Me thinks somebody doesn't want a vote.

Ah, "Clinton Talking Points Memo" strikes yet again. What a surprise.

Now, She is into buying the nomination. Samantha Power was dead right. She is a monster, who will go to any lengths for power.

Here's a question: have the Clintons or any of their other friends agreed to reimburse these folks? Clinton (Bill) has some friends with a great deal of cash and they could just give this money back to these folks.

I just have a hard time understanding what it is in it for these folks to spend $12MM to re-contest an election that by all indications will net her less than 15 delegates assuming that she can win.

Boy I can't wait to see the responses you get to this one. You write:

It's worth noting, though that if no revote happens, then the votes of Michigan voters won't end up counting -- and that the Obama campaign's lack of support for the current revote proposal is a key factor preventing it from going forward. As Ben Smith notes, "Michigan officials continue to signal that without Obama's support, the proposal is dead."

But no one from TPM has done any susbstantive analysis of the legal questions raised by Obama's campaign. Nor is there any discussion here of their concerns that people who voted in the GOP primary initially will no be permitted to join the revote.

Everything is reduced to Clinton wants a revote, Obama doesn't. There is no analysis of the terms for that revote. If Obama has legitimate concerns about the fairness of a vote, the fact that wealthy Clinton supporter will foot the bill does not solve the porblem.

Clinton is trying to stack the deck for any revote any you are just repearting her spin with the Obama's preventing this from going forward.

How about they fund something worthwhile, like funding AIDS or cancer research, or towards building homes for displaced New Orleans residents, or perhaps towards saving tiger in the wild?

Obama needs to do something. The only people who oppose a revote at this point are Obama and Jack Cafferty, and Cafferty is just doing it to be ornery.

Obama should support the revote and then do what he does best, beat Hillary.

no candidate should help fund an election in which their name is on the ballot. Obama, Clinton, Rove, or Jesus Christ.

this goes double when the money is being provided by big-money supporters of that candidate.

"Now, however, it looks as if Rendell and fellow Hillary supporter Jon Corzine have found enough Hillary donors who are willing to throw their financial weight behind the revote.

The duo have penned a letter to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to say that they have "a list of individuals who, combined, are prepared to serve as guarantors to ensure that a total of up to $12 million will be deposited in the State of Michigan Presidential Primary Administration Fund by April 17, 2008."

This looks like Hillary's campaign would be violating federal campaign funding laws.

This would be a group of her maxed out fat cats actually donating another $12 million into Hillary's campaign effort.

Since only Hillary supporters are involved with the fund raising, they are clearly doing so to help Hillary, and would not be doing it without her approval. That means that she sees it as helping her campaign. That $12 million is a massive violation of the federal election limits on contributions laws.

Hillary must be sanctioned heavily for such massive blatant violations of the law.

Caution, everyone! You are entering the TPM Spin Zone! Ah, the injustice being done to the Clintons and their great movement to enfranchise all of America!

Just a question to the reporters here, how does this content differ from the tripe we get through the talking heads?

So what's the punishment again for holding their primary in violation of DNC rules?

The Clinton camp is spinning this very well, but essentially this is a case of a do-over when you don't like the results. That is not how elections work, and it is a scary precedent. It also would completely undermine future, perhaps more well-thought-out attempts by the DNC to impose some order on the primary schedule. Clinton, like Obama, Edwards and the other nominees, agreed to the stupid idea to leave MI and FL in the cold. They could have done it differently and didn't. Now any arrangement will be skewed to favor one candidate or another, at least a little, and that is not how elections are supposed to be designed in this country.
Isn't it Clinton who liked to say, "Woulda, coulda, shoulda" to brush off mistakes? Well, I'd say that applies now.

Just count the votes in Florida and Michigan, seat the delegates and give the nomination to Clinton.

Praising God damn America will never win in this country.

If you want a Dem President, run Clinton. Period.

Wait, who's the limousine liberal candidate again?

It seems rather self-serving, rather than just being nice, to have
only Clinton donors fund a re-vote. Although the official DNC
supports the proposal, it seems as though the state legislature is opposed. And logistically, is it really possible to organize a re-vote by June? The Clinton campaign seems damned and determined to create a controversy, so as to buy time to tear down Obama as much as possible. McCain is rising in the polls and is still getting positive ratings. We need to stop wasting time and start campaigning against McCain. Just split the delegates for Michigan and Florida 50-50, and get on with defeating the republicans. The media seems to have lost sight of the big picture-she can't win enough delegates, and is unlikely to pull ahead in the popular vote totals no matter what.

Michigan (and Florida) will be seated for the winner of the nomination as pundits have been saying all along. They have to be; there's no doubt about it. It wasn't and issue until Hillary, her campaign and surrogates started clamoring first about how the delegates were hers even though she agreed to the DNC's rules and then how they needed a revote.

She suddenly abandoned her original pledge along with Edwards, Richardson, Obama and the other original candidates when she had the fear of God put in her by Obama. Back before Patty Solis Doyle began running the campaign into the ground, Mark Penn still looked like he was worth all of that money, and inevitability was the still in the air, it wasn't a problem. She wasn't such an advocate for Michigan then because she didn't think she had to be.

Her arrogance and that of the inevitability-Kool-Aide-drinkers is highlighted by this stunt and its drama. It wasn't until just before Michigan after Iowa and South Carolina losses made it look like she might indeed not be the nominee that a few on some political blogs started taking notice that Hillary was still on the ballot. A few started what seemed a conspiratorial suggestion at the time to theorize Hillary had purposefully kept her name on the ballot as insurance and might indeed try to steal those delegates. Crazy suggestion. She wouldn't do that. Even she's not that shady.

Nobody in the media really nipped that story early but it was clear, as was the case with Florida when she was losing and needed momentum, she was actually going to make this crazy claim and suddenly become concerned about disenfranchising Michigan and Florida. It is a testament to the power of the Clinton spin machine that the re-vote issue has even gotten this far and is so high-profile.

In reality, the whole thing is a stunt and more than anything a screw-up by the state-level Democrats that were so cocksure about their choice to ignore rules and give the DNC the finger so they could do what they wanted despite the penalty of losing their delegate seats. Hillary who has consistently moved the goal posts and tried to change the rules in her own favor is now clearly and demonstratively desperate.

Obama has always had the upper hand in this because the rules and agreement by all of the candidates is on his side. If anything, it again shows the superiority of his campaign. He has let Hillary dig herself into a hole. It's sort of like an episode of Matlock (Clintonites should remember that TV show) or even Scooby Doo when the criminal to admits their crime. Her push for a revote overshadowed and contradicted her original ploy to have all of the delegates seated for her.

Now that she has made the case against herself so well and so publicly, Obama can simply wait out the clock like a good lawyer, and get even instead of getting mad. So it will be back to plan A and to seat the delegates for the nominee. Michigan and Florida are important but this year they'll have to be like other late-primary states have been for years and simply have one choice. New York Times columnist David Brooks and a few others even thought that Puerto Rico was a winner-take-all contest because the nominee has already been long-decided by the time they got along to their caucus (now a primary thanks to pro-Hillary last minute changes).

Now if only the spun media would take a look back and see that this whole drama is Hillary-created. Rather than stand up for Hillary, they should be standing up for John Edwards and the others who played by the rules. Obama is standing up for them too by not simply ceding the delegates and having a re-vote without them. Maybe John Edwards would have won all of those union votes or all those undecideds were really for Joe Biden.

Hopefully Michigan and Florida will play by the rules next time. Now the foolish Democratic leaders in the state should be forced to face responsibility for their decision to ignore DNC rules. I'm sure at least a few will join Kwame Kilpatrick as soon-to-be ex-political leaders.

Ouch.

I agree.

"Thank God Hillary is looking out for Florida and Michigan Voters."

I thought maybe she was just looking out for her own ass.

Clinton has already lost. The delegate math says it all. She needs to gracefully excuse herself now, instead of trying to seize this thing.

Let's see....

Yahoo broke the story about Hillary pushing NAFTA while she was First Lady 2 hours and 10 minutes ago.

Still nothing at TPM...

Keep up the good work. You folks are sharp.

This is a repost from elsewhere, but I'll go ahead and be shameless:

According to Reuters, here's where MI stood a few days ago (based on one poll, so who knows):

"A poll last week by the Marketing Resource Group for the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter showed Michigan voters divided over which candidate they would support, and whether the primary should be rerun at all.

Obama led Clinton 44 percent to 43 percent among likely Michigan voters, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of 5 percentage points."

Assuming for the moment that it's legal for Hillary's supporters to buy a re-vote for MI, I believe Obama should negotiate some terms on fairness, campaign there like crazy, and then beat Clinton's pantsuit off (sorry, couldn't resist, pantsuit-wearer that I am).

As soon as there's a nominee, the Repubs attack. Until then, all the focus is on two powerful Democratic figures.

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday March 19 2008. It was last updated at 20:30 on March 19 2008.

On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called "Hats on for Bella" in Washington.

In her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has touted her experience in the Clinton White House as preparation to lead the nation in a time of crisis. "Ready on day one" has been her slogan.

But an initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedules from her days as first lady, released today by the National Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, shows that she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton's presidency.

Clinton, who was an accomplished attorney and first lady of Arkansas before moving to the White House, frequently claims more than 30 years experience in public life, contrasting herself with Barack Obama's slimmer resume - he served several years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the US Senate in 2004.

The Clinton campaign claimed on Wednesday that the release of the papers would show Clinton to have been an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of the US. But the documents from her office in the White House threaten to undermine her claim to have played a major role in Clinton's foreign policy decisions.

For instance, Clinton has said she helped negotiate the April 1998 Good Friday agreement between warring factions in Northern Ireland. But while Catholic and Protestant figures hashed out last-minute details of a power-sharing agreement in Belfast, Clinton was at the National Press Club in Washington at a party honouring Bella Abzug, a congresswoman from New York City who had died recently. While President Clinton phoned major participants in the peace talks, she met with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and joined a farewell party for Democratic operative Karen Finney. On the day the agreement was actually signed, she met with Philippine first lady Amelita Ramos.

When Nato launched air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, Clinton toured ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor, and stayed overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel there.

On August 20, 1998, Bill Clinton ordered US missile strikes on suspected terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan. The president and Hillary Clinton were on holiday on Martha's Vineyard, a posh island vacation spot off the coast of Massachusetts. After announcing the attack, Clinton cut short his break and returned to Washington to confer with his national security team; Hillary Clinton remained on the Vineyard until August 30, her records show.

There are other key foreign policy dates when the record is not so clear: on the day the presidents of three Balkan states signed a peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, ending years of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia, Clinton's file lists no public schedule for that day, but indicates she was in Washington.

The documents' release on Wednesday came in response to a conservative organisation's freedom of information request and subsequent lawsuit. The records include schedules from nearly 3,000 days Clinton was in the White House, and detail meetings, trips, speaking engagements and social activities.

Bruce Lindsey, a Little Rock attorney and long time Clinton confidant, vetted the pages prior their release. He and national archives staff checked the documents for information sensitive to national security and law enforcement matters.

Nearly a third of the pages have redactions, most of which the archives said were made to protect the privacy of Clinton's associates. The redacted material includes home addresses, telephone numbers and social security numbers, the archives said.

Christopher Farrell, director of investigations and research with Judicial Watch, the organisation behind the two-year-long legal effort to win the documents' release, said he doesn't anticipate finding any "smoking gun" within the reams of pages.

He said Lindsey "has enormous discretion" to redact information potentially damaging to Clinton's White House bid. "My expectations are quite low."

Hillary Clinton was present in the White House, however, for at least one significant event of the Clinton presidency. On November 15 1995, when President Clinton is said to have begun his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, she was in the White House, according to her schedule.

The release of Clinton's White House papers have made it possible to work out her whereabouts during the key moments in the Lewinsky scandal by comparing her schedule to the detailed account of Clinton's affair detailed in the Starr Report.

On at least one other occasion, the Clintons met on official White House duties shortly after Bill Clinton and Lewinsky had been engaged in sexual activity, the papers suggest.

Yick, I still can't stomach the whole Lewinsky scandal. I know she was the first lady, and is now the presidential candidate, but still, having everyone know where you were when he was screwing her or whatever...Echh!

I wonder if you can expect any better anymore. Now that major media outlets are under corporate (thus big $$) control, they'd fight and scream and spit and rail against 'unpatriotic' attempts to divest some of that control. I don't think we ever get away from this.

Not like they were ever rosy. But this is bad.

And who helped give away the media to corporations in 1996? Hmm...

Clinton wants her Michigan superdelegates, she doesn't care if she wins the primary or not.

Whoa. Getting to this late and not much time, but I thought that Obama said he would go along with any plan that satisfied the DNC and the state. So he should.

Burton's statement today sounded quite "Clintonian" if I may say so. Am I missing something? I've had no trouble following, supporting and being damn proud of the way the Obama campaign has conducted itself - fairness and common sense over 'politics as usual.' But if, as it sounds, the state and DNC have signed off on this, or are prepared to, then why isn't Obama agreeing?

If the 'disenfranchisement' problem is that Indies and Dems who crossed over aren't going to get to vote, then was a foreseeable issue and Obama's position before should have been: "We'll go along with anything the DNC and state approve of as long as ......"

With all the FALSE allegations that Obama has lied flying around (NAFTA, whether he knew of Wright's worst statemetns, etc., etc.), the impression this is giving should be avoided. There would be nothing sweeter in beating Hillary in a primary that she screamed and squealed for.

Agree it's a terrible waste of lots of money, but Obama took a position and should stick to it.

i am also starting to feel like this site is becoming a clinton talking points echo chamber...

what happened guys - did the scary black preacher push you back towards monsters, inc.?

I stand corrected. I always thought of it in terms of a tow truck.

Hmmm, and what might Clinton owe these backers if she wins the presidency? Valid question.

Ok, if we want to blame anyone for "disenfranchising" Michigan voters, it shouldn't be Hillary or Obama.

It was the Michigan Legislature who disenfranchised the Michigan voters. ok.

One more time. It was the Michigan legislature who f'ed over Michigan voters.

I am a loyal dem and michigan voter, and my ire is not at Obama or Hillary (although I'm an Obama supporter), but at the Michigan Dems, who in their hubris, f'ed over the michigan voters, whereas if they just let the schedule play out, our March primary would've been super important.

I hate this patronizing national media who just parrot what both sides say free of any analysis.

It was the michigan dems who f'ed over the michigan voters. A re-vote, that doesn't allow those who voted in the GOP primary (which did mean something at the time), because they knew the Dem primary meant nothing, is fundamentally unfair to those voters. Thus, that sounds like fair grounds to protest for Obama b/c he gets a lot of crossovers.

Also,

even though it's the fault of the Michigan Dems, and the legislature more generally, michigan should not have to pay. Our state is broke as shit. We shouldn't pony up $20M, so Hillary could possibly gain, what, 5-10 delegates on Obama?

That's what is so patronizing. All this talk about Michigan voters. Well, the truth is, even if we vote again, our votes will hardly make a dent in the delegate totals. Oh, but Hillary's rich friends are willing to pony up? F that, let's use that money for McCain. Obama has an insurmountable delegate lead. Why do we still have to deal with this kabuki dance?!?

You are absolutely right.

A re-vote in Michigan, under the proposed rules, can become a legal nightmare. That's the last thing we need right now. I think everybody should be allowed to participate in the re-vote whether they picked the Republican or the democratic ballot. When I walked into my precinct in January, I was asked to select Dem or Repub and was handed the appropriate paper. While the ballot goes into a tally machine, the information that ties the name to the ballot is recorded in a notebook. I am an independent and I have no intention to register as democrat. If they decide to base the decision on those notebooks, what are the legal ramifications? Who controls those notebooks and can they be tampered with?
I don't need the Obama campaign to tell me that and I don't think Hillary's definition of disenfranchisement fits my situation.

Would you support a candidate if, after knowing his or her spouse cheated on him or her - and in the White House no less - still remained married to him or her?

Would you support a candidate that continues to remain married to a person whose actions while president brought the country to a virtual halt and resulted in impeachment, while claiming to love the very country harmed by his or her spouse?

And would you support this candidate, knowing it would result in he or she - along with his or hers' harmful, divisive spouse - being back in the White House again?

I think Not.

Yes, Obama said he would go along with what the DNC decides, after being promised by the DNC that they would not approve a decision that would unfairly impact either candidate. Whether this proposal does or does not remains to be seen.

The Michigan proposal has not been officially approved by the DNC; it just received an OK by two members regarding rules violations.

Also, there must be a 2/3 majority in Michigan's House and Senate to approve a re-vote; and last I heard anyway, they are not even near that.

Bottom line: there are still many issues to work out in Michigan before the DNC can seriously determine whether or not to support it. Therefore, laying blame on Obama's campaign at this juncture if a re-vote does not occur is just plain wrong.

thank you OR55 -- I was going to say that what Obama supporters should do is make it very CLEAR that what he says is correct (he will approve whatever the DNC approves) but they haven't approved anything yet. That's simple enough.

BUT then there is the long memo from Obama counsel this morning nit-picking the whole thing and - yes - sounding very Clintonian!!

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/obamas_memo_on_michigan.php

If the Obama campaign came out and said "What do you think, we're crazy? We're ahead and this might put us behind so OF COURSE we are trying to stall. We owe it to our supporters." I'd have more respect than I do for this "well naturally we want an open, democratic process but.." pick - pick - pick ostensibly for concerns like voter disenfranchisement, state liability, etc."

Meanwhile Obama himself is on national TV saying that Hillary says she's trying to get revotes out of concern of the voters but it's really for political reasons to gain an advantage -- "which is fine so long as it's acknowledged that her motives are political" He's saying this in a slightly disdainful tone .... while doing precisely the same thing himself???? What has happened to this smooth-running campaign?

And is there any real advantage? Another thing Obama said last night was that they get into trouble whenever they do the 'traditional' political thing - which this stalling, nit-picking act surely is. He should say (and mean) "whatever the DNC says we agree to and, hey, we'll even pay half the cost!" Heck, that might even scare Hillary into saying 'ne-ver mind - let's save money and split 50-50.'