Way back in October of 2007, someone in New Hampshire asked Clinton if it wasn’t just politics as usual, saying one thing and doing another, that she hadn’t taken her name off the Michigan ballot.
As the only top tier Democrat remaining on Michigan ballot, Clinton is all but guaranteed to win the state’s primary. Michigan is tentatively slated to send 156 delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, but national party officials have threatened to take away those delegates if the state persists in holding its primary on Jan. 15.
“It’s clear, this election they’re having is not going to count for anything,” Clinton said Thursday during an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio’s call-in program, “The Exchange.” “But I just personally did not want to set up a situation where the Republicans are going to be campaigning between now and whenever, and then after the nomination, we have to go in and repair the damage to be ready to win Michigan in 2008.”
No one knew what the hell that was supposed to mean when she said it. Her additional comments clarified nothing.
“I did not believe it was fair to just say, ‘Goodbye Michigan’ and not take into account the fact we’re going to have to win Michigan if we’re going to be in the White House in January 2009,” she said…
…”If you look at the some of the states we have to win, the margins have been narrow. And it wasn’t, in my view, meaningful, but I’m not going to say there’s an absolute, total ignoring of the people in all these other states that won’t come back to haunt us if we’re not careful about it.”
None of that empty talk explained why she wanted her name on the ballot in a contest that ‘is not going to count for anything.’ She agreed not to campaign or advertise in Michigan, and she agreed that the contest wouldn’t count. A lot of people smelled a rat back in October, and they were right to smell a rat.
Hillary Clinton says the results of Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary should count, even if Barack Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot.
“That was his choice,” she says in an interview with Steve Inskeep. “There was no rule or requirement that he take his name off the ballot. His supporters ran a very aggressive campaign to try to get people to vote uncommitted.”
It was not only Obama’s choice, but the choice of Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards. But why does the choice matter? As Clinton acknowledged three months before the Michigan contest, ‘It’s clear, this election they’re having is not going to count for anything.’ If it was ‘clear’, then having your name on the ballot didn’t matter any more than not having your name on the ballot.
The New Hampshire Union-Leader is hardly a friendly or impartial source, but they noted that Clinton’s attitude towards the Michigan and Florida contests violated the spirit of an explicit promise she made last August.
COURTING VOTERS in Iowa and New Hampshire, last August Sen. Hillary Clinton signed a pledge not to “campaign or participate” in the Michigan or Florida Democratic primaries. She participated in both primaries and is campaigning in Florida. Which proves, again, that Hillary Clinton is a liar.
Clinton kept her name on the Michigan ballot when others removed theirs, she campaigned this past weekend in Florida, and she is pushing to seat Michigan and Florida delegates at the Democratic National Convention. The party stripped those states of delegates as punishment for moving up their primary dates.
“I will try to persuade my delegates to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida,” Clinton said last week, after the New Hampshire primaries and Iowa caucuses were safely over.
Clinton coldly and knowingly lied to New Hampshire and Iowa. Her promise was not a vague statement. It was a signed pledge with a clear and unequivocal meaning.
She signed it thinking that keeping the other candidates out of Michigan and Florida was to her advantage, but knowing she would break it if that proved beneficial later on. It did, and she did.
New Hampshire voters, you were played for suckers.
Actually, I think Michigan was moved up explicitly to help Clinton, so I don’t think she wanted the contest not to count. Florida was screwed by the Republican legislature and governor, and Clinton certainly did not want Florida not to count. There’s no question that Clinton has been hurt by the DNC’s stripping of the MI and FL delegates. But she did promise not to campaign or participate in those states, and she acknowledged that the contests would not count.
That was then. Now?
“We’ll wait and see where the voters go,” Clinton says, when asked if she thinks the superdelegates should follow the lead of the popular vote. “I want to see what happens in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, Michigan and Florida.”
…”With all due respect, we have to look at who can anchor the states we need to win in running against John McCain,” she says. “He will be very competitive in states like Florida. We have to ask ourselves as Democrats, ‘Who is the person best able to defeat John McCain?'”
With all due respect, Clinton has lost the nomination and she is just being spiteful at this point.
