Clinton Camp: “There Are No Rules”

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 9:14 AM on May 7, 2008.

Anyone who thought Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) might reconsider her presidential bid after her big loss in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana on Tuesday are mistaken.

In fact, in a conference call with the national media on Wednesday morning, the campaign’s top strategist, Geoff Garin, and top spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said the fight would almost surely last past the final primaries and be taken up by the Democratic National Committee’s standing committees, starting with the Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31.

“There really are no rules,” Garin said, when asked about the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida – two states stripped of delegates for holding early primaries – and about any scenario where the campaign is behind in the delegate count won in the primaries and caucuses, or the popular vote total. “You make a conscious decision of what is in the interest of the country.”

“The DNC will engage in an adjudicary process to seat the delegates,” Wolfson said, referring to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC), and then the Credentials Committee, which under the DNC rules hears appeals of RBC decisions.

Wolfson also said the number of delegates needed to win the nomination was not 2,025, as both the Clinton camp and campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) have said in previous conference calls with the media earlier in 2008.

“That is not the operative number,” Wolfson said. “The number is 2,209.”

The campaign advisers also said that their candidate was continuing to win among “white blue-collar and working-class voters” and that demographic, more so than the votes of African-Americans or younger, first-time voters, would be the key swing vote in a fall contest with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican nominee.

“Senator Obama has not proven he can win big swing states,” Wolfson said, citing Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. “He has not proven he can win the blue-collar vote.”

Wolfson said that summation was “the crux” of her argument to super-delegates - the elected officials and party leaders who comprise 20 percent of the convention delegates. Either candidate must also win a majority of super-delegates to secure the nomination.

When asked by reporters if the Clinton campaign was willing to fracture the party’s historic coalitions, namely the African-American and youth vote, to win – or as one reporter put it, “to destroy the village to save the village,” Garin firmly said no.

“I reject that analogy as out of hand,” he said.

Wolfson said either candidate would have to work hard to convince their supporters to back their opponent, should that candidate secure the nomination.

The campaign aides also said that if Florida and Michigan were seated as full delegations, Clinton would only net a gain of 58 delegates.

The advisors also said that their candidate had loaned a total of $11,425,000 to her campaign.

OBAMA CAMP: WE HAVE THE MOMENTUM

The Obama Campaign View

In its conference call with the media on Wednesday morning, the campaign manager and key supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said their candidate now has the biggest delegate lead of the entire campaign and predicted that he would be the party’s 2008 presidential nominee.

Campaign Manager David Plouffe said Obama was now ahead of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) by 172 delegates and predicted Obama would win the majority of pledged delegates on May 20th, when Kentucky and Oregon hold their primaries. West Virginia’s primary is next week.

“We can see the finish line here,” he said.

Plouffe said Obama picked up 17 more delegates than Clinton in North Carolina, while she won four more delegates than him in Indiana. In the meantime, Plouffe said that Obama was winning commitments from super-delegates by a “two-to-one” margin in recent weeks, even as the campaign has weathered controversy from remarks by Obama’s former pastor.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), also on the call, said Obama took a “giant and decisive stride” to winning the nomination on Tuesday.

“He beat every poll and every expectation,” Kerry said, noting that Obama would have won in Indiana were it not for Republicans who mischievously voted in the Democratic primary at the urging of conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.

“Rush Limbaugh is tampering with the process and the GOP has clearly defined that they want Hillary Clinton as the nominee,” Kerry said.

The Obama campaign said late Tuesday that they believed 7 percent of Clinton’s vote came from Republican crossover voters.

Arizona Gov. Janet Nepolitano said it was now time for the party’s super-delegates, its elected officials and leaders who comprise 20 percent of the total delegates, “to bring this process to a closer” by declaring their support for either Obama or Clinton.

But Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said it was not appropriate for anyone to tell Clinton when to end her campaign.

“There is sincere respect for Hillary Clinton within this campaign,” she said. “Barack Obama doesn’t just say those words. He means it. It would be awkward and wrong for any of us to tell her the race is over.”

Should Obama win the nomination, McCaskill said, “We are confident she (Clinton) will work hard to unify the party.”

Plouffe also said the Clinton campaign cannot unilaterally change the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, which is now 2,025. In its earlier conference call Wednesday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said that number was now 2,209 – which implied that both the Michigan and Florida delegations would be seated in full.

“The number is 2,025,” Plouffe said. “That is not our number. That is the DNC number. That is an attempt to write a new metric.”

Plouffe said the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee would take up the question of seating the Florida and Michigan delegations, because that panel stripped both states of their delegates after they held unauthorized early primaries. He said the Clinton campaign, not Obama, has been opposed to any settlement that did not include a full seating of those states delegates. But, he also said that the Clinton campaign all-but acknowledged in its remarks Wednesday morning that even a full seating of those delegates would not put their candidate ahead.

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said seating both those states would only net Clinton 58 additional delegates.

“All we can say is we believe we will be the nominee of this party,” Plouffe said.