Automatic Ickes: Supers Get More Democracy than Youby: Dean BarkerSun Feb 17, 2008 at 07:08:33 AM EST |
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Add Harold Ickes to the growing list of senior Cliton campaign officials who are doing everything they can kill my enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.
Ickes, claims that "automatic delegates" (as he puts it in his attempt to spin the issue into confusion) will decide the election - no matter what happens with those pesky small states and those peskier wine and brie eating caucus-goers. That's not a new argument. Camp Clinton has been building that narrative ever since it became clear to them that they could lose on elected delegates. It's become so pervasive that even neutral Nancy Pelosi smacked it down publicly: ``It's not just following the returns; it's also having a respect for what has been said by the people,'' Pelosi said. It would be ``a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided,'' she said. What is new is Automatic Ickes' attempt to bolster that argument, and it's odious (my emphasis): "They are closely in touch with the issues and ideas of the jurisdiction they represent and they are as much or more in touch than delegates won or recruited by presidential campaigns," Ickes said.Ickes has taken the concept of public servants representing a constituency and transformed it into superdelegates (some of which are public servants, some not) representing the electorate. That's radical. (Title and a bit of wording changed because for some reason I made Ickes a super too - I don't actually know if he is one or not.) |