Top Clinton Adviser Says Superdelegates Will Decide Election, Obama’s Victories ‘Irrelevant’
Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event at the Brat Stop in Kenosha, Wis., Saturday. (AP Photo)
A top Hillary Clinton adviser on Saturday boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by rival Barack Obama would be “irrelevant” to their decision.
The claims no doubt will escalate the war of words between the campaigns, as Obama continues to argue superdelegates should vote the way of their districts. But the special class of delegates, which make up about 20 percent of the total delegate haul, are not bound to vote the way of their states and districts, as pledged delegates are.
Obama leads handily in the pledged delegate count and has won more states but trails Clinton in superdelegates, making them potential and controversial deadlock-breakers if the race ends up a dead heat come convention time.
Harold Ickes, a 40-year party operative charged with winning over superdelegates for the Clinton campaign, made no apologies on Saturday for the campaign’s convention strategy.
“We’re going to win this nomination,” Ickes said, adding that they would do so soon after the last contest on June 7 in Puerto Rico. “You’re not going to see this go to the convention floor.”
Ickes predicted Clinton and Obama would run “neck and neck” in the remaining states and that there would be a “minuscule amount of difference” between the two in pledged delegates.
But he said superdelegates — who “have a sense of what it takes to get elected” — would determine the outcome and side in larger numbers for Clinton.
Even though averages of head-to-head polls on RealClearPolitics.com show Obama beating presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in a general election and Clinton losing, the Clinton camp is stressing the electability argument.
Ickes said superdelegates must “exercise their best judgment” about who can win the White House.
In essence, he argued the party’s 795 superdelegates (Connecticut Independent-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman recently was stripped of his superdelegate status) were in a better position to assess electability and suitability for the presidency than party regulars who will attend the national convention in late August as pledged delegates.
He also said Michigan and Florida, which voted for Clinton, should have delegates seated at the convention, even though he originally voted with the national party last year to strip the delegates because the states violated party rules by holding early primaries.
Ickes explained that his different position is due to the different hats he wears as both a Democratic National Committee member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting.
Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe on Saturday blasted Clinton for the strategy.
“The Clinton campaign just said they have two options for trying to win the nomination — attempting to have superdelegates overturn the will of the Democratic voters or change the rules they agreed to at the eleventh hour in order to seat non-existent delegates from Florida and Michigan,” he said in a statement.
“The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats’ ability to win the general election.”
Many top Democrats, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said superdelegates should follow the will of voters expressed through primaries and caucuses and not trump those votes.
The Obama campaign also circulated a Bloomberg story from Friday quoting Pelosi, who said Michigan and Florida should not decide the race since they broke party rules.
Though he predicted the superdelegates basically would turn the election, Ickes in the same phone call Saturday said he objected to the term because it implied they had too much power. He said from here out, he’s calling them “automatic delegates.”
“The Fourth Estate created the term ’superdelegate,’” Ickes said, though Democrats have used the term widely in the roiling debate of their allegiances and responsibilities in the increasingly competitive and high-stakes battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“They don’t have super powers,” Ickes said. “It’s one person, one vote. They have no more power than any other delegate. But they do have a sense of what it takes to get elected.”
Superdelegates consist of members of Congress, former presidents, governors and other party officials and insiders. The class was created in 1982 to take power away from activists and hand it to party insiders. Rarely have their votes decided the nominee.
“They are closely in touch with the issues and ideas of the jurisdiction they represent and they are as much or more in touch than delegates won or recruited by presidential campaigns,” Ickes said.
Obama currently leads Clinton by 136 in pledged delegates but trails by 95 in superdelegates, according to calculations given by both campaigns.
“Hillary will end up with more automatic delegates than Obama,” Ickes said, and the number of elections won by Obama is “irrelevant to the obligations of automatic delegates.”
That support, however, could be eroding for Clinton, as recent reports have said some black superdelegate supporters are reconsidering their endorsements since their districts voted mostly for Obama.
FOX News’ Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Now that the press has raised the “coke” question in their dogged pursuit of George W. Bush, questions about Bill Clinton’s drug past are also fair game.
One area of inquiry for the news hounds at, let’s say, the Washington Post, might be an incident that supposedly took place in the early 1980’s when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
Dr. Sam Houston, a respected Little Rock physician and once a doctor for Hillary’s cantankerous father, Hugh Rodham, says it is well known in Little Rock medical circles that Clinton was brought to a Little Rock hospital for emergency treatment for an apparent cocaine overdose.
According to Houston, who told us he spoke to someone intimately familiar with the details of what happened that night, Clinton arrived at the hospital with the aid of a state trooper. Hillary Clinton had been notified by phone and had instructed the hospital staff that Clinton’s personal physician would be arriving soon.
When Mrs. Clinton arrived, she told both of the resident physicians on duty that night that they would never again practice medicine in the United States if word leaked out about Clinton’s drug problem. Reportedly, she pinned one of the doctors up against the wall, both hands pressed against his shoulders, as she gave her dire warning.
Like most tales that reflect poorly on Bill Clinton, the press has ignored any inquiry into this one. In 1996, however, columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell located and telephoned one of the nurses who had been on duty the night Bill Clinton was brought into the emergency room. According to Tyrrell, the nurse didn’t deny the story, but said she couldn’t talk about it because she could lose her job. Welcome to Arkansas.
THE END
In 1999, 704,812 people in the United States were arrested for marijuana “crimes.” * This was an increase of over 85% from the 380,399 arrested in 1993 **, Bill Clinton’s first year in office. Many more were arrested for other drugs. Evidently, the era of big government is not over yet.
Numerous public leaders have admitted to smoking marijuana, like President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
One question, if you will:
If Clinton, Gore, Gingrich and Thomas don’t belong in jail, why do all those other people belong in jail?
Bonus questions:
If smoking marijuana kills your ambition, how do you explain Clinton, Gore, Gingrich and Thomas?
If sharing marijuana with a friend is a felony, why don’t we feel the same way about Clinton, Gore, Gingrich and Thomas as we do about rapists, robbers and murderers?
US Court of Appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg admitted smoking marijuana for years. All he was able to achieve during this time was to serve for several years as Professor at Harvard University. Imagine what a good job he could have gotten if he had not been smoking pot.
Charles Rogers admitted using cocaine almost daily while a college football player at University of South Carolina. All he was able to achieve at this time was winning the Heisman trophy. Imagine how well he would have done if he were drug-free.
Larratta, How frightening the statements you make!! They are 100% true!!
SEE BELOW!!
HUSSEIN OBAMA ’s asset:
He is “new” to washington, so he is “clean”, really?
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He is “outsider”, he will “change” washington. how?
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because he is new, so he is the “hope”, and represent “future”, really?
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Obama act as he is God, you have to “believe in”, how dare you!
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What is obama’s true face? he do use a religon style speech fool deeply many voters.
Such as “hope” “change” “future” “Believe in” ,
But the true face is:
He is drug user not long ago, he just quit smoke to run president.
He is not clean, he buy $2 million house while let his friend get state funding and help him get discount more than $500,000 total.
he even spend $690,000 compare 190,000 to buy the superdelegates, and 40% who receive money did.
He said he only do 5 hour legal work and lie 17 deep relationship with the middle east corrupt biz man Rezko. Watch the SC debate how nervious when he explains.
Enough is Enough. B Hussian Obama!
Bush is a “Change”, if another “change”, when 8 year later, American will be a true third world country.
It all started with steroids.
The rise to governor was built on his movie fame. The movie career sprung from his notoriety as the world’s top bodybuilder. His claim to that perch was based on his winning a record seven Mr. Olympia titles, with the aid of muscle-building drugs pumping up a body that was once no more techno-human than that of, say, your average junior champion curler — of the broom, not barbell variety. Which Arnold Schwarzenegger was as a boy in Austria.
As Schwarzenegger rationalized as recently as 1996, “It was what I had to do to compete. The danger with steroids is over-usage. I only did it before a difficult competition — for two months, but not for a period of time that would harm me. And then afterward it was over.”
He got what he needed. He moved on.
He didn’t die.
His back erect and his smile as bright as the mid-day sun, Schwarzenegger, now 56 and California’s governor, seems the picture of health and vitality. Large-living proof of how synthetic hormones can actually enhance a person’s existence. The new, updated role model for steroids, to replace that of the withered Lyle Alzado.
he anti-steroids lobby is having a hard time grasping what it means to have a steroids profiteer as head of the nation’s most populous state. But this much is certain: If Schwarzenegger has any reservations about how his rise to the governor’s office might heighten the acceptance of steroids, in sports and elsewhere in society, then his new job offers the chance to adjust his legacy.
“He’s in position now to have influence,” said Richard Pound, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which conducts testing for the Olympics and other sports bodies. “He can address the labeling of (muscle-building) supplements. He can deal with the trafficking of steroids, the use of steroids, the medical classifications of steroids that have no therapeutic application. There are (criminal) disciplinary issues.”
California is the world capital for performance-enhancing drugs. It’s the state that introduced steroids to the NFL, via the San Dianabol Chargers of the 1960s. Much of the steroids trade in this country still runs through California, where stopping the flow from Mexico is a low priority for law enforcement. California companies led the fight against regulating potentially dangerous sports supplements.
The latest company under a spotlight: San Francisco-based Bay Area Laboratories Co-Operative (BALCO), now the subject of a federal grand jury inquiry and, according to the U.S Anti-Doping Agency, the alleged disseminator of designer steroids to high-profile athletes. More recently came a report that four Oakland Raiders had received letters from the NFL that they had failed for THG and could faces suspension by the NFL.
POLITEX: BUSH HAS FIRST-TIMER MOTHER, 27, IN JAIL FOR TRACE AMOUNTS OF COCAINE. Many Texans who believe Bush used coke before his 28th birthday must consider him an opportunistic hypocrite because he purposely proposed tightening up the drug laws for first-timers in order to win votes when he ran against Governor Ann Richards in 1994. That same year, with the state prisons overflowing, ” Richards signed a new penal code whose provisions included automatic probation for first-time offenders caught with a recreational quantity of drugs,” writes Michael Daly in Sunday’s New York Daily News. Bush was at the time campaigning to get Richards’ job, but both he and Richards declined to discuss if they ever used drugs. Bush “produced a survey of Harris County prosecutors that derided the law as “Penal Code Lite.”…’Those on the front lines of criminal justice agree with me in describing the new penal code as a joke,’ Bush said. ‘This survey should give the governor a much needed reality check.’ A news report noted that Bush ‘told supporters that he thinks individuals must be held accountable for personal behavior.’ He did his best to make everyone forget that Richards had doubled the time violent offenders served in prison and was leading the nation in executions. He continued to hammer her for being lite on crime right up to election day. As the new governor, Bush signed a new new penal code that ended automatic probation for first-time offenders,” adds Daly.
Last Tuesday a “27-year-old mother of two… appeared as a first-time offender in the 230th District Court of Harris County. The woman had been in a car with two other people in Houston when the police rolled up and announced they were illegally parked. The police would later maintain that the woman made a ‘furtive movement.’ ‘You touch your nose, it’s a furtive movement,’ says her attorney, Bob Scott. The police would contend that they only searched the car and its contents for their ‘own protection.’ A handbag in the backseat proved to contain a glass pipe. The pipe had no visible traces of drugs, and a New York cop would have just thrown it away. These Texas cops were determined to make it their business if she had taken cocaine. They submitted the suspect item to the lab….Yee hah! The lab reported that the pipe contained cocaine ‘residue.’…The woman knew without asking that pleading none of your business was not an option. She took the eight months to be served in the prison system whose ultimate boss was busy seeking the Republican nomination for president”
“As the woman began her Texas-size sentence for residue, Bush was making some decidedly furtive motions about his own possible cocaine use.” Daly reminds us that Bush’s “refusal to address the issue directly made him seem too much like our current President. He also sounded like somebody of a social class where you can make your indiscretions without worrying about being rousted and searched on some pretext like illegal parking.” As you know, Bush eventually implied and his spinners said that he hasn’t used hard drugs between age 28 and the present. He said the purpose of telling that to reporters was to indicate that he could get a clearance for a top-level job in the Clinton White House. We’ve since learned that Bush’s statement was not correct, since the present White House form requests the applicant to fess up to any drug use since his 18th birthday. Getting back to the woman, Bush at 28 “was one year older than the woman currently in jail for residue. She will finish learning from her mistake by next spring, and by then Bush might have discovered that all his campaign millions cannot make up for his failure to give one straight answer.” 8/22/99
MICKI - Ditto - I too serve and am currently deployed to SW Asia. I cannot and will not serve under a Commander in Chief that does not support the ideals of FREEDOM and democracy in the USA. How can we continue to police the World on the outside when the rules aren’t being followed on the inside? I will not serve under the Hillbillary gang (all about themselves) again and I cannot serve under a man (Osama) who fails to properly honor and show respect for the American Flag. I am convinced that Osama has a hidden agenda.
The Democrats have been a troubled lot since Lyndon Johnson. The problem grew progressively worse with the Peanut Farmer and then America was truly duped by Slick Willy and the HIllbillary gang. This party has been hijacked by the extreme left Socialists and the ring leaders (Hillary and Osama) want the top job. God save America from this Socialist regime!! And all the Republicans have to offer is John MacNasty. America is buying into the smoke screen and BS flying all over the media. It’s frighteningly apparent who they support!!
It is time that this nation, not the Politicians, but the real American people, support a legitimate third party that has the welfare (I’m not talking about the line at the local DSS) and security of this nation as a top priority. We’re not getting that from either of the current parties.
Both camps are doing something common in politics. It is called slinging mud. Is it right? I really don’t care. I don’t pay attention to much of that. I would rather look at their platforms.
Obama: NO THE SUPERDELEGATES DO NOT HAVE TO VOTE FOR YOU JUST BECAUSE YOU WON A STATE. YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE RULES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME JUST TO HELP YOU ALONG.
Hillary: NO THE VOTES IN FL & MI CAN’T COUNT. EVERYONE VOTED ON THIS MATTER AND VOTED THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SEAT THEIR DELEGATES.
Ok JEEZE, Does this mean you’re good with the WAR?
eorge W. Bush is an alcoholic. He claims he gave up drinking in 1986 at age 39 when Billy Graham convinced him. This is an obvious lie. You can see this video of him plastered six years later at Jamie Weiss’s 1992 wedding. On the tape he disses people who don’t drink or smoke marijuana as “boring”. He spends more time “on holiday” than any other president in history, during which time he is not photographed or seen. If he is bingeing, he is in no state to deal with a terrorist emergency.
According to the book Fortunate Son, bin Laden money, invested via James Bath, enabled George to get hooked on cocaine. He was earlier busted for cocaine in 1972 but got off with community service at Project P.U.L.L. a project for troubled black youth. In 1995, his father arranged to have the record purged and his son to get a new drivers’ license number. Like Margie Schoedinger who accused Bush of rape, the author of Fortunate Son, James Hatfield, was found in a public washroom with bullet in his brain, ruled by the authorities a suicide.
When questioned about his cocaine use, Bush said publicly he was not prepared to discuss any drug use in his past over 30 years ago on the grounds it might encourage youth to indiscretion. That is doubletalk. There are only two honest answers to the question, yes which would encourage youth to drug use, and no, which would not. Therefore, it seems to me the president has already confessed publicly for all practical purposes, at least to anyone trained in mathematics or logic.
Bush claims voices told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. He has cokehead-like delusions of grandeur that this was God Himself talking to him, despite the biblical warning in John 5:37 this could not be true. Cocaine dictating foreign policy is national suicide. Jeffrey Tucker discusses this in his essay.
There is so such thing as an ex-alcoholic, only a recovering alcoholic, and there is no such thing as an ex-cocaine addict, only a recovering cocaine addict. Mandatory drug testing for the president and his staff is far more justified than for filing clerks, even if just to protect against that form of terrorist attack.
Reason not to vote for Obama:
1. He has little to no experience.
2. He has no substance.
3. His muslin background is questionable.
4. He is a member of a black seperatist church.
4. He has a questionable drug use history.
5. He is arrogant and disrespectful.
6. He made racism an issue is this race which is divisive. Not a uniter.”
Well done!