Hopefully Democratic voters will be smart enough to examine fact versus fiction in this regard. But it did shape the outcomes on Tuesday.
Instead it was another action meant to put the Obama campaign on the defensive and shift the burden of responsibility from the Democratic Party leadership in Florida and Michigan onto Obama himself.
Live on CNN, we saw the most skilled artist, James Carville say he would put up $15 million dollars to do "do-overs" in the Michigan and Florida elections. This was planned to be another act to place the Obama campaign on the defensive, and it did catch a less than stellar Obama spokesman flat-footed.
Wolf Blitzer saw an opportunity to broker a deal on his show and claim some big ego gratification and rating point. He immediately embraced the Carville offer and tried to force it on the Obama spokesman. Later Ms. Borger, as a CNN analyst even recommended that they could sell the rights for the election to a corporate account and call it the "minutemaid sweepstakes" or something similar.
Where have these people been? In a cave?
Why does this not raise immediate red flags with the media who had just hours earlier claimed on election eve that the Obama campaign had a problem with connections to a financier in Illinois, yet totally missed the connections and "percentage of profits" compensation packages of Bill and Hillary Clinton with Cilion and it's parent in the consturction and operations of ethanol plants in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa??? The New York Times had done a glmaor piece on the "perception of wrongdoing" on John McCain and his tighter and tighter relationships with lobbiests.
Yet, the recommendation coming from the campaign was that the voters of Florida and this time, Michigan were again for sale to the highest bidder.
Who made those offers? The champions using the language of "disenfranchisement" and "good of the people" were simply Clinton partisans. So who will do the fact check?
Let's just do a couple of basics, here.
1. The Republican Governor and Legislature are the ones who emplaced the violation on dates and broke the rules, not the Florida Democratic Party. In Michigan, it was the Party that was responsible and they accepted the risk of punishment when they broke the rules.
2. The Democratic national Committee - all of it - not just the chairman or the attorneys voted to sanction each of the two states by not seating the delegations because each had knowingly broken the rules of the national party primary system.
3. Among the candidates, there was an agreement - unanimous - that there would be no campaigning in either of the states and within Michigan, specifically all of the candidates but Clinton even had their names removed from the ballot. Mrs. Clinton did not totally honor the agreement and made several campaign appearances in Florida beyond her agreement with the other candidates. The voters were well aware that their votes would not count PRIOR to the primaries that were conducted in each state.
4. This was not a major issue within any campaign camp; including the Clinton camp; until now. There is no record or voice clips from Mrs. Clinton or any other candidate that would show that they were not in support of the decision of the Democratic National Committee regarding Florida and Michigan until now when the Clinton campaign now feels they have an opportunity to use it for their advantage.
Clinton supporters like Senator Nelson and Mrs. John Dingel have been working on behalf of their candidate to force the seating of the delegates from an irregular and quite honestly illegal election. Quite honestly, those elections are unenforceable and rife with corrupt outcomes that are the seed of a failed fall general election.
Who has the ball in solving this problem?
The media would have you believe that the ball rests with the DNC because skillful dodgers like Carville are exceptional at shifting the responsibility for their own favor. But the primary responsibility rightfully stands with each state to develop a plan that will solve the problems and serve the Democratic voters; while being fair to the candidates.
So the quick and dirty solution is to sell Florida and Michigan to corporate sponsors.
While that may be consistent with the thought process of the Clinton campaign; it wreaks of "smelling bad" to Obama supporters and grassroots Americans who hold one primary feeling that corporations have gained too much control within the United States.
it's just dead wrong and actually speaks more to the real differences of inner thought and approach of the two Democratic campaigns. While I'd love to hear the comments of John Edwards on this, I am concerned that he is no longer willing to step in and get his arm chewed off.
There is a very dangerous precedent being discussed openly here. The CORRECT point of responsibility is the two states, not the Democratic National Committee. The correct place of the DNC is to approve a plan that provides state voters a fair and equitable process and publish rules for the candidates.
But I always wonder when the candidates or their surrogates begin the brokering process. That's just out of place and the result already smacks of buying another election; a result learned well by Floridians and grassroots Democrats, but not so well by the Democratic Leadership Council and the Mrs. Clinton campaign.
First, we should wonder just where this kind of money is coming from and what are the backdoor arrangements. No one contributes large sums of money without expecting something in return. Haven't we, if we are Democrats OR Republicans, learned that in Washington over the past 20 years?
So who is going to buy Florida, this election.
