But unfortunately for Clinton, her chances of actually being on the ballot in November are vanishingly miniscule–and most everyone in attendance knew it. Although Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” blared on the PA, door workers who once would’ve demanded supporters’ contact information requested instead that the crowd volunteer for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party. On stage, a local pol kept the waiting septuagenarians occupied with a homily on togetherness. “Whichever side of the aisle you’re on in this election,” he said, “We have to be a united party as soon as the superdelegates decide who the nominee is.” In place of the slogan usually emblazoned on Clinton’s podium–say, “Ready to Lead”–there was a simple URL: “HillaryClinton.com.” And when Clinton herself took the stage, she didn’t say a single word about any of her plans or proposals, or try to sway a single undecided voter
So why did Clinton come to Boca? Let’s just say that symbolism played a part.
If you’ll recall, Palm Beach County (home of the infamous butterfly ballot) was the central front in the battle to count every vote cast in 2000’s razor-close presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore. It’s the place where, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, the dream of a Democrat returning to the White House in 2001 finally died. With the remaining primaries offering no path to victory, Clinton today finally seized on this painful history to cast what had been one of her many rationales for staying in this unwinnable race–the need to count Florida and Michigan’s disputed primary votes–as a “moral” crusade that compels her to continue. “I am here today because I believe the decision our party faces is not just about the fate of these votes and the outcome of these primaries, but whether we will uphold our most fundamental values as Democrats,” she said. “The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: if any votes aren’t counted, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished.” The crowd answered in unison: “Count our votes! Count over votes!”
If Clinton had stopped there, today’s remarks would’ve served as (a slightly more monomaniacal version of) what’s she already said before. She didn’t–to put it mildly. Instead, in a wide-ranging–and carefully crafted–address that sounded, at times, like a history of American voting rights, Clinton suggested that discounting Florida and Michigan would betray the “generation of patriots who risked and sacrificed on the battlefield” to win American independence and ensure that a “just government [would] derive from the contest of the governed.” Other saints would spin in their graves as well. Among them: “abolitionists”; the “tenacious women and few brave men who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848” and spent the next “70 years struggling” for the right to vote; and the African-Americans who “knelt down on that bridge in Selma to pray and were beaten within an inch of their lives.” (Clinton stopped short of mentioning Al Gore). In the end, she said, denying these votes would be of a piece with subjecting the good people of Florida and Michigan to the “poll taxes and literacy tests, violence and intimidation, dogs and tear gas” of the Jim Crow south. “It is because all that has been done that we are here in this election,” she said, with a sly glance in her opponents’ general direction. “I believe Sen. Obama and I have an obligation to carry on this legacy and ensure that every voice is heard and every vote is counted.” In other words: I mean business.
A cynic might be tempted to remind Clinton that these disputed primaries only became a concern when it looked like they could help her, and only became a moral crusade when she had no other path to pursue. Last fall, for example, she said that Michigan “wouldn’t count for anything,” and two of her top aides, Harold Ickes and Terry McAuliffe, have until now supported punishing delinquent states by stripping their delegates. But Clinton wouldn’t care. “Your votes should not be cast aside because of a technicality,” she told the Century Villagers this afternoon. Judging by today’s address, Clinton clearly hopes that Florida and Michigan will propel her past Obama in the popular-vote count and rally superdelegates to her side. Again, a cynic would probably feel compelled to note that the only plausible way Clinton can accomplish this feat is by awarding herself 328,309 votes in Michigan and awarding Obama (whose name wasn’t on the ballot) a whopping zero–a sleight of hand that’s unlikely to endear her to the decisive party members, but may very well discredit the Illinois senator’s near-inevitable nomination among the half of the party (hers) that he still needs to win over. (Not to mention that nominations are determined by delegates instead of some chimerical, uncountable popular vote compiled from a half-dozen different kinds of contests.) Again, Clinton doesn’t seem to care. “The popular vote is the truest expression of your will,” she said. “I know that Senator Obama chose to remove his name from the ballot in Michigan. That was his right. But we should not rob you of your voices because of it.” Perhaps Mrs. Clinton would consider a compromise–say, halving the delegations, Republican-style? Never: “The Democratic party must count these votes, and they should count them exactly as they were cast.” That settles that.
Clinton, it seems, is setting the stage for a showdown. At the end of her speech, she asked the crowd to visit her Web site and “join the 300,000 Americans” who’ve already signed up to petition the DNC. (Explains the “HillaryClinton.com” podium.) Meanwhile, the Rules Committee is scheduled to resolve the Florida and Michigan dispute on May 31–and, seeing as its members have already told the media that they will mete out some form of punishment, Clinton won’t get the full delegations she’s demanding. We’ll see then if that’s good enough for the candidate and her crew–or if her last crusade will simply continue, with no end in sight.
