The review is in…

…from Where It Stands.



Yep.

God bless Barney Smith.

That is all.

It's working.

Gallup tracking poll, via CA Pol Junkie...

August 27: O 54 M 38

Bouncin' like flubber, and there's a big show yet to come.

That Kerry fella…

…blood rare for the red meat lovers among us
.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

Ask the man who's been one.

“Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Barack Obama is ready to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.”

Woof!

Shorter Hillary…

…by The Rude Pundit.

"Don't be stupid."

Yep.

"No way, no how, no McCain...

...Barack Obama is my candidate!"

All those gods bless her, too. And goddesses.

Red meat…

…from OH Governor Ted Strickland…

"...George W. Bush came into office on third base, and then he stole second."

Heh™.

"Not merely victory for our Party...

...but renewal for our nation."

He's still the one. God (every and any god) bless him.

Good question.

Unnamed (presumably Clinton) delegate, via Goldy.

“Why is it disunity for us to do our job voting for the candidate we were sent here to vote for?”

Of course, it isn't. In '92, when my mission was to whip Brown delegates from the upper left through the first ballot the mantra was "Unity doesn't mean uniformity." I was successful beyond my hopes that year when an uncommitted delegate joined our ranks at the last minute and we actually cast more votes for Governor Mayor Attorney General Brown than we'd arrived in New York with. On the other hand, within a week of my return I accepted an invitation to join the state Clinton/Gore steering committee and gave my all to the November effort.

Did we lose the efforts of some of the Brown stalwarts? Certainly. Did we even lose a few of their votes? Probably. As a self-proclaimed insurgent campaign, we pulled a lot of support from quarters with at best tangential relationships with the Democratic Party. The Democrats among us, though, came together with our fellows quickly enough, and completely enough, to render the unity question moot in the fall. T'was ever thus, and I expect it shall be thus again.

She's up, she's down…

…she's out, she's in.

Although Clinton had resisted pressure from donors, allies and supporters to accept demands to allow her name placed in nomination, she and aides to Obama seemed to realize independently that doing so would be the best way to incorporate and welcome Clinton's supporters into Obama's general election campaign, both symbolically and practically.

The resistance was, apparently, out of concern about how many of her 1896.5 elected delegates will, in fact, cast a Clinton vote for a roll call. I don't have any problem with her being nominated. When the '92 Clinton campaign tried to block Jerry Brown from nomination, declaring that he could not address the convention unless he withdrew his name and endorsed Bill before the balloting, I was among the delegates crowding the floor in protest. Our battle cry at the time was "Unity doesn't demand uniformity." In fact, the drive to achieve uniformity through unanimity in that contest was the most divisive element of the '92 convention. This will be better than that.

While the extended "will she, won't she" charade has been more irritating than amusing, now we know she will, and that's fine. I'm unconcerned, too, about the amount of time that will be devoted to all things Clintonian in the run-up to the ballot. I think there's sufficient political acumen between them for Bill and Hillary to understand that the only way to improve the damage done to the family brand during the primaries is to demonstrate uncompromising zeal for the nominee and a Democratic victory while on the conventions stage.

On with the show.

Never mind.

Predictably, the Obama campaign has moved to avoid a meaningless credentials fight over delegates from Florida and Michigan, proposing to seat them with full voting rights. Since Hillary has announced that she won't be nominated on the floor in Denver, restoring the delegations without contest has absolutely no consequence in terms of the nomination.

There's some rumbling about the implications of this move on the future of the nominating calendar and process. I wouldn't place too much stake in those prospects. While I support seating the delegations at full strength now, it's not because I think they were right then. It's because it just doesn't matter anymore and we're a big tent party. It's time to get over it - until next time, anyway.

As far as next time goes, there will continue to be internal tussles about rules and calendars, caucuses and primaries. I wouldn't count on wholesale changes coming out of this convention, though. After all, the process in question is the one that Obama won. The convention will be, in a sense, a celebration of that process. Obama loyalists will control the convention and its committees, and they're likely to be pretty satisfied with the way things turned out this time around.

Of course, at some point the delegates will, in some pro-forma bit of business, pass the ball to the National Committee for continuing refinement and supervision of the rules for 2012. Whatever's done in Denver, it won't be over. There will be plenty of opportunity for the intramural squabbling that our Party is renowned for, but the convention won't show much evidence of that. We're convening to celebrate Barack. We can fight later.

The Washington delegation…

…gets a little more representative of the people's will, as expressed in caucus, as DNC member David McDonald has endorsed Obama. That leaves two PLEOs from these parts uncommitted, McDonald's colleagues Sharon Mast and Ed Cote. Should they both join the Obama camp, it would bring the PLEO percentages pretty close to the caucus outcomes. Funny how those things work out sometimes.

Or don't.

Won't matter by Wednesday anyhow, I suppose

How they're representing you now...

Rep. Brian Baird: Obama
Sen. Maria Cantwell: Clinton
DNC member Ed Cote: Uncommitted
Rep. Norm Dicks: Clinton
Former House Speaker Tom Foley: Clinton
Gov. Christine Gregoire: Obama
Rep. Jay Inslee: Clinton
Rep. Rick Larsen: Obama
State party Vice Chairwoman Eileen Macoll: Clinton
DNC member Sharon Mast: Uncommitted
Rep. Jim McDermott: Obama
DNC member David McDonald: Obama
Sen. Patty Murray: Clinton
DNC member Pat Notter: Obama
State party Chairman Dwight Pelz: Obama
King County Executive Ron Sims: Clinton
Rep. Adam Smith: Obama

How're they doing?

OK…

…but what's the problem? Via The Democratic Strategist...

Key figures on the Rules Committee informally agreed by telephone Wednesday night to seat the entire Florida delegation based on the Jan. 29 primary, but to give them each only half a vote. The same principle would be applied to Michigan, but there are still unresolved complications over how to handle the "Uncommitted" delegates chosen in the Jan. 15 primary in which Barack Obama's name was not even on the ballot.

The uncommitted delegates don't need any quotation marks. Uncommitted delegates are a perfectly normal part of the Democratic nomination process, and they can (and should) be seated at the convention exactly as such. How the Michigan uncommiteds - who were elected to represent the people who didn't have a preferred candidate on the truncated Michigan ballot - cast their .5 votes should be completely up to them. They're not anybody's to assign.

Is anybody talking to these people? That's what delegates are, you know - people. Not digits on a vote tally. Not chess pieces to be shifted about strategically. They're people who were elected as, essentially, free agents. The fact is, most of them probably had a preference at the time they were elected, though some of them may have shifted allegiance since. It should be easy enough to poll the uncommitteds for pre-convention tally purposes. In any event, they should be seated as elected and should vote as they wish.

Complication resolved.

Quote of the day.

Via Political Wire…

"If there is simply a caving on this, we'll end up with primaries on Halloween."

DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Chairman James Roosevelt Jr., in an interview with the Boston Globe, saying Florida and Michigan delegates will not be seated at the Democratic convention.

Sic 'em, Mr. Chairman! We can't claim t0 be the Party of the rule of law if we can't follow our own rules.

The Solomon Solution.

Todd at The Blue State likes it...

Make both Florida and Michigan split their delegates 50-50 between Obama and Clinton, then call it done.

Me? Not so much.

The solution is for the Democratic central committees of Florida and Michigan to submit new delegate selection plans to the DNC and follow them to assemble a slate of delegates to the National Convention. It doesn't matter what mechanism they use as long as the DNC approves, and I've got a hunch the DNC would cast a pretty approving eye on almost anything rational. Those are the rules, that's all that matters.

Seating the MI and FL delegations only on the condition that they be, in effect, irrelevant? I really don't get the appeal.

This isn't about the nomination. This is about the rules, the only real infrastructure the Party has. If we don't enforce those rules, do we really have a Party at all?

Truth…

From Joe Sudbay...

It's always the loser who wants to change the rules.

This one's for you, Speaker Tom.

It's official...

Democrat Bill Foster has won the special election in IL-14, and by a stunning margin.

And he gets a golden ticket to the convention, too. New target, 2025.

A hurrah for Howard.

While some are encouraging The Chairman to do exactly what he shouldn't (pick a winner), he's busy doing exactly what he should (enforcing the rules).

“The Democratic Nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules, and out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

The striped shirt and whistle become you, Dr. Dean.

Regarding the impending threat…

…to all that we Democrats hold dear.

Never mind…

The Democratic superdelegates are starting to follow the voters — straight to Barack Obama.

In just the past two weeks, more than two dozen of them have climbed aboard his presidential campaign, according to a survey by The Associated Press. At the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton's are beginning to jump ship, abandoning her for Obama or deciding they now are undecided.

So, the elite cabal of people we've elected to represent us are executing a diabolical plot to behave representatively.

Jeebus, all those electrons wasted.