Hillary's "Count Every Vote" Hillpocrisy

Here is a fun bit of hillpocrisy, for those jonesing for an early morning fix. This didn't make the news anywhere, but at the same time Hillary has been running around the country decrying the terrible disenfranchisement of voters in Michigan and Florida who voted for her (she wants to disenfranchise every single voter who voted for Obama in Michigan), equating their struggle (okay, actually her struggle because they don't seem to really care) with the suffrage movement and the fight against slavery, and comparing the Florida-Michigan row to Mugabe's anti-democratic actions in Zimbabwe, she has been trying to disenfranchise voters in Texas. Yes, we all know she also doesn't want to count any voters from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, but now she is going after caucus goers in Texas, who just happened to have voted for Obama. Hillary's campaign tried keep an entire county from being seated at the state convention because that county's senate district conventions were held a day late, because there wasn't a large enough venue in the county for the day it was originally scheduled. So Hillary's campaign wants everyone in the county (again, the county went to Obama, just a coincidence I'm sure..) disenfranchised, for breaking the rules, because they essentially had no other choice.

This of course directly contradicts her moral standard she has employed in the Florida-Michigan fiasco, which is that "whenever we can understand the clear intent of the voters, their vote should be counted." Hm, I'm pretty sure these people intended to vote for Obama, so why are you trying so hard to get everyone in that county disenfranchised if you are supposedly the new hero of democracy? What happened to fighting for every single vote to be counted?

Oh, and a Hillary supporter on the credentials committee that would decide the ultimate fate of the votes from Collin County said "What is troubling me...is that it seems to me that this rule is crystal clear." Which is funny, because the rules of the DNC were also crystal clear, even clearer actually because they were warned of the consequences, and yet they violated the rules anyway. In Collin County the local Democratic Party didn't want to break the rules, but they had nowhere to hold their county convention that day, so they had to do it the next day. But regardless, what we see here is that on one hand you have Hillary demanding that every vote (that was for her) be counted, and saying screw the rules, and then on the other hand you have her trying to disenfranchise 40% of the voters from Michigan, not count the votes from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, and now trying to disenfranchise the voters of an entire county in Texas, and defending the rules as "crystal clear". Funny how that works huh?

But that's hillpocrisy for you!

But this story has a happy ending, for democracy, not Hillary, because last night the Texas Democratic Party's temporary credentials committee voted unanimously to deny the challenge aimed at unseating the entire Collin County delegation from attending next week's state convention. The reason? The man Hillary's campaign had file the actual challenge with the committee on the grounds the change could have confused some voters in the county wasn't even from the county in question!

Something Stinks In Texas (Again)

FUD in Texas, courtesy of Camp Clinton
by kos

While the Clinton campaign steps up its efforts to ratify the sham elections in Michigan and Florida -- their lone lifeline in a campaign they have otherwise thoroughly lost on the merits -- they seek to disenfranchise actual voters in a real contest -- that in Texas.

On Wednesday:

Garry Mauro, Clinton's state campaign chairman, said Wednesday he is satisfied that the process is working well. Mauro said Clinton is planning no challenge to the process.

Birnberg said he is not expecting many challenges to convention delegates because too many delegates would have to be rejected to change the mix for either Obama or Clinton.

"If you're talking about Senate District 13, which has 4,000 delegates, you cannot imagine how many credential disputes you'd have to have to change" the outcome, he said. "That probably takes 1,000 successful challenges mathematically."

Then on Thursday:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's Texas campaign is challenging the seating of delegates from numerous precincts for Saturday’s Democratic county conventions, particularly in Barack Obama's strongholds.

State Senate District 23, which includes much of southern Dallas County, was a central target of the Clinton campaign.

Just before Wednesday’s deadline to file complaints before the county convention credentials committee, Clinton campaign officials delivered a large packet of challenges.

"There are numerous challenges," said Dallas County District Clerk Gary Fitzsimmons, who is temporary chairman of the District 23 credentials committee. The district went solidly for Mr. Obama in the primary, and there’s a question over whether Mrs. Clinton will reach the 15 percent threshold needed to receive delegates.

The committee meets Thursday night to deal with minor challenges. The rest will be handled on Saturday, the day of the county conventions.

On a conference call Wednesday, Clinton campaign officials said they would not try to influence the county conventions with mass challenges before the credentials committee [...]

"Apparently the promise that the Clinton campaign made less than 24 hours ago not to challenge the seating of delegates at Saturday's district conventions was just another made-up story," [Obama spokesperson Josh] Earnest said. "The Clinton campaign's politically-motivated outrage over disenfranchising voters apparently doesn't extend to the 1.1 million Texans who participated in the precinct conventions earlier this month."

Of course it doesn't. Clinton originally agreed to the sanctions against Michigan and Florida. Yet now, even after the states have admitted they don't have the money, time, or political will to get new sanctioned contests, the Clinton campaign clings to the states in an effort to spread enough uncertainty to keep her failed campaign alive.

Note that in Texas, SD-23 in Dallas is little different than SD-13 in Houston -- Clinton got only about 27 percent of the vote, and only about 18 percent in the caucus. She's in danger of failing to reach viability there and in Houston's SD-13, and those are huge districts. Note also that the district, which the Clinton campaign is trying to disenfranchise, is essentially half African American, half Latino. But every delegate counts, and SD-23 has six of them. They'll fight for every single one of them no matter how many people and communities they disenfranchise.

There are also reports that several south Texas counties, Clinton territory, are refusing to publish the location of the conventions. In the old day, no one showed up to these things, delegate slates were just filled in without hassle by some local party honcho. These people would like nothing else than to fill in a full slate of Clinton delegates without the hassles of "democracy" and all. So between credential challenges and other subterfuge designed to depress Obama's performance and cast the caucus results in doubt, we'll see that once again, Camp Clinton will do and say anything in its mad pursuit of power.

[There have also been reports of robocalls telling people that the county conventions have been canceled.]

Hillary's Only Path To The Nomination: Disenfranchise Hundreds Of Thousands Of Voters

I wrote previously about the hypocrisy of Hillary's doublespeak about being so concerned that every voter's voice is heard in Florida and Michigan (just as long as they didn't have much of a choice when they cast their votes), while basing her path to the nomination on hijacking the will of the voters via superdelegates and switching pledged delegates, essentially overturning 10,000+ voters with each delegate gained. Well now she is at it again, saying that pledged delegates are just like superdelegates, and they can switch at anytime (and implicit in this, is that they should switch, and switch to her, since that is the only way she has even the faintest chance of winning):

I just don’t think this is over yet, and I don’t think that it is smart for us to take a position that might disadvantage us in November. And also remember that pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.

After that, she defends her position that that is a fair way to win (notice there is no acknowledgment of what she is saying really means, which again is disenfranchising 10,000+ voters for each superdelegate, and anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000+ voters for each pledged delegate, depending on the state and turnout), because the rules allow it, and she is suddenly a big fan of following the rules:

There are different ways to become a delegate, there are delegates from caucuses, there are delegates from primaries, and there are the appointed delegates, they’re all equal, they all have an equal vote – those are the rules of the Democratic Party. Now if you don’t like the rules, change them going forward but those are the rules. And they are there for a purpose...

Please notice that she wasn't a fan of the rules that allowed students in Iowa to vote even though they live in Iowa at least 3/4 of the year, work there, pay taxes there, fund their university system, and are legally allowed and encouraged to vote. She also didn't like the rules that she had previously agreed to that gave workers on the Las Vegas Strip access to caucus sites, as soon as the union endorsed Obama, and her surrogates filed a lawsuit on her behalf to change the rules and shut the caucus sites down. She also hasn't been a fan of the rules in any of the caucus states, because even though they have run that way for a long time, and even though they run by established rules, she consistently claims they don't count, except for Nevada of course, which she won. She also wasn't a big fan of the rules in Texas, which she constantly complained about, and even considered filing a lawsuit to protest the rules and delay announcement of the caucus winner long enough that the media would ignore it and say she won Texas, even though she only narrowly won the primary, and Obama blew her away in the caucus, netting him 3 or so delegates, a clear victory. She has also not been a fan of the DNC rules concerning Michigan and Florida, rules that she agreed to in advance, yet she now wants to change because doing so would benefit her. Now does that sound like "those are the rules of the Democratic Party. Now if you don’t like the rules, change them going forward but those are the rules. And they are there for a purpose."?

No, that sounds like the ugliest kind of hillpocrisy.

And now Clinton strategist Harold Ickes backs up Hillary's position:

I think what Mrs. Clinton was trying to make clear is that no delegate is required by party rules to vote for the candidate for which they're pledged. Now obviously circumstances can change, and people's minds can change about the viability of a particular candidate, and that's permitted under our rules ever since the 1980 convention.

While technically true, the Clinton campaign misses another opportunity to point out what this actually means to voters. Say, for example you have a pledged delegate from a fairly populous district, and this pledged delegate is given the position of being the caretaker of the people's will, say 12,000 voters, from the ballot box to the DNC. So say this delegate chances his or her mind, and switches support to the other candidate. Instantly 12,000 voters who went to the polls not only didn't vote for their candidate, they voted for the other one. It is worse than just disenfranchisement, it is stealing their vote and giving it to someone else. I for one would be sick to my stomach if I knew my vote cast for Obama got changed after the fact and cast for Hillary, as any voter would in a similar situation, no matter if you support Obama, Hillary, McCain or Ralph Nader. THAT is what all of this smooth talk about "pledged delegates can switch" really means. The cold ugly truth isn't as palatable as the euphemisms and distorted doubletalk coming from the Clinton campaign, yet no one seems to be talking about what winning an election via superdelegate or pledged delegate coup would really mean for democracy. We certainly can't count on the media to connect the dots, but I hope if the blogosphere and the netroots keep the issue alive, and keep pointing out how blatantly Hillary is trying to hijack democracy, maybe people will start to see through her two-faced rhetoric.

Update (3/26): Now this is pretty crazy, today the Clinton campaign has gone even further, basically saying that pledged delegates are expected to use their own judgment to pick whichever candidate they want, meaning the will of the voters should have nothing to do with how the pledged delegates vote:

In an interview with Mark Halperin, Hillary Clinton again put out the idea that pledged delegates do not have to stick with the candidate they were elected to back: "We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment."

They are essentially saying now that the will of the voters is meaningless, or should be meaningless, and that the entire race not only can, but ought to be decided undemocratically! That is crazy!! They are saying there needn't be any relationship whatsoever to what the voters want, and what the pledged delegates do, meaning the whole system in their minds is nothing more than an empty gesture, completely meaningless! This really shows how little they care for democracy and the will of the voter.......yet Hillary continues to cry foul about every voter in Michigan and Florida not having their voices heard.

I'll just give you a second to let the astounding hillpocrisy of that sink in......

Something Stinks In Texas

This is interesting, here is a Report by the Dallas Morning New which talks about the training materials the Hillary campaign is sending out to its precinct captains for caucus night:

The materials say in part, "DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles."

It goes on to say, "If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serve as the Secretary, in the interest of fairness.

"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions."

I guess if you aren't likely to win an election, you might as well try to control it and be in a position to hijack the system. Now this might seem harmless, or relatively harmless, on the surface, because, after all, would the Clinton campaign really abuse power to their advantage? Well, of course. The last important contested caucus we had was in Nevada (you know, the one where the Clinton campaign tried to sue to disenfranchise thousands of union members because they had voted to endorse Obama a day before). In the aftermath of that disastrous event came a deluge of reports of malfeasance by the Clinton campaign. I encourage you to read this kos diary which does an amazing job at documenting many of the violations of rules and ethics by the Clinton campaign, here are some examples of what went down:

• Obama voters being turned away from a caucus site


• Obama voters being told to fill out voter cards in the lobby until noon while Clinton supporters were invited in the caucus room--then the doors being shut on the Obama supporters because they weren't in the room


• Interference on the part of State Party officials to cheat on behalf of Clinton


• Voter cards being filled out in advance for Clinton and given to all voters, regardless of support


• Voter cards being used in the place of actual headcounts to tally votes


• The Clinton campaign setting up signs against the rules


• Clinton supporters managing the voter registration process, and threatening to call the police when Obama volunteers requested equal access


• Other general bad behavior and bad faith moves by the Clinton team--and more besides.

Now this shows what the Clinton campaign and their people will do in order to try to win. They are mean, they are antagonistic, and now we know why, they were told to take control of everything and run the caucus their way. Again, these are just examples of SOME of what happened, but it is in no way a comprehensive report. I think there is good reason to expect that this will happen again on Tuesday in Texas, and the blogosphere WILL be reporting. We cannot let democracy be hijacked like this. Caucuses are supposed to be about political engagement and community, they are supposed to bring people in the community together and facilitate discussion, and Hillary wants to run them like war zones. She will do anything to win, she has proven that time and time again. And if you want another example of what can happen when her loyalists control the process, just look at New York City where 80 districts, many of them heavily African American showed ZERO votes for Obama. 80 is not a huge coincidence, 80 is malfeasance. For this reason we can't let Hillary get away with trying to dominate the electoral process so she can disenfranchise voters.

Also keep in mind that Hillary has been threatening lawsuits against the Texas Democratic Party in order to delay the results of the caucuses so as to keep them from being headline news (if/when she loses).

Update: Word on the street:

The Clinton camp is telling folks to arrive at the caucus at 6:30 and Obama is stressing 7:00pm.

This was forwarded to me. Please pass this around to all your Texas Groups and anyone you know in the media! I was wondering today why Hillary was telling her supporters to be at the caucus at 6:30!

In addition to the comments below, be aware that the potential impact of this is that a full parking lot at 6:30 PM could dissuade late Obama voters from casting their Primary ballot because they cannot find a parking space. This could be considered impeding voting.

For Obama Precinct Captains who are monitoring their voting location on March 4 (100 feet from the polling location until 7:00 pm or until the last voter is done) stay alert and report any questionable activities to the election judge and call the Obama Precinct Captain Hotline for election day questions and concerns at 1-877-48-OBAMA (62262) or the Texas Democratic Precinct Convention at 1-800-336-3254.

"Clinton has been telling her supporters to show up at 6:30 [Dallas/Mesquite speech on Saturday, March 1], while Obama keeps stressing 7:00. I'm afraid there's going to be some shenanigans involving closing the doors at caucus sites when at capacity or at 7:15 PM whichever comes first. There was a similar gambit run in Nevada where the Clinton camp shut out a good number of caucus goers by barring the doors.

Anybody who has got a line on Obama folks or Texas caucus goers please pass along the heads up to show up early and not to get muscled. Know your rights!

Compounding this issue is the possibility there may not be enough caucus chairs to go around for the 8,000 sights leading to the 1st person in the door being the caucus arbiter (TDP's apparent policy).

Again let's try to get the word out about this possibility as there is no doubt the Clinton camp is going to try to game this one.

Update (3/3): There have also been reports that Hillary has resorted to paying people (who happen to be black) to hold signs on street corners supporting her in Texas. If true, this means that Hillary can't even find enough serious supporters to hold signs for her. Ouch. At other points in this campaign I have heard of her resorting to paid "volunteers" to do work that tons of unpaid volunteers from the Obama campaign have been doing. It seems she may very well have a problem in the inspiring department.