Florida Democrats will attempt to destroy Dean for not giving in to them.

madfloridian

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Thu Mar-13-08 09:56 PM
Original message

Florida Democrats will attempt to destroy Dean for not giving in to them.

Some are going so far as to say he should get with Hillary and Obama, and broker a deal. Yeh, that would work really well...to try to tell the wife of the former president what to do.

Here's the problem...he is the chairman of all of the party..Florida is NOT the center of the universe except in their own mind. It has been Hillary's superdelegates leading the way here, and then being the first to condemn no matter what steps were taken.

He is the chairman who has tried to open up the party to the people out side of DC. He has tried to change the power structure to include all the country and all of the states, and not just a few elite states.

In trying to be fair, he will pay a price. It will be the tactic to say he is not leading, but when he does try to lead fairly they will attack him for that as well. He was an object of discussion on the Hillary conference call...and it was not pleasant. They are all so "disappointed."

I see two compliments to his work in this article at the St Pete Times. The rest is what is coming...it will be the tactics. He will be portrayed as inadequate, as weak, for not stopping Florida from moving their primary ahead. He let the rules committee do its job. They took away the delegates because Florida appeared before them and did not tell the truth.

In this article he is criticized for letting the rules committee do that. For not standing up the rules committee.

I like the quote from Harvard research, Elaine Kamarck. She did a long study on the 50 State Plan, and found it was working well.

I think Dean has stayed exactly the right course, which is stay in the background and work to find a consensus," said Elaine Kamarck, a member of the DNC rules committee and former senior adviser to Al Gore's presidential campaign. "If he were to get out front on this, people would be yelling at him that he shouldn't be out front on this. He can't win."

She said only two entities have the authority solve the problem: the DNC rules committee, which must okay any new election that could distribute delegates to the candidates; and the party's credentials committee, which decides who gets seated at the national convention.

Thanks, Elaine, I remember how the blog treated you at times because you were DLC. You are right, Dean is playing his role in an impartial manner.

I also thank Florida DNC member, Alan Katz, for this comment. The only decent one from Florida.

"Here we are three years later — the Democrats won the House and Senate, we have paid staff in every state in the country, and we are a real national party," said Allan Katz, a DNC member from Tallahassee who is close to Dean. "I happen to think he provided a good balance."

As to the rest of the article, it is mostly criticism. There is this paragraph.

Dean backers say he must not jeopardize his neutrality, and any attempt to count the delegates could be seen as favoring one candidate over another. They say Dean has far less latitude under DNC rules than his critics suggest.

Here is the article from the St. Pete Times.

Critics: Dean too quiet on Florida's delegates

You can read the rest if you wish. I am very aware that this is a contest, and it was a contest from the beginning. It is a contest between a campaign which does not use the 50 State Plan, does not use the DNC voter file, and does not approve of any states but the really really big ones.

It is a campaign that said that the rules of the DNC were not the rules of her campaign.

The rules the party has put in place to choose its nominee are not the rules of the Clinton campaign and, just like the Obama campaign, we are doing what we can under those rules to secure the requisite number of delegates for the nomination. One way to avoid the situation described above is to figure out some way to honor the votes of Michigan and Florida, where there was record turnout. Counting the delegates in Florida and Michigan is a civil rights issue, and a solution needs to be figured out before the convention.

I have had to live among the people who started this thing here in Florida. It has been made clear that it was not being done for the people of the state, but for the super massive egos of the state party leaders.

Floridians now do not even know what they want. To be fair to the people who were screwed by the party leaders, Dean offered a revote. Now their heads are popping here...a revote..goody. But now they don't even want it unless it is all on their terms.

Here's a surprising part of the article from someone I do respect. Wexler is admonishing Dean to get an agreement from Obama and Hillary. He seems to think that will solve all the problems. He surprised me with this line of thinking.

Rep. Robert Wexler, who supports Obama, said he spoke with Dean this week and encouraged him to sit down with Obama, Clinton and Florida Democrats to broker some sort of deal.

"Stop with the technicalities — the chairman of the party needs to prevent us from driving over the cliff," Wexler said. "He did sound amenable to that."

Bob, you and the other Florida leaders have been the ones driving us off the cliff. You may be for Obama, but you are hurting the party. Stop the spin, step back, take a deep breath, and think what you guys are doing to the party. Dean is highly respected by many, and you are driving a wedge.

There is a court case Monday on appeal. No telling what will happen. There was a lawsuit by Bill Nelson. There was a lawsuit against the state. There will be an injunction filed if there is a revote.

A campaign is using its surrogates to damage the reputation of the party chairman who was supported by activists and the netroots. It is using them to instill doubt in his ability to function.

I hope enough see what is happening, but I seriously doubt it.