The "Inevitable Nominee" and the Washington Caucuses
The Arrogance of the State Clinton Campaign
By DWE
Thu Nov 01, 2007
”The Chair of the 36th District Democrats, Peter House, recently received what he described as a "chilling" phone call from the director of the state Clinton campaign. James Kainber wanted the help of Democrats who would do grassroots organizing on behalf of the Senator's presidential campaign. Peter House replied that he knows the grassroots Democrats in his district and that most of them don't support Sen. Clinton.
Using one of the oldest tactics around--what amounts to the "bandwagon" argument--Mr. Kainber claimed that 30 LD chairs had already signed on to support Sen. Clinton. Kainber said that the activist contingent of the Party isn't lining up behind Clinton, but it really doesn't matter. After February 5th, she'll have the nomination sewn up. Our February 9th caucuses will, in effect, be irrelevant.”
Now while some might think that this is about Clinton bashing but, in fact, it has much more to do with the potential threat that our State Party imposed February 9th caucuses might actually pose to other races in our state.
The post goes on to share a letter that Peter House sent out to his fellow LD and County Chairs. In the letter he asks that his fellow chairs refrain from making ”an early endorsement of a presidential candidate.” His request was not about restricting support for any candidate but rather about preserving the integrity of our caucuses. He details the phone conversation that he had with Kainber and then explained his concern:
”February 5th is the day of a slew of state primaries...what Dwight Pelz calls Stupid Tuesday. On Tuesday February 5th, the field will be substantially narrowed. It may even be that one candidate gets enough votes to effectively end the nominating process.
Our caucuses are a few days later, of course, on February 9.
A done-deal nomination would be bad for party activists because it would let the air out of the excitement around the caucuses. All of us will by then have put in hours of planning and spent lots of money preparing for the caucuses. If we get low turnout, we will miss the chance to recruit new folks into the party. We will miss the chance to meet the "Challenge from the Chair" of getting an increase in voter turnout. I also shudder to think of the money we might lose.
Now, maybe you have a candidate that you have endorsed and you are not willing to withdraw your support, but I ask you please to refrain from talk of inevitability of the nomination of any candidate. Resistance is not futile. Our party depends on it.”
My question is: Do you think that the continued rhetoric of “the inevitable nominee” will have the impact on our caucuses that House is predicting and, if so, will that low turnout have a lingering effect on November, 2008 turnout?
Now, while the idea of having your own blog is to create comments on your topic, in this case I would direct you to the original post at Washblog where your thoughts will have a much broader audience.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
posted by Chad Shue | 7:35 PM
3 Comments:
I would tell Mr. Kainber where to go!
Wow! Insert "Dean" where it says "Clinton" and it's 2004 all over again...this is the direction leadership is going so get on the bandwagon this is the only real Democrat in the race and he's going to win and you know it and this is the way it's going to be you may as well get on board right now....
Call me a strong Hillary supporter who despises the strongarm tactic. It never works to try and frighten people into supporting your candidate and can solidify opposition. There - did I actually say something you agree with? :~)
Chantel(?)
I believe that there is a bit of difference between the Dean campaign and the Clinton campaign in that, in the early part of the 2004 campaign, I think the media really was enthralled by the Dean campaign and actually added fuel to the fire. He was viewed as a real insurgent who might actually be able to take out the party's "annointed one" in John Kerry. The fact that Dean was able to tap in to the internet and develop such a large following so quickly and to raise the large sums of money from small donations really gave the media a story to write about.
However, once the party insiders (which was still being controlled to a large degree by the DLC) started taking their shots at him and making it known that the strategy for 2004 was to challenge the "AWOL village idiot" with the "War Hero with real intellect" - that it was not ok to simply take Bush on directly for his abuses and say that we should end them but, rather, argue that "we can do it better." the media began to fall back into line with the party line and helped to take Dean down.
In Hillary's case, it was long ago determined that, because of her name and the successful political/money machine that Bill Clinton already had in place, she would be the nominee. Of course, being a woman gave the media another compelling story line so they started planting the stories of inevitability immediately following the 2004 loss.
Having said all of that, I really am mostly concerned about the possible impact of having a pre-determined nominee on our precinct caucuses. Which is why I wrote the post and am still hoping folks will go to the Washblog post to see what is being said there.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
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