Daily Kos discovered this yesterday, and now all the bloggers are agog at the fact that Terry McAuliffe as chairman threatened that Michigan would not get near Boston. They are acting like it is some deep secret they discovered.
Hell, we have been talking about it since 2007. Pay attention, folks, good research goes on at Democratic Underground.
I must admit Jake Tapper at ABC covers it well today.
Clinton Campaign Chair Threatened to Strip Michigan of Delegates in 2004Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has staked her path to the Democratic nomination on the officially illegitimate contests held in Michigan and Florida somehow being recognized, in opposition to Democratic National Committee rules.
What's so remarkable about this is that two of the Clinton campaign's most important strategists have in the past taken the stand that these states should abide by the DNC's instructions -- even if that meant stripping them of their delegates.
In direct contrast to the positions they hold now.
Senior strategist Harold Ickes as a DNC Rules Committee member in 2007 voted -- along with the other 11 Clinton supporters on the 30-member committee -- to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates as punishment for disobeying the DNC primary calendar schedule.
Ickes now is a leader of the "count Michigan and Florida" rhetoric coming from the Clinton campaign, despite his previous position.
Now comes this curious find, on Daily Kos. It turns out that irrepressible Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe once -- when he was DNC chairman -- threatened to strip Michigan of delegates if that state's Democrats carried out their long-time goal of disobeying the DNC calendar.
And guess what? Nobody yelled at Terry. Nobody went on the news and said he was hurting the party. Nobody paid any attention at all.
Hell,
nobody threatened to sue him eitherBut they are suing Howard Dean's butt all over the place for enforcing the party rules. Bill Nelson, Vic Dimaio, maybe more to come. Dimaio is now going to sue the DNC for discriminating against white people in Florida. Chew on that a while.
Where are the bloggers? Nowhere. Silent. None of them have been really taking up for Dean for enforcing the rules while the Clinton campaign has been trying to bring him down, crash his fundraising, and even send people on TV to demand he be fired.
Heck, we even talked here last year about
the deal McAuliffe made with Carl Levin"The panel, which carried the unwieldy name of Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling, made two sets of recommendations, one dealing with the opening phase of the nominating calendar and the other with the later phases.
The commission came into existence as part of a bargain between former DNC chairman Terence R. McAuliffe and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). Levin has long agitated against what he calls the privileged position of Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first caucus and first primary every four years. During the 2004 presidential campaign cycle, McAuliffe bought peace with Levin by promising to appoint a commission after the election if the senator would agree not to try to blow up the calendar for that year.
Oops, Hillary, that is the commission that helped make the rules you are wanting to break now.
I was reminded of something Joan Vennochi wrote in 2005. It was about how the Democrats were all piling on Howard Dean every time he spoke up against the Republicans. She reminded them he was not their enemy.
Dean Isn't the ProblemDEMOCRATS ARE running against Howard Dean instead of George W. Bush and the GOP -- or, better yet, running for principles that matter to the country. It makes little sense, unless the intent is to destroy what's left of their shell of a political party.
Dean, the head of the Democratic National Committee, is under attack by fellow Democrats who are allegedly upset at his partisan rhetoric. Critics such as Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina are taking their shots at Dean, just as if they were sitting next to him during a debate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Manchester, N.H. They sound like they are positioning themselves for a future presidential campaign rather than working together to rebuild a party with a message for the future.
How shocking: Dean said, ''I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for" and defined the political landscape as ''a struggle between good and evil." Is that any worse than the comment by Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader, who said of Bush, ''I think this guy is a loser." (Reid later apologized.) Is it worse than Senator Hillary Clinton of New York saying: ''There has never been an administration, I don't believe, in our history more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda."
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Dean's predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, was famous for personal attacks against President Bush. He described Bush as being AWOL, or absent without leave, during his stint in the National Guard and declared that ''George Bush continually lies."
But Democrats never cared what McAuliffe said; all that mattered was the money he raised, compliments of his vaunted schmoozing skills. Now a few hot-shot donors are upset that Dean isn't stroking them as constantly as McAuliffe, and suddenly he's a failure. According to a recent report in ''The Hill," during the first three months of this year, the DNC raised $14.1 million, ahead of the pace McAuliffe set in 2001. Dean is focusing on fund-raising in small increments through the Internet, as he did during his 2004 presidential bid, which revolutionized presidential campaign fund-raising. That's the big picture Democrats should focus on. Broadening the donor base from the bottom up is good for the Democratic Party.
She ended with statement urging Democrats to stand up for something.
She said
"If Democrats in Congress did their job, Dean would be the chorus. Now he's the whole act. Dean's fellow Democrats would rather boo him than themselves.It is deja vu all over again in 2008. It is getting very obvious that we are about set to go one of two ways....the way of the people of the party or the way of the corporate donors Terry did so well courting.
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