Madfloridian's Journal - The FL and MI primaries are still playing out. Accusation of unfair primary continues.

Among the angriest of the Clinton supporters, that is. Those of us who express concern recognize what some of you do not...that they do NOT believe the primaries were fair. They blame Barack Obama and Howard Dean for skewing the primary vote. There is no doubt of that belief, it is all over their websites with the angry looking cat.

The word is out here at DU to just post positive stuff. That would be nice. But why can't we at least stand up for someone who has worked his butt off for the party for 4 years as chair...and gets stalked and condemned in ads.

He can not effectively defend himself right now.

I don't see how a group of people could call a primary result unfair if rules were followed scrupulously. And they were. Governor Dean and the Rules Committee went strictly by the rules that were made before the primaries began.

The worst part is that during the primaries the former president expressed doubt that the outcome was fair. Bill Clinton blamed Howard Dean and Obama even though they stuck to the rules as to FL and MI delegates. This is not supposition. I have it in his own words. Today at another site someone surprised me when they said the delegates were forced to vote for Obama. I am still stunned at the vitriol. Yet those words were also said by Bill Clinton.

Here is why I worry, and yes, I will quote the man I respected as a two-term president. I do it because I am worried that Howard Dean and Barack Obama are doing everything they can to be nice, and it is never enough. Never.

From May this year. A very bitter statement.

Today, at the first of five campaign events in Kentucky, just days ahead of the May 20 primary here, the former president said the lack of attention to the unseated Michigan and Florida delegates was proof that the party and the political pundits are trying to force Democrats to get in line behind Obama.

....."What did the Democratic National Committee do? They obliterated them. Who cares if you wanted to get up there with these other states because you've been broken by this economic policy of the current administration. We're gonna show you who's boss. We are obliterating you from the face of the earth and pretending that your voters did not vote. You just have to know, that is the position of your national party. Nobody quarrels with their right to discipline them. They made a decision they did not have to make. And do you seriously believe, if the votes had been the other way, that they would have made the same decision?" Clinton asked a crowd in Owensboro.
Accusations toward the DNC

He just in effect said that Dean played favorites. Outrageous. Those same words are being echoed now in the groups like the PUMA alliance and the Denver Groups. They may be few in number, but they get great media access.

Another time in May he accused the DNC of not wanting to win as much as the Republicans did.

Kendrick Meek, a 40 year old African American Congressman from Miami.... knows that the Democrats are blameless in Florida's decision to have an early primary, and yet we basically gutted them. The Republicans, who did it, were treated quite differently. Because the Republicans like to win elections. So they did what their rules provide. And what our rules also provide, they said, 'Okay...you went ahead of time so we're going to seat you at half-delegates and seat all your super delegates. That's what any political party with any sense would do."

—Bill Clinton, Eugene, Oregon May 12, 2008
Denigrating party rules

There are other instances, but that is enough to show that these groups are simply continuing feelings that began when FL and MI broke the rules.

The group I call the "Catharis" group is today getting attention from the NYT. They are getting great mainstream media coverage.

Calling All Votes

Symbolic gestures and signs of respect always hold a larger meaning for the campaign that came in second. More than a few of Mrs. Clinton’s devotees, including plenty headed to Denver this month, are in need of catharsis and a bit of closure. They remain convinced that their gal got a raw deal, that she was treated unfairly by the news media, that she was cheated out of her Florida and Michigan delegates by hostile power brokers like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, that she was a victim of sexism, that the historic nature of her candidacy was callously dismissed in all the hullabaloo over the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s, and on and on and on.

Some of these allegations ring truer than others. But many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters believe them intensely enough to want to make trouble for Mr. Obama. Discouraging Mrs. Clinton’s name from being entered into a roll-call vote would give her legions yet one more opportunity to feel that their candidate had been snubbed.

No, none of them ring true at all. That is the problem. Rules were followed.

That column is geared to garner sympathy for them. The rest of us have to make our own way out of the upset when our candidate loses. We don't get to wallow in self-pity. Other candidates and their supporters have not done that.

There is a danger in being too agreeable when people really feel like this. When they are so angry they even put ads in papers that claim Dean was neither impartial nor objective now or in the primary.It appeared in FL and MI papers

This ad actually says that Howard Dean took sides in the primaries and since.

"Howard Dean as chairman of the DNC is supposed to be both impartial and objective. The feeling of most of Senator Clinton's 18 million voters is he was not. They believe he was not during the primaries and they believe he hasn't been since."

I had this post done for a while, but I had almost decided not to post it. Then I see the horrible attack ad on Howard Dean at the Puma Alliance and see that NPR has asked them to contact them for an interview. That really made me angry.

They claim Obama is not the official nominee, and that Dean is the one who should place her name in nomination. The ad was in The Lansing Journal and The Tallahassee Democrat yesterday.

It is such an outrageous claim that I keep waiting for someone in the leadership, anyone, to stand up and say enough is enough.

But no one is doing that.