With no plausible path to the White House, Clinton has spent her one-day Sunshine State swing shifting gears from presidential candidate to (ahem) voting-rights activist. She’s explicitly compared the ongoing Florida and Michigan dispute to the “poll taxes and literacy tests, violence and intimidation, dogs and tear gas” of the Jim Crow South–while implicitly comparing herself, the champion of “counting every vote,” to abolitionists, suffragettes and civil rights martyrs. And judging by the standards she’s setting on the stump, Clinton won’t rest anytime soon. On May 31, the DNC’s Rules Committee, in an attempt to set some sort of precedent, will likely follow in the footsteps of the Republicans and agree to seat half of each scofflaw state’s delegates. Will the senator from New York be satisfied? Not likely. Even though she praised the GOP here in Sunrise for “mov[ing] quickly to resolve their problem” and damned the Dems for “allow[ing] ours to go on,” Clinton also insisted that “the Democratic party… count these votes, and… count them exactly as they were cast.” Half? That’s half of what Hillary wants. With her demands unmet, Clinton could conceivably soldier on… indefinitely. Asked by the AP this afternoon whether she’d support Florida and Michigan if they decided to take their dispute with the DNC to the convention, Clinton responded, “Yes I will. I will, because I feel very strongly about this.” Which is why I said she should serve as the next administration’s (entirely made-up) Popular Vote Secretary; there’s little chance that the votes will be counted “exactly as they were cast” before then–if only because delegates, not votes, determine the Democratic nominee. That in mind, I’m sure Barack Obama or John McCain would be happy to have her. After all, the abolitionists didn’t give up just because of some stupid “Rules Committee.”
But let’s assume Clinton stops short of the full kamikaze–a far likelier outcome. If the DNC follows its own rules and doesn’t apportion the Florida and Michigan delegates according to the precise popular vote–they’re guaranteed to award Obama a few in Michigan, for example, rather than disenfranchise the hundreds of thousands of Michiganders who intended to vote for him–what will the lasting effect of Clinton’s crusade be? In his column today, my colleague Jonathan Alter suggested that, by rallying her fans around a hopeless cause, Clinton is actively delegitimizing Obama’s inevitable nomination–and ensuring that Democratic divisions only get worse. “The shorthand many Clinton supporters are already taking into the summer is that she won the popular vote but had the nomination ’taken away’ (as Joy Behar said on ‘The View’) by a man,” he wrote. And Clinton herself provided some ammunition for this sort of argument this afternoon. Reminding the people of Broward County that “the candidate who got fewer votes [in 2000] was inaugurated president” (as if they needed reminding) Clinton warned that without Florida and Michigan “you will have a nominee based on 48 states”–a situation that would lead many loyalists to conclude, as Clinton put it, that “if the Democrats don’t want my vote, maybe John McCain and the Republicans do.” It’s true that some supporters will hear Clinton’s remarks as “Obama will win an incomplete election with fewer votes, so it’s reasonable to jump ship”–even if that’s not what the senator meant. Divisive? Try nuclear.
That said, the view from 35,000-feet is always a little blurry. Speaking with a dozen or so men and women at the Sunrise Lakes Phase 4 Clubhouse after Clinton concluded her speech, I found that their views on the Florida and Michigan contretemps (and the Democratic race overall) were a lot more nuanced than the worrywarts in Washington assume. Take Marie Dominique, a retired Sunrise resident of black, Caribbean-American descent. Asked whether she voted for Hillary in January’s primary, Dominique laughed. “I’m not going to say,” she said. “I’m not going to say.” (At this, a friend mouthed “Obama.”) But you were still interested in hearing her out today? I asked. “Absolutely, absolutely,” she said. “Very interested.” The thing is, despite supporting Obama, Dominique agrees with Clinton that the DNC should factor in Florida’s votes. “There’s a lot people did not know if those votes were going to be counted,” she said. “They went without knowing, hoping they would.” What’s more, Dominique would even be fine with Clinton as the nominee: “I know it’s not the correct thing to say”–for an Obama fan, that is–“but we have to wait until everything is counted to rule one out from the other. As a Democrat, I will vote for whoever is on the ticket.” Will Clinton supporters accept a Florida and Michigan compromise? “What other choice is there,” said Dominique. “It’s the last option.
