Which is more important? The ends or the means?

And can either one be truly clean of the other is dirty?

Are you saying that the people on the other side of this debate - MoveOn, for example - are googoos who don't care about results?  Whether it's shit coming out of the pipe?

I doubt you really think that.  There are a lot of people of good will on each side of this fight, and I'm hopeful we'll be side by side on a lot of fights in the future.  

He was a reformer with results too!

Keep working it Jerome.

At some point, absent gigantic crushing wins in WI, TX. OH, & PA, plus a number of the "insignificant" states, this thing will be over.

At the moment, the other side is presenting a more persuasive argument.  The only way to to change that is to win. Not a squeaker either.

All these Hillary fans, who truly want her to win, should get off their  backsides and head to the states where they are holding elections.  Because right now, it looks like Obama's team wants it more.

Hubert Humphrey, of course, started out as a fire breathing leberal whose introduction to national politics was his peech at the 1948 Democratic Convention that urged Democrats tp "step out of the shadow of states rights and walk into the (bright?) sunshine of civil rights."  Pretty damned revolutionary for the time.

By the 70s, Humphrey was the old guard.

Dukakis was the first candidate to really build a conscious national strategy around courting the Latino vote.  It worked for the nomination, as Latino votes in Florida and Texas helped blunt the dual threat of Jesse jackson and Al Gore.

There were a lot of results from 60s Democrats.  Civil rights.  Voting rights.  Medicare. Medicaid. The war on poverty: day care, jobs programs and a real, unjimmied unemployment rate of 3.6%.  Economists seriously talked at length over whether unemployment was too low and below the full employment figures.  But for the Vietnam war even more woulf have been pushed through that dirty pipeline.

Results trump process, in my mind.

MoveOn throwing a fit over superdelegates because they think they will hurt Barack Obama. I don't remember anyone caring about superdelegates in more than twenty years.

Superdelegates are problematic from a democracy standpoint -- they were set up to prevent a George McGovern or Jimmy Carter or anyone not vetted by party leadership from ever getting nominated again -- but to think that the leadership of the Democratic party, of which a huge chunk is sick of the Clintons, will spike Obama's nomination is silly. I honestly doubt that even Hillary would want to see the party's hopes of winning destroyed over a bullshit fight at the convention.  

If MoveOn wants to help Obama it would do better working on getting people to Ohio and Penn to help him out. Clinton's last hope is not the superdelegates; it's destroying Obama in those two states.

why is mydd.com the only place that has Hillary with a lead in delegates?

The only problem is that many of us don't believe Hillary wants the "progressive results." The DLC's end goal is not progressive at all. Neither was NAFTA nor the Iraq War nor the Iran vote.

So your failure in logic is that Hillary is not pushing for a progressive result at all, even in messy terms or reform terms.

Did you hear that The national SEIU, who had announced they were going to stay out of the fray, has just endorsed Obama? Have you heard that John Lewis has just switched to Obama? That DNC Member Christine "Roz" Samuels has just switched to Obama? That Representative David Scott has switched to Obama? That DFA, Deans ex-organization, has now started a huge campaign to ensure SD's do not thwart the delegate winner.

Did you hear that UFCW has just endorsed Obama?

I am just a little ashamed of this small clot of democrats.

And I do not mean HRC supporters, I mean those operatives using disappointment and anger to stir up actions that in any other circumstance, would be roundly and angrily denounced.

Don't "reformers" want to change the process so that we can better get results?  I'm not sure the system as is allows for the kind of progress we seek.

No no! Remember if you don't support Hillary Clinton you are irrelevant!

They just got updated. They follow TheGreenPapers, and DCW, if you want more up to date. It's a bit of surprise that TGP doesn't show Obama ahead still, the networks and MSM all are going off of projections, which are pretty accurate. TGP is going with actual confirmed results.

The Humphrey quote could've been lifted from Chicago's old Mayor Big Dick Daley complaining about Martin Luther King demonstrating for fair housing after Daley had done so much (as he saw it) for Chicago's blacks.

It wasn't lofty rhetoric that built the segregated dangerous public housing projects. It was pure contractor corrupto greed coupled with racial fear and political expediency.

The question I have about HHH is what exactly ever came out of a pipeline Humphrey built?  Did Humphrey ever even build a pipeline ugly or otherwise?  The guy was not exactly Lyndon Johnson in the Senate.  

In fact Johnson viewed Humphrey pretty much the way Humphrey viewed Doo Doo Ka Ka -- an ineffectual liberal poseur.

Wow, what a great selling point, especially given the crushing victory Humphrey brought in 1968, to say nothing of his tremendous nomination victories thereafter.

Jerome, you had asked about which states Obama would take from the Republicans.

How about Nevada?
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_conte nt/politics/election_20082/2008_presiden tial_election/nevada/election_2008_nevad a_general

You're right, winning in 2008 is going to be key to getting results.

Considering that at the same time Jessie Jackson Jr.  and others are basically blackmailing Black Superdelegates to either change their vote or the carpet will be pulled under them:  

He said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him "if it comes down to the last day and you're the only superdelegate? ... Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?

"I told him I'd think about it," Cleaver concluded.

Jackson, an Obama supporter, confirmed the conversation, and said the dilemma may pose a career risk for some black politicians. "Many of these guys have offered their support to Mrs. Clinton, but Obama has won their districts. So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position" in the future, he added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_o n_el_pr/clinton_superdelegates_6;_ylt=Ap eAuR7qy3M.kGJ6rUOZk50E1vAIhttp://news.ya hoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_el_pr/clinto n_superdelegates_6;_ylt=ApeAuR7qy3M.kGJ6 rUOZk50E1vAI

I don't think the endorsement by John Lewis matters much.  But his superdelegate vote sure matters.  His switch to Obama is the best evidence yet that the superdelegates will not choose Clinton if she is behind in pledged delegates (vice versa as well).  they just won't do that to the party.  

Jerome and anyone else can make whatever arguments they want, and I agree that if things end up within the Florida margin then all hell will break loose.  But if Obama can keep a pledged delegate lead of over 100 or so, the super dells will line up behind him.  

In the short term, given his status with the black caucus, Lewis's switch may lead to a cascade of black superdelegates pulling away from Clinton, which will start making it more and more obvious that the delegate race isn't a virtual tie, it is a small but meaningful lead by Obama.

I sincerely hope you are not referring to Hubert Humphrey, the ultimate liberal, as a progressive.  Maybe I got that wrong?  That would be pure revisionist history.

Hi Folks...

Look, instead of cherry-picking the best parts of process and politicking in hopes of aiding and/or justifying an HRC "win" on the convention floor (which won't work...the leader in primary votes, whoever it is WILL get the support of the superdelgates...PERIOD), you HRC supporters ought not be posting here, but making calls on her behalf in OH and TX.  Really!

As for some advice Hill should take, look no further than Peggy Noonan.  Yes, what she offers does pose a risk for HRC, but it also, IMo offers high reward... she has to do SOMETHING soon...the SDs are peeling of of her as I predicted they would, and it WILL continue.

Here's Noonan's argument:

"This is death by a thousand cuts." That's what they keep saying about Hillary Clinton.

Think of what this week was for her. She awoke each day having to absorb new sentences in a paragraph of woe:

Three more primary losses, not even close. Now it's eight in a row. A slide in the national polls. Staff shakeup: soap-opera-watching campaign manager out, deputy out. Bill's former campaign manager, David Wilhelm, jumps for Barack Obama. Josh Green, in a stunning piece that might be called a meticulously reported notebook dump, says, in The Atlantic, that Mrs. Clinton made personnel decisions based only on loyalty, not talent and skill. (There's a lot of that in the Bush White House. The loyalty obsession is never a sign of health.) The Wall Street Journal reports "internal frictions" flaring in the open, with Clinton campaign guru Mark Penn yelling, "Your ad doesn't work!" to ad maker Mandy Grunwald, who fires back, "Oh, it's always the ad, never the message." (This is a classic campaign argument. The problem is almost always the message. Getting the message right requires answering this question: Why are we here? This is the hardest question to answer in politics. Most staffs, and gurus, don't know or can't say.) On a conference call Tuesday morning, Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters Mrs. Clinton simply cannot catch up. It is "next to impossible" for her to get past him on pledged delegates, she'd need "a blowout victory" of 20 to 30 points in the coming states, the superdelegates will "ratify" what the voters do. (I wrote in my notes, "not gloating--asserting as fact.") Within the hour Mr. Plouffe's words were headlined on Politico, made Drudge, and became topic one on the evening news shows. Veteran Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier took a stab at an early postmortem in what seemed a long-suppressed blurt: The Clintons always treated party leaders as "an extension of their . . . ambitions," "pawns in a game of success and survival. She may pay a high price for their selfishness soon." He cited party insiders: Superdelegates "won't hesitate to ditch" Mrs. Clinton if her problems persist. To top it all off, Mrs. Clinton has, for 30 years, held deep respect for her husband's political acumen, for his natural, instinctive sense of how to campaign. And he's never let her down. Now he's flat-footed, an oaf lurching from local radio interview to finger-pointing lecture. Where did the golden gut go? How did his gifts abandon him? Abandon her? Her campaign blew through $120 million. How did this happen?

The thing about that paragraph is it could be longer.

And it all happened in public and within her party. The dread Republicans she is used to hating, whom she seems to pay no psychic price for hating, and who hate her right back, are not doing this to her. Her party is doing this.

Her whole life right now is a reverse Sally Field. She's looking out at an audience of colleagues and saying, "You don't like me, you really don't like me!"

Although of course she's not saying it. Her response to what from the outside looks like catastrophe? A glassy-eyed insistence that all is well. "I'm tested, I'm ready, let's make it happen!" she yelled into a mic on a stage in Texas on the night of her latest defeat. This is meant to look like confidence. Whether or not you wish her well probably determines whether you see it as game face, stubbornness or evidence of mild derangement.

* * *

In Virginia last Sunday, two days before the Little Tuesday voting, she suggested her problem is that she's not a big phony. "People say to me all the time, 'You're so specific. . . . Why don't you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up.' "

When she said it, I thought it might be a sign that Mrs. Clinton was beginning to accept the idea that she might lose. I thought it was a way of explaining to others--a way of explaining to herself--why things hadn't worked. A riff that wasn't a riff but a marker, a rationale for a loss, an explanation of why she failed that could be archived by television producers--Hillary on the trail, 2/10/08--and retrieved the day she concedes. A 15-second piece of videotape that tells the story her way, with an admission that was actually a boast. I could do that big rhetorical stuff if I wanted to, and if I thought it were best for our country. But I'm too earnest to do that, too sincere, and in fact too knowledgeable. That's why I deal in specifics. Because I know them.

I thought it an acknowledgement that loss might come. But by Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton was furiously stumping through Ohio using the same line of attack, but this time it wasn't a marker. The race is about "speeches versus solutions." Her unnamed opponent stands for the first, she for the second. He is all "words," she is "action." "Words are cheap," she said.

If they were so cheap, her inability to marshal them would not have cost her so dearly.

She has also taken to raising boxing gloves and waving them triumphantly from the podium. Is this a fruitful way to go? It's her way, bluster and combat. People do what they know how to do.

A better way might be honesty. I say this in the sense that an old Richard Nixon hand used it when he said, "Nixon doesn't always think honesty is the best policy, but he does think it's a policy." He saw it as a strategic gambit, to be used like any other.

But imagine if she tried honesty and humility. When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.

True 'dat!

My enduring frustration with the primary season has been how pretty much everyone has taken the candidates' rhetoric and used it to sum the two (or three, when Edwards was around) up.  Forgivable enough, since it's the most information we have from them directly, but it also comes out of strategic calculation, not soul-bearing, and over time the reliance on it got to me.  I assume you mean that Clinton is, as she presents herself, the results-oriented, solution-providing fighter.  Why, then, has she comes so much closer to the "result" of losing this primary than I ever, ever thought she would in October?  Not that I'd place money on her loss or anything, a lot remains to happen, but how can you run as the pragmatic managerial competent one, then come damn close to losing what might have been a blowout?  At the moment, it looks like Obama, gauzy rhetoric and goo-goo image and all, who seems to be better at working the system to get what he wants, especially considering where they both started out in terms of support of all kinds.  (If you mean to reply that there's more to being a fighter than winning elections, well, that's always seemed to me to be the most evidence offered for Clinton's fighter bona fides--she took all they had to take, and she's still standing!  Otherwise, they've both passed bills and amendments, they were both activists, etc.)  I think the whole reformer/results dichotomy is false, even if it's one both candidates seem to like to some extent--all laws are reforms, after all, and what other results are there a politician can directly point to?    

That said, I'll freely admit I smirked when I got my email from DFA, for the same reason you did--the transparency of the ploy for Obama is amusing, but that doesn't mean there won't be a big optics problem, justified or not, if the superdelegates do end up deciding a pledged delegate tie or near-lead.    

An excerpt:

"By arguing that one of Clinton's key virtues was her ability to go toe-to-toe with the GOP attack machine, her campaign exacerbated instead of ameliorated her reputation for ruthlessness. "By bragging about how tough they were," says John Edwards's former chief strategist, Joe Trippi, "they reinforced the sense of the media that everything they did had a negative cast to it." At the same time, Trippi argues, "it made it really hard for them to call Obama on his shit. How can you complain about Obama being negative when you're bragging about your willingness to do the same thing against the Republicans?""

http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid 44211

Once upon a time there was a fox strolling through the woods.  
He came upon a grape orchard.  
There he found a bunch of beautiful grapes hanging from a high branch.

"Boy those sure would be tasty," he thought to himself.  
He backed up and took a running start, and jumped.
He did not get high enough.

He went back to his starting spot and tried again.
He almost got high enough this time, but not quite.

He tried and tried, again and again, but just couldn't get high enough to grab the grapes.

Finally, he gave up.

As he walked away, he put his nose in the air and said:  "I am sure those grapes are sour."

Humphrey's metaphor is colorful and interesting to think about. But is our political system really just a "pipeline"--i.e., just an instrument to bring about a desired result? I actually think that preserving democracy and democratic institutions is an end rather than a means.

While I admire and respect all that Hubert Humphrey did and stood for, there is some irony that you would choose his quote for this post as he was the last Dem Pres nominee who was chosen by the party insiders rather than primary voters.  That decision tore the party apart and helped elect Richard Nixon.  Who knows what would have happened in 1968 had Bobby Kennedy not been assasinated but I think history shows pretty clearly that the 1968 Chicago convention and all that happened there was a disaster for the Dem party.

The fact is I think that if the Dems nominate a candidate who lost both the popular vote and the delegate count you would have a repeat of 1968.  In fact, it is the only way I see either candidate loosing to McCain in November.  The days of party insiders choosing is basically over and I think the Super Delegates realize that.  I know a brokered convention is every political operatives dream but I'd be surprised to see the Super Delegates go with a candidate behind in the delegate count.  

With regards to one candidate winning the popular vote and another the delegate count, I know it is mathimatically possible but pretty unlikely with proportional representation.

Jerome, can you offer up any proof that the Party created this Superdelegate system with the intention that they pledge their support prior to the electorate voting?  Hasn't this campaign by Clinton to lock down the SDs so far in advance a distortion of the role they were created to play.  As Tad Devine pointed out in the NYT this weekend:

Democrats created these superdelegates after the 1980 election with several purposes in mind.

Party leaders had been underrepresented on the floor of the 1980 convention, which was the culmination of a bitter contest for the nomination between President Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy that left our party deeply divided and contributed to the party's loss of the presidency that year.

Many party leaders felt that the delegates would actually be more representative of all Democratic voters if we had more elected officials on the convention floor to offset the more liberal impulses of party activists.

But the superdelegates were also created to provide unity at the nominating convention.

They are a critical mass of uncommitted convention voters who can move in large numbers toward the candidate who receives the most votes in the party's primaries and caucuses. Their votes can provide a margin of comfort and even victory to a nominee who wins a narrow race.

The superdelegates were never intended to be part of the dash from Iowa to Super Tuesday and beyond. They should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.

She started by acting entitled to it (perhaps a mis-acted show of strength?), and then the next mistake was SC.  As you point out, Bob...that may have been the one that hurt the most, because it led to laying bare the third mistake...the fact that there was seemingly no plan for a post-Super Tuesday campaign...the entitlement led to the assumption of success.

NOW, Obama has a better than 100 point lead in elected, primary delegates, and there is almost no way (barring a miracle or catastrophe) she can make up that void.  This last week hurt a lot, in that regard.  Anyway, she is now faced with the reality that in order to win, she might need to try to wrest the nomination away on the floor of the convention, leading to this quote by Micheal Gerson of the Washington Post:

Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination -- and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules.

From Rob:

Ouch.  She will do irreparable harm to the entire Clinton brand by going down THAT road.  Her future career/opportunities as well as Bill's are at stake, IMO.

The best thing she could do for the party and the race, depending on this Tuesday, is throw in the towel.  Should Barack wind up with more delegates AGAIN...she should really end it BEFORE TX and OH...so as to stop the talk of rupturing the party & have to endure further defections by superdelgates.

Will she do it?

From MSNBC.com

Mr. Limbaugh then listed nearly a dozen qualities he said he found admirable in Mr. Obama. "Barack Obama is pro-life," he began. "Barack Obama is a tax-cutter extraordinaire."

If neither statement was descriptive of Mr. Obama, a liberal Democrat, nor was there much hope for what followed. "Barack Obama will establish a college football playoff, once and for all," Mr. Limbaugh said. "Barack Obama will offer free-beer Fridays."

His point, Mr. Limbaugh said, was that Mr. Obama represented "a blank canvas upon which anyone can project their fantasies and desires."

...From all sides. I don't see the problem.

But there's hardly any drama here. The superdelegates are ultimately going to support the candidate with the most pledged delegates. Lobbying in some other direction won't be successful.

Jerome, thanks for posting this. It sums up what the Democratic party is wrestling with. In my IMHO, I feel like the Obama-wing of the Democratic party "wants the pipeline to be nice and clean and shiny, and as long as it is, he doesn't care if shit comes out the other end. I [as a voter] don't care if the pipeline's messy and even shitty at times as long as the right result comes out the end." And, it's obvious that I am not alone in this sentiment. Give me a fighter. Hillary is the right candidate, at the right time, with the right plans and experience to make the changes we need in order to get the "right results".

It is an interesting argument.  

It also seems to be the argument that got us 8 years of  bush even  after 8 years  of prosperity by the clintons.

It is fundamentally not understanding the long term consequences of ones actions.                  

After all Hubert Humphrey lost to dukakis.  How terrible a candidate does one have to be to lose to dukakis?                                                                              

I want reform and results.

I also think if you make certain reforms with the political system in regards to ethics, the role of outside influence like lobbyists, transparency, etc., it will be a hell of a lot easier to get the good results.

I started out this campaign as a Kucinich supporter, mainly for his positions on health care reform and his principled stand on LGBT rights.

With Kucinich's and Edwards' withdrawal from the race, I was most open to BO's candidacy and attended events to hear his point of view. I came away feeling very disturbed at the utter lack of content in his presentations, and feeling he insulted my intelligence as a voter by attempting to gain my support with empty oratory without revealing his policy intentions. I continued to follow countless speeches he gave across the country, looking for a reason to support him, and trying to develop confidence in his candidacy. My misgivings only grew with increased exposure to his non-message, and this was exacerbated by the hateful and distorting attacks on Senator Clinton, the only remaining alternate Democratic candidate.

I went and read every morsel of policy proposed on both candidates' web sites, and found BO's to be unworkable nonsense on the health care front, one of my main issues (I am a single payer advocate) and thin and weak in general. On the economic front BO's ideas are significantly less progressive. The best suggestions looked like they were directly lifted from Clinton's web site, while the worst were his alone.

Clinton's proposals were described in far more depth and detail, and were coherent and mainly well informed.

You see where I am going with this.

He's not ready for prime time. I am now supporting Clinton, and everything I have seen from BO's campaign has served to increase the degree of alarm I feel at his ascendency to the nomination, as well as a sense of increasing alienation at the co-optation of a progressive agenda by someone without the qualifications or background to enact it.

I read several pundits decrying the supposed "selfishness" of Clinton in wishing to have a shot at the nomination and give her solid proposals a chance to reverse the direction our country has taken, but to me the real "selfishness" and power hungry orientation seems to be in the BO camp, where the patience to gain experience and expertise is lacking, and the willingness to risk the lives of countless Americans by placing someone unprepared in the top position seems to me to be the ultimate in self-aggrandizement.

People can have many points of view on candidates, and I believe BO's lack of experience has a remedy - more experience. He might well be the perfect candidate for a later election.

For now he is a high risk candidate who could be a disaster and a stain on the reputation of the Democratic Party for generations, a premature candidate who's election could abort a progressive agenda for the indefinite future. I'm far from sold on supporting him if nominated, I think progressives could be in for a rude shock.

I'm sorry to the BO supporters who may find my concerns scurrilous, but after long consideration I find the Clinton argument of substance over empty rhetoric compelling, and I have already sent in the largest donation possible and my active support in the hopes she can still pull this out. The country needs competence in government to repair the damage of the past 8 years, and Clinton is the candidate capable of results, not vague promises of reform.