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| Also listed in: Courage Campaign Staff |
That’s right, don’t dig Clinton’s plot in the political graveyard just yet. Her campaign is still focused on seating the punished delegates from rogue states, Florida and Michigan. Oh, and there is one new striking wrinkle. The Clinton team believes the magic number, (the number of total delegates required to capture the nomination) is actually 2,209 once you count Florida and Michigan. Not the magic number of 2,025 we’ve all become familiar with.
Let there be no doubt that negotiations are already underway with both campaigns and members of the powerful DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee. Its important to know how the national party leaders from the golden state will determine Florida and Michigan’s fate, possibly the fate of Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the democratic nomination given the fact that all three were voted into national party leadership by everyday members of the state party like you and me.
The members are:
Alice Huffman (Publicly Declared for Clinton)
President/ CEO of AC Public Affairs; President of state NAACP and national board member of NAACP; Served a cabinet level position in the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown
Mona Pasquil (Publicly Declared for Clinton)
Director of Community Outreach during John Kerry Presidential Campaign; Former Director of Asian-Pacific Affairs for the DNC; Former Western States Political Director for the DNC
Garry Shay (Publicly Declared for Clinton)
Attorney who also currently serves on the state party’s rules committee and is parliamentarian for the GLBT caucus
That’s right, they’ve all publicly declared their superdelegate support for Hillary Clinton. The big question is, will they tinker the rules they established in 2007 stripping Florida and Michigan delegates in order to support their preferred Democratic candidate?
Garry Shay told the LA Times:
- I don't let my political feelings interfere with what I believe to be right and just under the rules plans to object to the Clinton proposal to count Florida and Michigan.
- Though he would vote to seat all of Florida's superdelegates and half of its elected delegates.
I find it admirable that he is willing to set aside his political leanings to maintain some level of punishment on the rogue states, but to save the full amount of the superdelegate delegations while halfing the pledged delegates derived from voters is a bit elitist if not undemocratic.
Thus far, neither Huffman nor Pasquil have divulged their intentions at the fateful meeting on May 31st.
I have a better idea I’d like to share with all three California members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee. Voter disenfranchisement should be a non-starter in the Democratic Party, therefore the rules committee should vote to seat half of the pledged delegates from the voters and none of the superdelegates from Florida.
As for Michigan, seat an equal number of pledged delegates for Clinton and Barack Obama while again, seating none of the superdelegates.
My plan blocks superdelegates from both states because they are party leaders and state and federal leaders who should have prevented this mess in the first place. Punish them, not the voters nor the candidates who had to agree not to campaign there.
Oh and another important piece of my plan is to ask Clinton campaign official Harold Ickes to recuse himself from the committee all together. All members of this committee are political, but Ickes is a paid staffer for the Clinton campaign whose motives are obviously geared toward benefiting Clinton and not leading the party in the right direction.
The golden state three, should lead the way. We have the most at stake in this election. A faltering economy, housing crisis, traffic gridlock, crumbling infrastructure and worse, the nation’s highest prices for gasoline. So goes, California, so goes the nation.