Bill Nelson says DNC will delay decision. Karen Thurman says DNC will seat half.

[madfloridian]

Bill Nelson is just as vituperative as ever as he speaks about the DNC. He has never spoken kindly of the chairman or the national party. He last week was on TV and being divisive. He has threatened blood on the floor of the convention.

He is to give a presentation at the meeting tomorrow. Here are his comments from today.

Sen. Nelson: DNC will delay Florida delegates ruling

Nelson, who unsuccessfully sued his party in federal court to force recognition of Florida's 211 convention delegates, said he will make a presentation in Washington on Saturday to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is considering Florida's appeal for seating of all or part of the delegation.

"What I'm going to tell them on Saturday is that in Florida, we're pretty sensitive about our right to vote and have that vote counted," said Nelson, citing the 36-day saga of court fights and street demonstrations following the 2000 presidential election. "Eight years later, we've got Democrats trying to take away the Democrats' right to vote."

Nelson said he expects the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee to postpone a ruling on Florida and Michigan, which held its primary on Jan. 15, until Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama finish their primary struggle next week. Puerto Rico votes on Sunday, followed Tuesday by Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Those are the last primary states. After the pledged delegates are allocated from all the primary states, more of the uncommitted "super delegates" -- elected officials like Nelson, plus other party activists -- are expected to make commitments and possibly put one of the contenders over the top mathematically.

"It's more than likely that they're going to try to put it off, a decision, for a few days and try to see if there's a winner," said Nelson. "If that happens, everybody can go out and hug and kiss and make up, and this will all be forgotten."

I seriously doubt he is right.

He again threatened that Florida Democrats might not vote for the nominee. He has often done this.

Nelson also told Taylor County residents that Florida's 27 electoral votes will "decide the election" next November. He said the Democrats are hurting their chances of carrying the state by punishing Florida for moving its presidential primary from early March to Jan. 29 this year.

Karen Thurman, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, sent out an email just now. She sounds more sensible and urges unity, a tone I did not see in Nelson's comments.

From her email:

I believe that the DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee will restore at least half of our delegates, which would put us on par with Florida Republicans (whose national party halved their delegation).

I sincerely hope that this meeting brings closure to a dispute that has gone on for way too long.

Florida is the nation's largest battleground state, and the Democratic nominee - no matter who it is - is going to have a strong opportunity to win here.

It's time to unite and move full speed ahead toward November to elect a Democratic President.

Unfortunately she still had to include the talking points about how Florida was a victim. Florida was not a victim. The Democrats in both houses of the legislature voted yes. They went along. All they had to do was vote no.

She had to include this:

More than a year ago, Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature and Governor decided to move our state-run presidential primary election in violation of both the Republican and Democratic National Committees' rules.

After determining that no viable alternative existed, the Florida Democratic Party was forced to move forward with the early primary as the only way to give all Florida Democrats an open and fair election with maximum participation, regardless of disability, military service or anything else.

Apparently the two did not check their talking points out before speaking.

Reminds of how Talk Left sent out the word that the Hillary campaign was giving in and admitting the rules were fair. Yet at the same time her lawyers were denouncing the lawyers of the DNC.

I hope Karen Thurman is right, and that tomorrow brings closure. Somehow I have little faith in that.

[billyoc]

1. Billy O'Connor says "Fuck this shit".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6186946&mesg_id=6186965

*edited to add link.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Bill Nelson and his wife, and Hillary, all believe that God has chosen a certain few "elite"

to lead the country. Bill is a nutcase.

[HooptieWagon]

8. true, Nelson's wife recruited hillary into an elitist fundie dominionist christian group

I think they call themselves "The Family" or similar... perhaps google has something on them, but IIRC they're very secretive.

[PoliticalAmazon]

14. Actually, the Elites DO run this country.....

Read "The Irony of Democracy" by Dye and Ziegler. You can get it really cheap used at places like amazon.com. Look for the ones that aren't underlined. It apparently is used a lot in political science critical thinking classes (that's where it was assigned to my class to read).

It will change forever your view of politics in America, and you will wonder how you could have been so blind.

[iamjoy]

3. One Blogger Posted A Great Idea

He (may have been a she) said it wasn't the fault of the voters of Florida (or Michigan) and they shouldn't be punished. The states' full delegations should be seated. Meanwhile, the party leaders in the states who engineered this mess should be fired from their positions and banned from holding any party position for five years.

I rather like that one. :evilgrin:

Still, I would rather they weight our delegates to have .5 a vote each rather than cut the delegation in half. This may help Obama slightly more than half the number of delegates would because of the way delegates are counted, but that's not why. The reason is that some people worked their tails off to be delegates. Because when electing delegates you have to vote the whole slate, certain alliances were made based on how many delegates we had. If you redo the number of delegates now, you're screwing some of those people.

[madfloridian]

5. First Read gave me the impression that cutting delegates 50% helped Obama more.

"*** The circus comes to town: Speaking of drama, Saturday's DNC rules committee hearing is promising to be a potential circus, as Clinton supporters appear to be preparing for fairly loud protests -- something the Obama campaign is reminding reporters that they could do but are choosing not to. The Clinton campaign is denying fanning the protest front, but they aren't discouraging the demonstrations either. And then there are the conspiracy theories popping up in the left blogosphere that Republicans will be secretly showing up Saturday in order to cause chaos and make the party look ridiculous on national TV. As for the actual meeting itself, there's one more angle you ought to be aware of: a 50% cut and a halving of the delegates is not the same thing. For instance, if Florida delegates are seated in their entirety, but only have their vote counted as a .5, then Clinton will net approximately 19 delegates out of the state. But if the delegation is cut in half, that's done in every congressional district as well as statewide, then suddenly Clinton's advantage is only a net of six. That's right, the complicated nature of the DNC delegate selection process will be a good reminder to math majors everywhere that a 50% cut is not the same as a halving of an individual number. Go figure..."

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/29/1075327.aspx

I am not good with this kind of math, so I don't know.

[iamjoy]

18. Whoops - You're Right

I got it reversed. Cutting the number of delegates in half would help Obama more than cutting the votes of the delegates in half. I still favor the latter, but think at this point, Florida should take what it can get. I would be okay with a purely symbolic delegation - they all get to go, but no vote.

From your original post, it sounds like Chairwoman Thurman realizes she should take what she can get and the ones really pushing the point are some of our elected officials who are Super Delegates and Clinton supporters. What poetic justice it would be to strip away their votes while recognizing the hard working people who had no say in when the primary was, no say in the rules and didn't file lawsuits, etc. but worked hard for their candidate regardless of the mess.

I personally know some people who have been working very hard for Obama and some of them did make delegate. I would hate for them to be told they can't go to Denver because of goofball elected officials and party leaders. I know some people who worked hard for Clinton and made delegate too. I know these people felt all along the whole thing was unfair, and it wasn't because they were trying to scam more delegates for Clinton.

[madfloridian]

19. Karen has tried to be more nuanced...but she lost control to..

people like Nelson and Wasserman Schultz. You are right, the superdelegates have pushed this thing for Clinton.

[NashVegas]

4. Wasn't It Always Supposed to Be That Way?

I mean, from the time they decided to have the primary out of turn?

[madfloridian]

6. Not sure I understand.?

.

[NashVegas]

20. That They Would Seat 50%

Awarded in proportion to the vote.

[HooptieWagon]

7. Bill Nelson needs to STFU

and hope the furur he has been stirring subsides, lest the FL voters recall when he comes up for reelection that he was the head cheerleader of FLs attempt to cut in line against the rules.

[Ravy]

9. I think the rules are fair, too.

I don't think it was fair, or right headed, to take away all of the delegates, the rules do not state that they have to do that.

The rules committee wanted to force Florida into compliance with their wishes, so they brought out the big hammer, and then hit themselves in the foot with it, IMHO. If they had taken half to begin with (the level I think they will back down to) it would have saved a lot of drama and ill-feelings.

[madfloridian]

10. And Hillary would be ahead coming out of the gate in two states that broke rules.

I disagree. The only way to stop those two states....was to strip them all.

[Ravy]

12. But they didn't stop them.

And I bet they turn around tomorrow or soon and restore at least half.

And while Florida politicians showed their butts and played schoolground tough, it is the DNC that will end up backing off of their extreme position in the end. Even Obama acknowledges that it is hurting his candidacy and is encouraging the DNC to back off and seat the delegations in some fashion.

But there has already been months and months of bad feelings, and those don't tend to go away overnight.

If the penalty had started out where I think it will end up, I would have been right there with you all the way if the argument was "half or all". But they made the argument "none or all" and I don't consider either of those positions as being just.

[madfloridian]

13. Whoa...Dean and the DNC have been saying for ages they would seat them

just not fully count them.

Hillary has done such a magnificent job on catapulting propaganda that there is no room for the truth.

[Ravy]

15. Then why didn't they start with that position, instead of saying

that they wouldn't count. If Obama knew they would count at least half, he would not have taken his name off of the ballot in MI, I don't believe. It just wouldn't be the issue it is today.

It is kind of like an abusive spouse that smacks you across the mouth, then starts in with "Ohhh, I will make it all better, baby". Dean and the DNC should have never taken all the votes and said "Don't worry, we'll take care of you in the end."

They should have punished us half and then stuck to their guns. There wouldn't be near the drama or the backlash.

[madfloridian]

16. Hillary's propaganda machine....did its job well.

I despise her for what she has done to uninformed voters and to my state.

She will not be forgiven by me.

[MethuenProgressive]

11. What a screwed up situation it is when a good man is attacked for wanting his State represented.

He had to sue to try and force the recognition of Florida's 211 convention delegates?
That's a sad commentary on Dean's new Obamacrat Party.

[muryan]

17. Yea lets sue a week before a meeting

In which the sole purpose of that meeting is to seat the delegates. As if the entire motivation for the lawsuit wasn't a way for him to look proactive towards his constituents, knowing full well it was a pointless lawsuit.