When will the DNC lean on a candidate to back down to make for a united convention?

Great Debates
1

As of today, Monday, February 11, 2008 the democratic race for the president has been a horse race. As another poster recently put it in another thread, the water is getting deeper, and swifter for Clinton to pull away as a clear front-runner. Obama has had some big wins over the weekend and is currently leading in delegate counts. His campaign is showing zero signs of slowing down, further it is showing definite signs up ramping up and gaining momentum.
Clinton’s campaign has had some significant bumps in the media as of late, the MSNBC schtick about Chelsea Pimping Out her mom’s campaign and of course the loss of Hillary’s campaign manager at a critical time. She appears to be showing signs of a downward turn. Nothing in stone as of yet, but the appearances are there.

Howard Dean has mentioned that he would like a candidate chosen before the convention so the dems can go in with a united front. It’s been postulated that with one last large surge from Obama winning the potomac primaries, then on to the Texas and Ohio Primaries - if he get’s solid wins there that the DNC would lean on Clinton to back down and support Obama.

If he doesn’t have a strong showing in Texas but does in Ohio and Penn, Obama could still have the momentum to propell him to the convention as the clear dem candidate.

If the floor collapses and Obama somehow loses all of this steam - polls are showing that scenerio to be very unlikely - then the DNC may lean on him to back down.

I’ll wager a guess that the DNC is not going to allow FL and MI delegates to seat at the convention and will stick to their guns. If they do allow them to seat they risk an even higher divide amongst the party electorate - I don’t think they’d want that.

So my 2 cents - Obama sweeps the potomac primaries, pulls a tight win in Texas, wins Ohio and the DNC leans on Clinton to back down before the convention…

2

Let’s just say right off the bat that the Democratic Party fucked themselves with the Florida and Michigan situation. They allowed a situation to develop that caused people to lose their influence in the race totally, and pissed off whole states’ worth of party voters.

The Republicans faced the same problem, but the penalty imposed was a loss of half of a state’s delegates. Thus, a state could choose between an early showing and an late one with a full slate. There isn’t any anger right now on the Republican side over this.

Now, as for the other thing, Dean isn’t much beholden to the Clintons, so if he thinks leaning on Hillary will help the party, he’ll do it. Problem there is that his influence with them is limited as well - the Clintons have a large machine that doesn’t need as much from the party to keep going. And if the Clintons smell victory, will they put the needs of the Democrats first? I think that’s an open question.

3

If Obama still has the lead on pledged delegates after Texas and Ohio (that is, he wins or comes very close in the primaries), then I think the party will come down on his side.

If Clinton pulls away, then they’ll come down for her.

If it’s still too close to really say one’s ahead, then I think the pressure will be on Obama to win PA or get out.

4

With the continual rise in mudslinging between all involved, it’s got to happen soon. DC-MD-VA will push the party, and if it can last as long as Texas, it will. I doubt the party will be able to handle anything longer than that. But, I think you have it backwards.

Somehow, I feel like the DNC is going to end up endorsing Hillary, regardless of anything else. Honestly, I think it could go 50/50 right now, if it came down to intraparty politics. Hillary has the legacy support, but Obama has the key characteristic of being “moldable” – as Kerry, et. al. have already noticed. It’ll probably come down to choosing between your long-time buddy, or the new guy you can shape however you want.

shrug I really don’t know, anymore. This election is already dragging, and it’s only February. Whatever the case, one thing is clear – nothing is decided yet. Both candidates have a shot to win this, and I think it’ll stay that way until the DNC steps in… whenever that happens.

5

What can the DNC do, really? Parties can’t even influence the choice of VP nominees, much less who is running and how the campaign is conducted.

Here’s the thing - unless something changes with regard to Florida and Michigan, the calendar goes dead between March 11 and Pennsylvania on April 22. So if it’s not over on March 4, as things stand, it’s guaranteed to last another six weeks with nothing but fundraising and attacks, and no chance of resolution. The GOP will be wrapped up by then. That’ll be really uncomfortable.

6

Which doesn’t mean they won’t vote for the Dem candidate in November.

The question is whether the Florida and Michigan state parties will agree to have do-over primaries/caucuses, as the DNC is urging.

7

Well, if I’m the strategist for the Clintons:

1. Pull as many superdelegate commitments as possible.
2. Try to get some secret superdelegate commitments, enough to put you over the top on procedural votes.
3. Hope to keep things close enough in the elected delegate count that your superdelegate committments (both open and secret) give you an advantage on procedural votes
4. Use your voting power at the convention (including secret commitments) to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. Your “secret” supporters can say they just want to be fair to the good people of Florida and Michigan.
5. If the Florida and Michigan delegations are enough to put you over the top among elected delegates, you now have a thin veneer of credibility that allows superdelegates to support you openly as the nominee. (Just going along with the majority of elected delegates, you understand…)

8

I agree, this was woefully mishandled. The Republican penalty was much more constructive.

9

Why would the DNC lean on a candidate to make for a united convention? I mean, from the party’s POV, what’s wrong with a brokered convention?

10

As a disenfranchised Michigan voter, I’m now turning my attention to leaning on DNC Superdelegates to support my candidate (Obama), so that when the party leans on someone to step down, my voice will have been heard, and I can feel I’ve done all I could to get Obama the nom.

11

To advance the beginning of the national election. If Obama and Clinton must continue their debate until the convention, it means the Dems will expend resources against each other, while McCain is gunning for the Democrats. At least that’s the reasoning as I understand it.

12

OTOH, it creates a convention that people will actually watch – not a ceremonial coronation, but a real political decisionmaking event being played out before the nation’s eyes! Meanwhile, McCain fades into a background noise.

13

I think the primary process thus far has been very good for the Dems. We’ve had a lot of excitement, and a lot of involvement. On Super Tuesday, the Dems outdrew the GOP on the order of 14 million voters to 8 million voters. And for once we’ve avoided the “my primary is meaningless because the race has already been decided” problem: practically everybody’s getting a say in this.

Yes, the spectre of either the superdelegates, or a deal to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations as is, deciding the nomination contrary to the votes of a nontrivial majority of primary and caucus participants, still hangs over the process. But the continuation of the primaries isn’t the problem - it’s that other stuff.

So the DNC should stay out of it until the primaries are over, with the possible exception of providing a means of fairly contesting MI and FL.

14

Yep. Plus the close and exciting race is enticing a lot of new Democratic voters to register. That’s got to be a good thing come November.

Keep it going until the Puerto Rico primary (June 7), sez I.

15

I haven’t seen any indication that Dems in Florida and Michigan are outraged about not having their delegates seated. They knew what the penalty was going to be going in. I think Hillary will probably try to have them seated but I can’t imagine she’s going to succeed without a revote. Playing Calvinball with the rules that way would piss off WAY more people than not seating delegates from those states at all (and like I said, it’s not like those states are exactly rioting anyway. I don’t think anyone except hardcore Hillary supporters is agitating to have those votes ratified as is.

As to the OP, I think it’s all going to come down to what happens on March 4. If Obama can win even one of those states or even just stay very close in all of them, I think the writing will be on the wall. If Hillary takes them all in blowouts, we’ll start seeing media language about “a change in momentum” and a “comeback” for Hillary, in which case it might, unfortunately come down to a brokered convention.

Up until very recently, I’ve ben afarid that the superdelegates would feel beholden enough to the Clintons to give HRC the nom, even if Obama won more pledged delegates.

Now I think there’s been enough of a sea change in Obama’s direction that the supers would feel very nervous about going against the Barack tide, and I’m sure those supersvwho will be on ballots of their own will also be keenly aware of the sentiment among their own constituents as well as the polls which consistently show Obama doing better in the GE than Hillary.

At this point, I think it’s possible that Obama could clinch the nomination before the convention but that Hillary would have to win by major landslides in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania to turn the tide enough to win the nom without a bokered (and potentially very acrimonious) convention.

I’m too congentially pessimistic to get my hopes up, but when I look at things objectively, Obama looks on track to eke out the nomination if the trends keep going thje way they’re going. I don’t know what Hilldog could do to stop Obamania. We already saw in S.C. that going negative is probably just going to backfire. BHO is not the kind of candidate for whom villification is going to be very effective. It never worked against Reagan either. People kind of know who’s really an asshole and who isn’t (let’s be honest, we all knew that Kerry was kind of a douche but we really, really hated Turd Sandwich) and efforts to demonize Obama just fail to jibe with any intuitive radars, even among Republicans.

Barring something dramatic (Hillary cures cancer or Obama is revealed to be the Zodiak), I see a narrow but inexorable win for Obama before it comes down to a brokered convention.

16

Not so much outrage as frustration. In Florida, at least, the primary date was moved up by a Republican-controlled state legislature. The result to the Dems seems unfair.

17

First of all, don’t underestimate McCain’s ability to strip a few Democratic voters away, and run strong among independents.

Second, don’t underestimate the ability of a really pissed-off voter to just stay home, or just vote in the local elections.

18

If Clinton gets the nom, maybe; if Obama does, not a chance.

I don’t look for that this year, in Florida or anywhere else. It’s a wide-open election and political excitement is running too high. The only voters staying home will be conservatives for whom McCain is too liberal; and maybe even they will decide to hold their noses and vote.

19

The Democrats can play by other rules - if the national party would have harshly penalized this result, they could have kept to the original date.

There’s nothing that would have prevented this.

However, like I said, the national party could have handled this better and forestalled these questions entirely.

20

State law prevented it – the primaries being run and funded by the state, not the party.

If the state party decides to have another primary or caucus, the party will have to come up with the money, and might or might not get to use public polling facilities.