The Hypocrisy of the Clinton Campaign

Mark Nicholas has demonstrated the hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign in a couple of recent posts. Yesterday he showed how Terry McAuliffe took the opposite position he now takes with regards to Michigan and Florida. In 2004 Michigan Senator Carl Levin threatened to do what Michigan did this year in moving up the primary. An excerpt from McAuliffe’s book, What A Party! (page 235), shows where he stood in 2004:

“I’m going outside the primary window,” [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.

“If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,” I said. “We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.”

He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.

“You won’t deny us seats at the convention,” he said.

“Carl, take it to the bank,” I said. “They will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.”

We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it.

A few days ago Nicholas presented several quotes from the Clinton campaign on how the race was one for delegates. This was before they decided that 1) the race is over the popular vote but 2) Clinton will not drop out if Obama remains ahead in the popular vote.

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