassed by the police of Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, which, to my lasting shame, led to the decision to vote for Hubert Humphrey but not campaign for him, as did others I knew.

Over the years, Democrats have found many ways to lose elections they might have won. Will we find a new one this year?

Howard Dean's Democratic Solution

The Party Chairman, the Internet candidate of 2004 who flamed out in Iowa with a primal scream, has appointed himself to mediate who the candidate will be this year if the voters can't decide between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by the end of summer.

"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April," Dean told an interviewer before Tuesday's results were in. "But if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don’t think we can afford to have a brokered convention.”

A few weeks ago, Dean was saying about the campaigns, "The truth is, it's not that ferocious yet, and I hope it doesn't get ferocious, and I obviously have some responsibility to make sure it doesn't...I don't want it to get personal, and we have a protocol for what to do if it does."

A protocol? Is washing mouths out with soap involved?

Let's see if we have this straight: After Clinton and Obama have spent umpteen millions and a year criss-crossing the country, if the voters can't make up their minds in time for an orderly convention in late August, Uncle Howard will get them together and do what? Toss a coin?

Never mind that the original purpose of conventions was to pick a candidate not put on a TV special for the party, it takes a special kind of hubris for Dean to suggest that he will get the candidates together and "make some kind of arrangement."

At least, in the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms, it took a gaggle of party bosses to anoint the nominee. Has Dean decided to streamline the process down to just one?

The Only Numbers That Count

Behind the rise and fall of the polls and the trickle of primary and caucus results is the reality of who will pick next President of the United States.

At the Democratic Convention in late August, there will be over 850 super-delegates--governors, members of Congress and the Democratic National Committee, present and former Senate and House leaders as well as former presidents and vice presidents (Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale get a vote).

Even before Super Tuesday, more than one-third of the 2025 delegates needed to nominate have been chosen and are quietly lining up behind Hillary Clinton (at the latest estimate, 181), Barack Obama (80), John Edwards (29) and Denis Kucinich (2, including himself). More than half, 479, are uncommitted. You can see the list here.

Those behind Hillary Clinton include a considerable number of women and DNC members as well as New York and New Jersey Governors Eliot Spitzer and Jon Corzine. Obama has Sens. Pat Leahy, Tim Johnson, John Kerry, Claire McCaskill, Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson. John Edwards' list includes nine members of Congress and the DNC from North Carolina.

The new rules put in place after the 1972 convention were intended to take the choice out of the hands of party machines and kingmakers, but even so, picking the nominees is not a pure (large or small "d") Democratic process.

Then again, we have today's example of power to the people in Nevada. where as Gail Collins notes in her New York Times column, "the number of people in the state who have ever attended a caucus before is probably smaller than the number of people in the state who make their living as Elvis impersonators."

On to Super Tuesday...