A Little Civility, Please, Lanny

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(We’re still waiting for the Committee to come back from lunch. Hopefully that means they’re hammering out a deal — jh They’re back….)

I saw Lanny Davis in the lobby here at the Rules Committee meeting. I had my little video camera and I wanted to ask him what he thought of his good friend Joe Lieberman who was now running around saying Barack Obama is a member of Hamas. But steam was coming out of Lanny’s ears and it didn’t seem like the best of times:

A brief but spittle-filled shouting match broke out in the halls of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing on Saturday between a committee member and a surrogate for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Lanny Davis, the colorful, committed, and sometimes unrestrained Clinton supporter deliberately interrupted a small gathering of press who had come to hear Jon Ausman, a DNC member, explain the basis of his proposed Florida delegation compromise.

"I’ll tell you what," Davis chimed in, "the Clinton campaign’s position has been misrepresented by this wonderful love-fest, and the lady who testified for us was saying that the Obama campaign and your proposal is not generous. But it is in fact unfair. If you want to hear, now that the love-fest is over, why don’t you come over and hear the counterpoint to this completely disingenuous argument.

Lanny, Lanny. Please. To quote — well, you — can’t we all just get along?

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing–in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right’s fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

Anger just isn’t the way, Lanny. Politics is a gentleman’s game, part of the fine tradition of Cicero and the great orators. We lower ourselves and our American ideals when we lose our temper and engage in this kind of coarse, angry, spittle-flecked vitriol.

I really wanted to introduce myself and give him a hail-fellow-well-met over Lieberman’s senate victory (something he is no doubt proud of), but I have to say I feared for my very safety lest I approach him and he not be able to control his terrible temper.

Oh for shame.

Update: Lanny was a busy little beaver during lunch.

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84 replies
  1. Petrocelli says:

    ((((( Jane )))))

    Welcome to Emptywheel … hope this is your first of many posts here … *g*

  3. nonplussed says:

    at this point, I’d really like to put in a good word for Lanny, but in all honesty, I just can’t…

    • Redshift says:

      Nope. No black eyes, either. One of my cohorts is trying to read the expressions of the committee members as they come in, but I don’t know if he’s had much luck.

  8. selise says:

    Hopefully that means they’re hammering out a deal

    i hope they’re out seeing a movie, taking a walk, having a long lunch….. anything other than hammering out a deal behind closed doors. i’m sick of the pretense of open gov. and transparency when we have so little of it.

    of course i know my hopes are pipe dreams.

  9. neurophius says:

    Let’s hope every single member of the Committee doesn’t think he or she has to state his or her position for the record, at length…just vote

  14. dosido says:

    Does anyone else think Ickes shirt is looking a little Dunkin’ Donuts, you know what I’m sayin’?

  15. neurophius says:

    Chuck Todd says a net of 20 delegates, give or take two, for Clinton is the deal…

  16. joejoejoe says:

    Lanny Davis has a lengthy fresh blog post of his own up on The Hill’s Pundits Blog. Here’s Lanny’s close which suggests that much of the Clinton maneuvers are now about trying to secure the VP slot.

    But there is one possible scenario that avoids disappointment and frustration by passionate supporters of both candidates, that combines the strengths of one with the strengths of the other, and that virtually guarantees the election of a Democratic president in 2008:

    A Clinton-Obama or an Obama-Clinton ticket.

    Stay tuned.

    Clinton voters will love Obama VP nominee Gov. Sebelius of Kansas who is the same age as Sen. Clinton and has more than triple the amount of elected experience. Clinton surrogates who are about to be thrown off the insider gravy train, not so much. Bwahahahaha! I’m playing the world’s smallest violin. Obama-Sebelius ‘08!

      • joejoejoe says:

        No. I’m in Florida. I’ve always wanted to visit Kansas though. There is a beautiful chapter about Kansas in one of my favorite books, ‘Great Plains’ by Ian Frazier.

        • joejoejoe says:

          EW – I missed your question.

          I thought the Brewer presentation was good. If you take the view of Alice Germond that there wasn’t an election but an ‘event’ it makes a lot more sense to try and peer into the darkness and try to see something of value.

          I thought the Brewer plan was crazy when I first heard it but if you don’t view it as correcting a flawed ‘event’ but instead view it correcting a flawed process in the whole I think it’s a fair plan. I wasn’t familiar with all the write-in ballots that were neither ‘uncommitted’ or ‘Clinton’ and I think the Brewer/Levin plan addresses those fairly.

          Levin was excellent on NH. I think he ended Iowa and NH as priviledged states forever and that’s a good thing, maybe even worth the clusterf%ck.

          Thanks to you and Jane for liveblogging. This is great!

    • TheraP says:

      Sebelius and Pelosi, years apart, attended the same women’s college. Not sure what they majored in, but the head of the poli sci dept in those days, during her liberal years, was Kirkpatrick. (I kid you not!)

    • Redshift says:

      Heh. Lanny’s such a tool. Anyone who’s still using the phrase “a Clinton-Obama or an Obama-Clinton ticket” at this point isn’t speaking from any inside knowledge except inside the Clinton campaign.

  18. TheOtherWA says:

    I got tired of waiting for them to return from lunch and went back to yard work about an hour ago. Are they just now coming in?

  22. wangdangdoodle says:

    Limiting debate to 10 minutes per motion, with 2 motions to consider.

    I take it that is not 10 minutes per person?

  25. PJEvans says:

    well, if it’s a matter of cookies: about 25 minutes plus cooling time for these.

    Chocolate Crispies
    2 squares (2 oz) unsweetened baking chocolate
    1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
    1 cup sugar
    1/2 tsp vanilla
    2 eggs
    1/2 cup sifted flour
    1/2 cup chopped nuts

    Melt the chocolate (with the butter, if you want; it’s easier to mix).
    Add the rest of the ingredients and beat well.
    Spread in 3 8-inch square pans or one 11×17-inch jelly-roll pan (rimmed cookie sheet). (You can line the big pan with foil if you don’t want to wash it.) Bake at 400F for 15 minutes. Cool a minute or so and mark in pieces. When it’s cold, break apart.
    (Note: these will stick until they’re completely done. Don’t short the time unless your oven runs hot.)

    • wangdangdoodle says:

      probably won’t happen, just cracked my first beer. it’s all down hill from here…

    • wangdangdoodle says:

      I’m kind of liking that guy. He has been coming across as pretty level headed.

  33. neurophius says:

    we want the rules to mean something

    put in automatic sanctions to avoid conflicts such as this

  36. neurophius says:

    we must respect the 48 states that followed our rules

    we are not the Bush administration, we follow the rules

    too bad for fla and mi

  38. watou says:

    If this were a subject of legal procedue, any second-guessing of the rules would cause the decision to be overturned by a higher court. I had this happen in a case that I won at the state supreme court level, where the supreme wrote that a fiction was inserted into the record and that could not stand. Guestimating voter intent from scrubbed primaries is the same thing as recording a known fiction in place of what actually happened.

    Horse-trading a made-up vote count is one of the most shameful ways to disrepect the voter who was told her vote would not count. And as a result, you lose the moral high ground if ever you need to argue against negligent treatment of voters in the future, since you have now set the precedent.

    Let’s not make our own Florida 2000.

    “Yeah, let’s address the needs of the two candidates here, but forget about the fact that you said the vote wouldn’t count, so let’s just ignore the fact that we blew the opportunity to count properly.”

  41. CTuttle says:

    Which are the two motions, they’re voting on…? Is it the Obama camp’s and the Hill camp’s? Which one is being voted on now…? Sorry, I was writing up my post at Main and Central…

  42. RevDeb says:

    Ausmun (sp?) 50% representation plus Obama sweetening the pot(?)

    1/2 vote for all pledged delegates calculated on counted votes 52.5 Clinton 6.5 Edwards 33.5 Obama Unpledged also get 1/2 vote

  43. RevDeb says:

    Alice Huffman (a Hillary supporter) trying hard to unite the the Hillary supporters who appear to be heckling. Trying hard.

  47. RevDeb says:

    Donnie Fowler speaking. He doesn’t like it nor do many of the Clinton supporters but they are going along for the good of the party even though Icky doesn’t like it or support it.

  48. BlueStateRedHead says:

    EW, are those MI people who are unruly or FL? Can you tell? Are they party operatives or general public?

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