Even though this FL/MI mess is over Hillary has seriously damaged us (and will continue to)

We all know Florida and Michigan broke the rules when they tried to jump ahead. We also all know that Hillary and Obama knew that neither primary would count when they signed the pledge not to campaign.

So you had to know that in either case the best the DNC would do is reduce delegates or negate the results of those primaries in some way, months ago. This is not new news.

Both campaigns expected as much when they signed that pledge.

The problem is when Hillary's coronation was disrupted and it was clear they were going to lose this election her campaign went back on that pledge and decided to pull out the kitchen sink/scorched earth tactics.

They played up the Rev. Wright issue in the media and kept it going for two months. She hinted that Obama was a "muslim" with the off handed "as far as I know" comment. She hinted at McCain being better qualified to be President than Obama. And her campaign played the race card heavy and often with Pennylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky by openly courting White voters and presenting themselves as the safe white choice.

All of that certainly damaged Obama no doubt and all of it will continue to be exploited by the Republicans who have none of the scruples we once thought Democrats to have (once again, thanks Hillary).

But with her constant complaining and creating controversy where there was little to be had about two states, states that were already not gimmies for the Democratic Nominee in the Fall as it is, she played the worst possible card.

Her campaign knew going in that neither primary would or should really count. She clung to them out of desperation.

And even though the RNC halved the delegations for both states, nobody really knows about it nor cares.

After all the Republicans never went on TV railing against Democrats or their National Committee in saying Democrats don't want to count your votes.

Essentially she threw the entire Democratic Party under the bus in those states. The perception she created makes it appear that the Democrats don't care about voters from those states.

The Republicans had equally damaging penalties for these states but Hillary making a case against Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole has made it seem that the Democrats are the party who doesn't care about Florida or Michigan.

I admit getting Florida was a long shot but Michigan was a winnable swing state that now will be much harder for us to win.

And why? Because Hillary's loyalty is to herself and not to her party.

Hillary's campaign came into these meetings, knowing that she signed a non-compete pledge and that Democrats were aware that neither primary was legitimate and they still came in with the unreal expectation of full delegate seating based on those disqualified primary results. Results, that included a state where Obama and Edwards were not even on the ballot. Results where Obama could not come to the state and campaign against her name recognition and in every state thusfar he has either whittled down her support or overtaken her in primaries where they both spent time in a state.

They would not accept any less and I honestly don't think she cared how it turned out. Delegate-wise their best hopes would not have put them over the top and they knew it. Their best shot was to keep popular vote numbers (most especially problematic in Michigan where she had her name on the ballot and Obama did not) so she could take it to the Convention and argue a popular vote victory.

This was all angling and posturing for the fight they knew they were going to make in Denver.

No result today would have changed their intentions. This is not about Michigan or Florida's voting rights. This is and has always been about Hillary Clinton.

So she'll head to Denver and begin a party war on the floor. She'll have all of her big money donors call and threaten to rescind campaign financial support to Superdelegates who run in State races or House races and unlike a National Presidential candidate do not have the visibility or power to inspire thousands of $20-50 donations from constituents... certainly not enough to compete with the big Republican donor rolls.

These superdelegates will face their own political mortality if they lose donors to their campaigns and possibly see these fatcats work against them for a primary opponent who will support who they want next time out or even a Republican who have proven easier to control by their financial backers.

It will be the dirtiest game ever.

And Democrats will look sleazy, to millions of viewers nationally who are sick of the culture of corruption in Washington and will have a hard time understanding how any Democrat would be a change when it appears to run so rampant in their own party.

Fatcats and lobbyists calling the shots for their old pals the Clintons.

And in the end we'll limp along severely damaged because Hillary can't just quit and go away. Doing what is best for her party isn't in her bloodstream it appears.

The convention will turn off millions of voters.

The cries of "Democrats don't care about your votes" will turn Michigan and Florida voters away from our party in November.

It's not all gloom and doom. We have the one candidate that can shine hope onto any situation. But she has continually attempted tie both hands and a leg behind his back in November.

It's not the Democratic Party that doesn't care about Michigan and Florida voters... it's Hillary Clinton.

Because if she really cared about them, she would have stopped turning them away from the party and bowed out in a way that would help our nominee win this November. Without that, none of those Michigan or Florida voters will have a chance this next four years.

Because four more years of Bush policy is enough to ruin us all.

Spineless, Centrist CATFIGHT!!!

Okay I just thought I'd throw a misogynistic term out there right away so all the people that want to slam me with sexist claims will stay away from the post from the get-go.

It's interesting to me to see how this feud is developing. Hillary Clinton runs a dirty campaign where she constantly attacks Barack Obama, who is certain to become the party's nominee for the Presidential general election. Knowing she can't win by the will of the people, her team scheme in every possible way to steal it. They play the racism card against him, say he's not as qualified as John McCain, go after his church and then Hillary goes completely batshit crazy and thinks she was an action hero star who dodged sniper fire in Bosnia and was the person who brought peace to Northern Ireland. No really, former leader of the DNC and DLC douchebag Terry McAuliffe actually said that:

But now the Clinton campaign is really pushing the blarney boat out. On March 4th, Terry McAuliffe, her campaign chairman, has gone the further that I can see. “We would not have peace today had it not for Hillary's hard work in Northern Ireland," he said on CNN on March 4th. Well, that’s certainly news to those who were there at the time.

Of course the Irish have something altogether to say about that lie.

Anyway all the while they were going the smear route (and here's a partial list of the attacks), they were dreaming of ways to steal this. Go after Super Delegates, challenge the legality of caucuses, declare Michigan and Florida's delegates should be seated even if Hillary signed a pledge not to campaign and no other candidate's names were on the ballot in Michigan. Hell they even went as far as to suggest that she was going to try to twist the arms of Pledged delegates in order to subvert the will of the voters.

Of course there was going to be public pressure on Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi to say something in this regard. Especially with Hillary both slamming Obama as worse than McCain AND begging to be on a ticket with Obama at the same time.



So she did and the Hillbots went nuts. Her rich corporate donors decided to try to blackmail Pelosi and the party if she stands in the way of the Superdelegates cheating for Hillary.

Basically they feel that if Pelosi stops the Superdelegates from stealing the election for Hillary that they will withdraw the support that they give to Democratic Candidates.

Upon closer inspection though, these twenty donors who signed this letter should give serious pause to any Democrat who actually wants change in this country. All this does is open up more questions of why the Clintons still refuse to release their tax returns and makes you wonder how much money from these donors has made it into their personal finances. And if it made it into their personal finances, then you can makes claims of illegal donations to the Clinton campaign since she used some of the wealth she's obtained to lend $5 million to her own campaign. After all, if she received money from these people and then funded herself with it that's a ridiculous loophole for one to use to cheat their way around campaign finance reform.

And look at the donors. 7 of them stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House when the Clintons were practically renting it to their corporate buddies. One of them got in serious trouble for selling missile secrets to China. This is a rather notorious list of people to be trying to strong arm our party.

The Democratic Party is supposed to be, at least my definition of it has always been, the party of the people. While it was no secret that the GOP only cared about rich people and corporate interests, the Democrats were supposed to be counter to that. The opposition party.

Allowing these donors to dictate anything is bad for the party and frankly, bad for America. We already have a party that caters to the rich and is willing to destroy the poor and middle class for their benefit.

In this fight I would almost certainly support Nancy Pelosi. Yes she has been a great disappointment. When she ran against former Tennessee Congressman and current head of the DLC Harold Ford for House Minority Leader after Dick Gephardt retired she was painted as the liberal San Franciscan Democrat who would bring the party to some sort of tree hugging hippie revival or something. When she won the election amongst Democratic members of the House there was a feeling of hope that she would be the strong liberal she was painted as. After all, nobody in the House looked very strong at that point and Republicans were playing every dirty trick in the book to get legislation on the floor before anyone could read it, deny Democrats meeting rooms and pretty much silence the Democratic voice completely.

Pelosi held her own but when it was clear in 2006 that public sentiment and backlash was so strong that she could see a Democratic tidal wave of new House members elected and she could become the Speaker of a huge majority, she decided to play the spineless centrist card we all feared. Before the 2006 mid-terms she declared that impeachment was off the table. I could somewhat understand that being said before the election.

After all there are 30% of the country that are completely lacking common sense or understanding of the world and they would come out in droves to save their leader from facing the crimes he committed. So keeping them at home made sense. But after they won there was no excuse. Bill Clinton committed perjury on a personal indiscretion. The House Republicans which spent $60 million of taxpayer money and could only come up with this weak charge, impeached him.

That was a minor offense. A misdemeanor at best. Bush has committed treasonous acts against his country. It's well documented that he broke FISA laws, used signing statements to break a majority of other laws that have been passed and then tried to cover his tracks by breaking yet another law and deleting all computer records of communications. We're not even addressing the obvious election theft that they should be prosecuted for.

For the future of our country and to send a statement to American citizens as well as children who are learning about the Constitution and how America works we should have impeached and prosecuted the entire bunch of criminals. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice... all of them.

The problem is the Senate is too closely divided to complete the conviction and removal from office. So Pelosi figured a failed impeachment would look bad and partisan to the American people.

The issue isn't whether or not that was true because that reasoning certainly isn't misguided it's that it fails to recognize how the media coverage of the impeachment and the trials which would be covered nationally, interrupting daily television programming so everyone could see, would prove without a doubt the crimes they committed and turn public sentiment for the conviction so strongly in favor of it that even the safest of DLC and Republican incumbents would have to consider their own necks versus saving Bush.

She never even gave that proposition a second thought and just kept impeachment off the table.

It's that sort of spinelessness that kills Democratic hopefuls before they ever get a chance to be elected and make an impact on Congress. It reinforces every bad stereotype of the party and does it in a way that the Right Wing talking heads and the mainstream media pundits alike can attack and have some credibility on. After all some credibility is way more than the zero they usually have.

So I'm usually inclined to think everything Pelosi says is garbage, but she's absolutely right here. The will of the people should trump the opinions of party insiders and rich donors.

But even when I am warming to the idea of supporting Pelosi in a fight of this magnitude she says something stupid again.

"We can't allow the tension and pressures of a spirited Presidential contest to spill over and harm hard-working Democratic candidates running to strengthen our Democratic majority in the House," Pelosi wrote in an e-mail sent to a vast list of Democratic donors and supporters. "I will do whatever it takes to protect our candidates and make sure their campaigns to drive change forward don't skip a beat."

And Pelosi urged potential donors to make a contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before the March 31st deadline for the current fundraising quarter.

Her appeal comes two days after a group of 20 Clinton backers sent a letter to Pelosi chastising her public position that superdelegates should support the will of the people -- in other words, vote for the candidate with the most pledged delegates.

See that's the problem. Who does Pelosi urge you to send money to? The former Clinton Administration official turned Congressman Rahm Emanuel's DCCC.

The DCCC, run by Emanuel and the DSCC run by the other New York Senator Chuck Schumer are breeding grounds for DLC Centrists. Their purpose is supposed to be to help all Democratic House and Senate candidates win their races against Republicans.

The problem is they don't stay out of the primaries. They endorse the weakest, most centrist candidates whom they feel will be easiest to control in continuing their goals to serve their corporate masters. This was never more apparent than in Minnesota's 2006 Senate Campaign when centrist Amy Klobuchar who didn't really have positions on a lot of major topics was losing debates to the progressive Democratic candidate Ford Bell. Schumer ran the DSCC in, endorsed her before the primary was close to done, got big name Democrats to do fundraisers for her and voila, she had a boatload of cash and party backing to squash all opposition voices.

Those weak kneed candidates are the ones that the DCCC and DSCC constantly try to prop up. They want to infuse as much cash as possible into those candidates in specific winnable races where they can gain a seat, brag about it and claim that their strategy of a Republican, er, Centrist Democratic Party is what the voters want.

Then they act surprised when voters, the media, the pundits all see the forest for the trees and call this group of Democrats cowards when they vote for Bankruptcy laws that help Credit Card companies but not the middle class, or when they have a shot to end the war but refuse to cut off funding, when they can show backbone and stick up for the constitution and impeach Bush but don't lift a finger to do so, when they have a chance to stand up to Bush on FISA and telecom immunity and then let the bills even get to the floor.... well at least the House stepped up to the plate on that one.

In 2006 Democrats won in places they hadn't before. Thanks to the 50 state strategy employed by Howard Dean at the DNC. Considering it was his first national election as chair of the DNC and we won so big, I'd say he did a great job. Emanuel and Schumer went off on him for not limiting our money to races they targeted that we could win. Aka spend money only on a few seats in Blue states or in places where we absolutely know we can win.

That sort of alienates the rest of the Democratic Party who are trying to push back against the Republican majorities that this sort of ignorance created.

Obama's success in traditional red states is not just that he won in most of them, it's that he drew such large numbers of voters there. Voters that were not there before Howard Dean started employing his strategy to build the party in states that were not Democratic safe havens. The only way to win for the long term is to get into every state, every city, every region and get our message out there. Republicans count on and depend on these locations not having Democratic challengers and they have been able to maintain one voice, one theme on the airwaves in that area precisely because there has never been opposition there. In those cases many Democrats just refuse to vote. Why bother? Your party isn't putting out serious challengers or backing them in a meaningful way so you'll lose badly no matter what.

And that's precisely what's wrong with Nancy Pelosi here. Even when she has these people blackmailing her, she goes out and tells people to support another one of them.

There are organizations like MoveOn, Blue America, Progressive Democrats for America, etc that support progressive Democrats. That fight for candidates that aren't just status quo defenders of the rich. And short of telling people to go outside the party for help from these groups she should be telling people to help Howard Dean and the DNC out here.

Thanks to Hillary's prolonged primary battle, the DNC will be weakened considerably in the fundraising arena. Of course maybe that's what the Clintonites want since they hate Howard Dean anyways.

Even when it's clear she's in the right in a situation, Nancy Pelosi muffs the punt so to speak and fumbles away what would be an opportunity to finally recognize the impact people-driven politics has over the old-school lobbyist-funded fat cats that used to run the party. She could have driven people to places that support the power of grassroots and away from the DLCers who have helped kill the party in almost every way since Bill Clinton's 1992 election win.

In her best chance to do what was right, she couldn't even hang on to the ball.

It's a shame really.

-Rp