Monday, April 28, 2008

Morty's Republican In-laws Will Not Like This - Sorry

The Democratic Party will not be suicidal. From TPM.

Howard Dean: Party Elders All Agree Race Shouldn't Go To Convention
By Greg Sargent - April 28, 2008, 9:07AM

Howard Dean, on ABC this morning, makes it absolutely clear that he and all the other "party elders" want the race to end well in advance of the convention:

"The rules say [superdelegates] can make up their mind in August if they want to, but there are a lot of Democrats myself included, Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and many many others who understand that we want the voters to have their say, that's over on June 3rd, and then the unpledged delegates really have got to make up their mind.

"None of the so-called party elders that I've talked to thought that this should go to the convention and I agree with that."

This is likely to provoke more anger from Hillary's major supporters, who have expressed fury at Dean for statements like this, which they characterize as meddling in the Dem primary.

Either way, Dean appears to be suggesting that it's likely that party elders will step in after the voting and try to engineer a movement of super-dels to the perceived winner.

Hillary, clearly, is hoping to be able to argue that by some metric or other she won the popular vote, in order to obscure perceptions of who won, hence turning the contest into a battle for super-del support. But if Obama wins the pledged del count, as expected, it doesn't appear likely that party elders will stand idly by while that happens, if these comments from Dean are any indication.

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