traveler wrote:
>Clinton, Obama sup****ters wrangle over delegates
>The acrimony is evident at district conventions in Texas this weekend,
>with each side accusing the other of underhandedness.
>
>By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
>March 30, 2008
>
>
>HOUSTON -- Less than a month ago, Texas Democrats turned out in huge
>numbers for the presidential nominating contest between Hillary Rodham
>Clinton and Barack Obama, confident that, no matter who won, the party
>would have a popular, well-financed candidate.
>
>But that exuberance is gone now.
>
>Across the state this weekend, tense confrontations -- even shoving
>matches -- erupted as partisans for Clinton and Obama battled over how
>to interpret the March 4 election results and how to choose delegates
>to the Texas Democratic convention.
>
>At one particularly raucous session Saturday at Texas Southern
>University, a leading Clinton backer, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee,
>was booed by hundreds of Obama sup****ters, and police were called
>later to break up heated exchanges that left some in tears.
>
>"It's bedlam," said Houston lawyer Daniel J. Shea, a Clinton backer.
>
>Democrat-on-Democrat clashes over delegates have been playing out in
>Iowa, Colorado, Florida and other states -- the latest indication that
>the feel-good nomination race of the era has veered into a political
>ditch.
>
>The contentious battle in Texas shows the high cost of this unending
>campaign. To hold his delegate lead, Obama has kept a team of 65 paid
>organizers and lawyers in the state this month, while Clinton has 45.
>
>As the feud rages -- even in states that voted weeks or months ago --
>each side has its own game plan for victory. For Obama, it means
>highlighting his lead in delegates to the party's national convention
>in Denver. For Clinton, it means lengthening the campaign so that she
>can use every tactic to narrow her delegate deficit and to win
>upcoming primaries in her bid to raise doubts about Obama's
>electability in the fall.
>
>The candidates have also become far more combative, and that hostility
>has party leaders worried. In a year that looked to be a Democratic
>romp, Obama and Clinton are burning money, erasing goodwill and
>eviscerating each other's reputation while the presumptive Republican
>nominee, John McCain, prepares to kick off his general-election
>campaign with a nationwide tour designed to highlight of military and
>congressional experience. On Saturday, Clinton told the Wa****ngton
>Post that she was prepared to take her campaign all the way to the
>party convention in August.
>
>"This thing has turned from being an adventure to being a grind," said
>Robert M. Shrum, a Democratic strategist who managed John F. Kerry's
>2004 presidential campaign.
>
>Polls published last week showed some of the dangers: McCain has
>gained ground against both Democrats, and at least 20% of each
>Democratic candidate's sup****ters now say they would consider
>abandoning the party in November if their candidate is not the
>nominee.
>
>The potential for anger is more pronounced -- and the consequences
>more dire -- than in most campaigns because this contest is being
>waged along the fault lines of gender and race, with the would-be
>first female president versus the would-be first black president.
>
>That was starkly evident Saturday at one convention in Houston, where
>mostly white Clinton sup****ters repeatedly challenged the credentials
>of black Obama backers in a heavily black district that had voted
>overwhelmingly for Obama. Democratic leaders, who had been thrilled by
>the massive turnout in early-voting states, now fear the consequences
>not only in the presidential race but also in state and local ones.
>
>"When you have a divided party, I think it hurts you up and down the
>ticket," said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, who said his
>party cannot afford to lose seats in an evenly divided state Senate
>and a state House controlled by a narrow Democratic majority.
>"Somebody who's mad enough at one of the candidates to want to vote
>for John McCain is more likely to [vote] down that side of the
>ballot."
>
>Bredesen has circulated a plan to stave off a potentially divisive
>national nominating convention in August by holding a "primary"
>earlier this summer among the nearly 800 superdelegates -- the party's
>elected officials, leaders and activists -- whose votes could decide
>the race and forestall the type of delegate fights now unfolding in
>Texas.
>
>Another party elder, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, proposed
>Saturday that Clinton and Obama avert a "disaster" by agreeing to
>share the ticket, with the delegate winner running for president and
>the loser for vice president.
>
>"If, on the other hand, the candidates refuse to work out a way to
>keep both constituencies firmly in the Democratic camp for the general
>election," Cuomo wrote in the Boston Globe, "the 2008 primary may be
>the story of a painfully botched grand op****tunity to return our
>nation to the upward path and [instead] leave us mired in Iraq and
>government mediocrity."
>
>Such concern prompted one prominent U.S. senator, Patrick J. Leahy of
>Vermont, an Obama sup****ter, to call Friday for Clinton to step aside,
>while Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged the
>candidates to find a resolution by July.
>
>The acrimony was on sharp display Saturday in Texas as Democrats met
>in 280 district conventions, part of the complicated system the state
>uses to determine the makeup of its delegation to the national
>convention.
>
>Clinton won the primary in Texas, but Obama won the caucuses that
>followed after the polls closed. It was those caucus results that were
>being challenged Saturday at conventions that drew thousands of
>boisterous participants.
>Even after Saturday, individual delegates can still be challenged. The
>count will not be secured until the state party convention in early
>June, and possibly not even then.
>
>While party leaders openly fret about the potential harm in the
>November election, the ongoing battles in Texas and other states come
>with political benefits for Clinton -- particularly in states that
>held caucuses in which Obama was far more successful.
>
>Not only do Clinton aides believe that scrutinizing the caucus process
>can help them squeeze out more delegates, due to math or certification
>errors, but they believe that a drumbeat of complaints about the
>caucuses bolsters Clinton's argument to superdelegates that they are
>not as legitimate as primary elections. In addition, the fighting
>delays the official delegate count, which helps keep Obama's lead from
>growing too fast and gives Clinton more time to raise questions about
>his electability.
>
>Both the Clinton and Obama teams encouraged sup****ters to get to
>Saturday's conventions amid re****ts that dirty-trick e-mails told
>delegates the conventions had been canceled or moved. Thousands of
>Texas households received a recorded phone call from former President
>Bill Clinton reminding delegates of the im****tance of attending.
>
>Definitive results were not available Saturday evening from the often
>chaotic district conventions. Nonetheless, both campaigns declared
>victory. Clinton field organizer Michael Trujillo said preliminary
>results showed a likely two-delegate ****ft toward Clinton, thanks to
>successful challenges in southern and rural Texas. The Obama campaign
>said Saturday's conventions confirmed that Obama still had the overall
>lead in the Texas delegation.
>
>During the day, sup****ters of both candidates said they were disturbed
>by what they considered intimidation and cheap tricks from the other
>side.
>
>Valerie Zavala, 38, said that as soon as she identified herself as a
>Clinton sup****ter, Obama backers demanded to know why she had even
>bothered showing up. "There's a lot of hostility," she said. "I see a
>lot of tension."
>
>Adib Faafir, an Obama sup****ter, suspected that trickery by Clinton
>backers had blocked his chance of participating. He held up his
>cellphone to show a text message telling him to show up for the
>convention at a local school miles from the actual location. By the
>time he arrived at the correct address, he was out of luck.
>
>"Only two of the people from my precinct have showed up, and they
>wouldn't let me register," he said.
>
>The Clinton campaign had announced last week that it would not be
>officially challenging delegates. But behind the scenes, Clinton staff
>encouraged and counseled individuals in the challenge process.
>
>Each side accused the other of gaming the system to its advantage.
>
>Trujillo didn't bother with diplomatic niceties, charging that the
>"abundance of pure cheating from the Obama side escapes the
>imagination."
>
>Obama's top field organizer, Temo Figueroa, said it was Clinton who
>had created the prospect of a nominating fight lasting to the
>convention, a nightmare for party leaders.
>
>"The new rules are that she is not going to quit," he said. "She is
>going to fight over every single delegate, and the fight may go to the
>last vote and the last delegate."
>
>
I oppose the tactics that the Clinton's are using in an attempt to bring
Obama down & build up McCain!
I am Lilly White, & will tell you that all of us need to get the chip
off our shoulder!
I have worked with AAs & other minorities & nothing they say offends me,
we need to get over our super patriotism!
When leaders of countries directly violate Holy Scripture & do what our
elected leaders did to Iraq there will be condemnation & damnation of
our country.
Obama has the leader****p qualities needed for America & the World!
<HREF="http://www.udarrell.com/in_defense_of_reverend_dr_jeremiah_wright.html">
<HREF="http://www.udarrell.com/moderating_radio_television_talk.htm">
- UDARRELL
--
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THE REAL POLITICAL ISSUES & WISDOM Principled PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT
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(Continually Updated)
"The Center for Public Integrity," 935 Do***ented False Statements in two
years so Bush & company could invade Iraq."
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"War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who
does not color his crime with the pretext of justice." - Voltaire
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- Read it
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"Reality Is Not An Easy Thing To Be Confronted With, or to ACCEPT." -
Darrell
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