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Michigan’s Clusterfuck: Prelude to a National Clusterfuck?

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I’m not the only one calling MI’s primary next week a clusterfuck–one of the state’s top Dem consultants, Mark Grebner, thinks so too, though he doesn’t use the word clusterfuck:

Of course, we may get lucky, but that’s not really "a plan". With Clinton bouncing back tonight in NH, it’s plausible that she and Obama will go round after round, with neither scoring a knockout.

Imagine next that Michigan’s "primary" results in a Clinton landslide on January 15, caused mainly because the opposition will be confused and splintered by the available options. I don’t know whether that will happen, but it may.

The consequence might be that Michigan’s would-be delegation would prove critical to forming a majority. Not at the Convention, most likely, but during the wheeling and dealing phase that leads up to it, as the two sides struggle to assemble a majority.

If this comes to pass, the fight will be between Clinton’s effort to seat Michigan, and Obama’s struggle to uphold the DNC sanctions. One side extending pseudo-grace and forgiveness to our transgressions, while the other side asks in pseudo-good-faith, why he should be punished for complying with the DNC’s rules and following their instructions.

[snip]

My question is: is there some reason this can’t happen?

I’m marginally less worried than Grebner is about the Democratic side (though trust me–he’s a lot smarter about MI politics), mostly because I’m taking naive solace in the fact that "uncommitted" will appear on ballots, meaning Edwards and Obama supporters won’t have to navigate what would be effectively a write-in vote, but with a legally significant word, to support their candidate. That doesn’t mean Democratic voters won’t choose to vote in the Republican primary, doesn’t mean that those cross-over voters won’t be decisive as they were in 2000 for McCain, and doesn’t mean either party will get a real read of the support for its various candidates from the clusterfuck. It just means that Hillary will win by a smaller landslide (hey–with both Edwards and Obama supporters voting on the same line, who knows?), which will make the clusterfuck imagined by Grebner slightly less severe, though still a real possibility.

Me, I’m more intrigued by the way that Michigan’s clusterfuck may begin to set off a larger clusterfuck for Republicans. There has been no polling in Michigan since mid-December, and in that poll Huck scored remarkably well. Read more →

Missing the Party

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Let me start this post by throwing out some assertions.

  • The most interesting question about New Hampshire, IMO, is not whether Obama beats Hillary or whether Mitt survives against McCain. It’s whether Obama has a greater draw over Independents than McCain, which thereby deprives McCain of any victory there.
  • In her very gracious concession speech the other night, Hillary seemed genuinely thrilled by the huge Democratic/female/youth turnout (even after bitching about Obama’s direct appeal to "out-of-state" students for several weeks beforehand), even as she seemed to be recognizing how failed her strategy in Iowa had been.
  • Mitt Romney won handful of delegates today, and regardless of what happens in NH, will go onto MI, a state where several buildings in Lansing bear his Daddy’s name, to compete against a guy who had a huge victory here in 2000.

All of which is my preface to saying that the pundits are (for the most part) dealing with a much too flat conception of what this primary is going to look like, seeing only the intra-party competition, and they’re not seeing that we’re already thick into a competition between the two parties that may well have real ramifications for the outcome.

That said, let me go back to the beginning and explain what I mean. The press has largely assumed that McCain, the "maverick" who won in NH in 2000, stands to be the non-Mitt there this year. That assumes, of course, that the Independents (and even the Republicans) who turned out for McCain in 2000 will turn out for him again and it assumes that McCain’s prime contestant is Mitt. Now, ignore the fact that NH is a pretty solidly anti-war state and McCain is up there threatening a hundred year presence in Iraq. The bulk of the press still seems to be ignoring an unstated contest between Obama and McCain for Independents. Chris Bowers reads it right, IMO, when he suggests,

No momentum for McCain and Huckabee whatsoever. Obama is sucking up all the air right now, and probably the New Hampshire independents that McCain needed. Read more →

emptywheel’s Quickie Analysis

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Many of you no doubt disagree. But I’m not crying about an Obama victory (then again, I wouldn’t have been crying about an Edwards or Clinton win, either).

But here are the details that I think are most important.

Crazy, record turnout–reportedly well over 200,000. And reportedly, perhaps two-to-one for Dems, compared to the Republicans.

Crazy, record turnout among youth.

Crazy, record turnout among women (MSNBC just announced that Obama actually beat Hillary among women).

I don’t care who you support–this crazy record turnout is nothing but a huge win for Democrats.

(Four years later and I still sound like goddamned Howard Dean, bless his soul.)

And among Republicans? Some 45% voted against corporatist America. Add that to Edwards’ turnout, and you’ve got a solid majority sick of government by the corporation, for the corporation…

Update: One more point. It’s been decades since I took a math class. But by my calculations, 29% of 220,000 (Hillary’s results) is significantly more than 34% of 120,000 (Huck’s results), right? If my math is correct, we just elected three Presidents to one for the Republicans.

Executive Privilege

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A number of people have pointed to Charlie Savage’s great article on the responses of Presidential candidates to a bunch of questions about executive power. I’m really glad Savage asked these questions, as I’ve presented forms of these questions (specifically as it related to the underpinnings of Bush’s illegal wiretap program, which was put into place under Bill Clinton) to Hillary’s campaign and gotten no response.

That said, most of the questions either explicitly or implicitly ask candidates whether they repudiate certain of Bush’s acts, so I’m not sure they help Democratic voters distinguish between primary candidates. The exception is the question on Executive Privilege. Here are the Democrats’ answers on the the question addressing executive privilege.

Does executive privilege cover testimony or documents about decision-making within the executive branch not involving confidential advice communicated to the president himself?

Obama

With respect to the “core” of executive privilege, the Supreme Court has not resolved this question, and reasonable people have debated it. My view is that executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the President and the White House.

Hillary

I fundamentally believe that our constitutional system depends upon each branch striving to accommodate the interests of the other, and the President should seek to accommodate legitimate congressional requests for information. I also believe in an open transparent government that fulfills its obligation to share as much information as possible with the public. But it is settled law that certain limited "communications made by presidential advisors in the course of preparing advice for the President, come under the presidential communications privilege, even when these communications are not made directly to the President."

Edwards

I support the constitutional separation of powers and the doctrine of executive privilege, as guided by judicial review. Unlike the current president, however, I will not invoke executive privilege merely to advance partisan ends. Read more →

Hillary: Bashing the Youth Vote

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Via psericks, this pisses me off:

In a jab at Obama’s efforts to encourage out-of-state students who attend college in Iowa to caucus, [Hillary] Clinton said the caucuses are only for people who live in this state.

“This is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here,” she told the Clear Lake crowd.

It pisses me off not because she’s dissing my vote (the MI primary/caucus monstrosity, that big contest for delegates that have been taken away, has been pretty much called for Hillary already). It pisses me off because I’ve run the precinct organization for a county with two large universities (U Michigan and EMU). And I’m well aware of the way that HAVA laws in many states have affected college students’ ability to vote. Read more →