If I were to pick a specific date for when the Clinton campaign’s tactics began to cause real consternation in Democratic circles, I’d have to go with Jan. 25. At that point, Clinton had won a couple of impressive victories (New Hampshire, Nevada), and Obama had won a couple of his own (Iowa, South Carolina), but the landscape moving forward looked considerably less friendly to the Clinton team.
Feb. 5, the date the Clinton campaign had expected to end the race, looked to be a split, followed by a series of Obama-friendly contests throughout February. So, on Jan. 25, the Clinton campaign decided that the Michigan and Florida primaries, which Clinton had agreed shouldn’t count, should count after all.
Three months later, I still think it was one of the Clinton campaign’s more noticeable mistakes. Trying to change the rules in the middle of the game is never a good idea, and the entire effort looked like an opportunistic stunt.
For Clinton campaign co-chair Terry McAuliffe, this might be more embarrassing than for most. Why? Because of what he wrote in his book written last year about his experiences in politics, most notably this excerpt from the 2004 campaign cycle.
“I’m going outside the primary window,” [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.
“If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,” I said. “We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.”
He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.
“You won’t deny us seats at the convention,” he said.
“Carl, take it to the bank,” I said. “They will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.”
Needless to say, McAuliffe, four years later, has found an entirely different outlook.
Here’s McAuliffe now:
CBSNews.com: And also this week, the governors of Florida and Michigan came out and seemed open to a revote in those states for their delegations to count at the Democratic convention. What is the position of your campaign on a possible revote?
Terry McAuliffe: Well, what we have said is that these folks have already voted. I mean, people talk about a revote. But there is no appetite in Florida or Michigan by the state legislatures. I mean, there’s no money. Who is going to pay the tens of millions of dollars to do this?
I’ve been informed that the Florida legislature, under no circumstances, would pay to have the Democrats redo it. So I agree with what has been said. The governors of both states have kept saying that the state parties in these two states need to work with the national party and come to some resolution of this matter. We just can’t leave 2.3 million voters, 1.75 million in Florida, and over 600,000 in Michigan, who went in and voted. They’ve already voted. And we just need to count the votes…
CBSNews.com: So you’re ruling out the Clinton campaign ever supporting a revote?
Terry McAuliffe: I’m saying they’ve already voted, let’s count the votes. I’m saying that the state parties in those states need to work with the national party and figure out how we count the votes that have already been voted.
Oddly enough, there were no more concerns about letting rule-ignoring states “break this entire nominating process.”
Now, it’s worth noting that the two examples are not entirely comparable. If McAuliffe’s book is right, in 2004, Michigan stood to lose half of its convention delegates. In 2008, the state lost all of them. The latter is obviously a far harsher penalty than the prior, which may have some bearing on McAuliffe’s position.
But by any reasonable measure, McAuliffe is playing fast and loose. When he’s the DNC chairman, trying to protect the integrity of the party’s rules and calendar, he’s content to let Michiganders watch the convention on television. When he’s the co-chair of a campaign that needs the votes of states that broke the rules, he believes the opposite.
As Ezra concluded, “Say what you will about the political wisdom of the move, but the Clintonites, at one time, knew exactly how bad this would be for the party. They were clear in their opposition to Michigan and Florida shuffling their primaries, and steadfast in their willingness to impose consequences. The problem came when those consequences collided with their need for votes.”
To say this is about grand principles of democracy and the scourge of disenfranchisement is to overlook the transparent political realities. This is about expediency and opportunism — Clinton and her team changed their mind because they need the votes; Obama and his team stuck to their guns because it plays to their advantage.