Fantasy Politics USA

20 major Hillary Clinton backers have shot off a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about some views she expressed during a recent interview on ABC’s This Week. Pelosi said she believed the superdelgates should vote for the candidate with the most pledged delegates after the primaries are over. In the letter they urged Pelosi to “clarify your position on super-delegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August.” “Superdelegates, like all delegates, have an obligation to make an informed, individual decision about whom to support and who would be the party’s strongest nominee,” the backers wrote. “Both campaigns agree that at the end of the primary contests neither will have enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination,” they also said. “In that situation, superdelegates must look to not one criterion but to the full panoply of factors that will help them assess who will be the party’s strongest nominee in the general election.” This reflects Clinton’s recent announcements that she thought the superdelegates can change their votes, and exercise independent judgment about who would be the best for the party and the country. They have become important in this election since neither candidate will likely have enough pledged delegates when this is all over, and the superdelegates will have to pick our candidate. The Obama campaign has responded by saying, “this letter is inappropriate and we hope the Clinton campaign will reject the insinuation contained in it.” The Clinton camp has responded to their response with, “few have done more to build the Democratic Party than Bill and Hillary Clinton. The last thing they need is a lecture from the Obama campaign.”
Alan Cosgrove

Two State Department officials were fired recently and one more disciplined for having a look at Barack Obama’s passport and other personal electronic information. All three were contract workers within the State Department, and used their authorized computer network access to look up files. This is in violation of State Department privacy rules. “Each time an employee logs on, he or she acknowledges the records are protected by the privacy act and that they are only available on a need-to-know basis.” A State Department spokesman said, “As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity…..we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case” The Obama campaign has responded by saying, “This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.” The breach of Obama’s passport was as early as January, and monitoring systems tripped when the records of a high profile person were accessed. “When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified,” according to State Department spokesperson. The Obama camp has called for a investigation saying, “This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”
Alan Cosgrove

Florida’s state Democratic congressional delegation rejected a proposal for a do over in the states primary on Thursday. The proposal had called for a combination of mail in vote and in person vote scheduled for early June. The delegation released a statement saying, “After reviewing the party’s proposal and individually discussing this idea with state and local leaders and elections experts, we do not believe that this is a realistic option at this time and remain opposed to a mail-in ballot election or any new primary election in Florida of any kind.” State party chairperson Karen Thurman said, “we really believe that all Floridians deserve to be heard, but if this is not what the people of Florida and our presidential candidates want, then we’re not going to do it.” A mail in vote is illegal since Florida law prohibits elections via the mail. The cost of the proposed re-do elections would be about 12 million dollars or more, and so far no one wants to pay for it. Florida also doesn’t even have voting machines at this time since they are doing away with the touch screen voting machines. They decided to do this with the same bill that proposed they vote ahead of schedule. The early primary was the last time Florida will use the touch screen voting machines, and hopefully they will have the new system up and running by November. The two candidates differ on solutions for this mess. Hillary Clinton has said she believes the primaries already held in Michigan and Florida should be counted, but would also be open to a do-over primary. “There are two options: Honor the results or hold new primary elections,” she said. “If you’re a voter from Florida or Michigan, you know that we should count your votes.” Clinton told voters today, “the results of those primaries were fair and should be honored.” Barack Obama has a different opinion about the voters in those two states. Obama believes the primaries already held were unfair and should not be counted. “We were told that Michigan and Florida wouldn’t count, and so we said we wouldn’t campaign there,” Obama said. “Senator Clinton said the same thing, that they wouldn’t count. Now her campaign is suggesting that they should.” Obama said he wouldn’t campaign there, but he was the only Democratic candidate that had T.V. commercials playing for a few weeks in Florida ahead of the primaries. At the time they claimed it was part of a national ad playing on cable channels, but it somehow never appeared after the primaries ended in Florida. Obama says the January results “just defy logic.” “I think you could ask my 6-year-old whether that was fair, and she would probably be able to say, ‘No, that isn’t,'” Obama said. Obama has not laid out a plan B on this, only to say the delegates should be seated in an “equitable” way. The Obama campaign would like to split the Florida and Michigan 50-50, which would be the same as ignoring the voters in those states completely. They also have said they would be open to caucuses in both of the states since he seems to do so well with that format. The Florida primary was as fair as it could be under such circumstances, and the results should be honored. The only candidate to campaign in Florida was Obama and he lost big, now he wants to ignore the results and call it unfair. Over twice as many voters cast votes in the Florida primary in 2008 than did in the 2004, and two major candidates in both parties dropped out after the results. To ignore these voters defies logic. In Michigan Obama pulled his name off the ballots to show a gesture of good faith to the DNC. When he did that he turned his back on the voters in Michigan to appease fat cat Democratic leaders. Is this a sign of making good sound decisions? Over 2 million voters in those two states are being ignored, and it is all the fault of party leaders and state legislatures that pushed for this early voting. In Florida it was a Republican governor with a Republican state legislature that are still laughing at the Democrats folly. It is interesting to note that the Democratic leader in the Florida legislature recommended a bill that would have had Florida voting on February 5th with the rest of super Tuesday, but it was rejected by the Republican controlled legislature.
Alan Cosgrove

While the Democratic National Committee, Michigan, and Florida try to figure out the delegate mess Al Sharpton has volunteered to screw things up even more. Sharpton has decided that the people that did not vote in Florida’s January primary are disenfranchised since many thought their vote would not count. Apparently he has not looked at all the numbers, since over twice as many people voted this past primary than did in the 2004 primary. Sharpton is traveling into Florida to collect signatures of these people for a lawsuit he wants to file against the DNC. Sharpton has not officially endorsed a candidate but it is clear he is doing this on Barack Obama’s behalf. It is in Obama’s best interest if the delegates in Florida and Michigan are not counted, which gives him a lead in the delegate count. Sharpton was on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Friday and said he believes in rules, and rules are not made to be broken. He does not believe the delegates in Florida or Michigan should be counted, which would disenfranchise all those that already voted, yet he spends a couple of days in Florida looking for a few hundred simple minds. “We cannot have the perception that the rules changed because of some favoritism, or because some people didn’t want to see Senator Obama as the nominee, when he legitimately pulled ahead,” Sharpton said on O’Reilly’s show. He went on to say that if Obama is denied the nomination because of some “back room deals” by the superdelegates, “you not only would see people like me demonstrating, you may see us talking about whether or not we can support that ticket.” If Hillary Clinton does win by some “back room deals” then Obama will almost assuredly be on the ticket with her. It seems unlikely that Sharpton could get that much support to not support the ticket. What are their options? Voting Republican or staying home. Other civil rights leaders don’t seem to agree with Sharpton. Julian bond, chairman of the NAACP, wrote a letter to Howard Dean, the chairman of the DNC, expressing his concerns for the delegates in Florida and Michigan. Bond wrote that he had “great concern at the prospect that millions of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted if they are not assigned delegate representation for the Democratic National Convention.” It looks like Sharpton wants to do anything he can to help Obama, even at the expense of millions of voters that have already voted, and seem almost ready to do it again. Two words, Tawana Brawley. Go home Al Shaprton. We don’t need your type of lawsuits. Let the DNC and the people of Florida and Michigan decide this. You are not from either one of those states, and you do not represent the DNC.
Alan Cosgrove