Commentary and Analysis: The 2008 Presidential Primaries

Karl Rove Sen. Barack Obama Sen. Hillary Clinton

Bamboozling the American electorate again

(Note: Printing out in PDF format is recommended.)

Revised and updated May 10, 2008

Evidence of a covert campaign to undermine the presidential primaries is rife, so it's curious that many within both the Democratic and Republican parties have ignored the actual elephant in the room this year. That would be Karl Rove. Long accused of rigging the two previous presidential elections, this master of deceit would have us believe that he's gone off to sit in a corner and write op-eds this time around.

Not so. According to an article in Time magazine last November, Republicans have been organized in many states to throw their weight behind Senator Barack Obama, hoping to deprive Senator Hillary Clinton of the Democratic nomination. While Rove's name isn't mentioned in the story, several former fundraisers and strategists for President Bush are identified. Together, these gentlemen helped flush Obama's coffers with cash early on in the race, something the deep pockets had not done for any candidate in their own party. With receipts topping $100 million in 2007, the first-term Illinois senator achieved a remarkable feat, given that most Americans only first heard of him in 2005.

To expedite the strategy, a website and discussion forum called Republicans for Obama formed in 2006, while the Obama camp launched its own "Be a Democrat For a Day" campaign a year later. A video distributed by its satellite offices explained the procedure to voters in Florida, Nevada, Vermont and elsewhere. In addition, many states nowadays hold open primaries, allowing citizens to vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation. In Nebraska, for example, the mayor of Omaha publicly rallied Republicans to caucus for Obama on February 9th. In Pennsylvania, Time reported on March 19th that Obama was running radio ads in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia asking Republicans to register as Democrats and then vote for him in the state's April 22nd primary.

The tactic, called crossover voting, allowed Obama to capture the delegates in nearly all the red state caucuses, while trimming Clinton's delegate haul in the blue state primaries enough to keep her trailing. Republicans for Obama, for one, was not bashful in making its case in an email appeal linked to its home page before the March 4th contests. "Since Texas has an open primary," the appeal read, "Republicans and Independents should sign in at their polling place and request a Democratic ballot. They should then vote for Barack Obama... Just think, no more Clintons in the White House!"

Rove undoubtedly prepared well for 2008. Even with the full monte of election-scamming tools available to him - phone bank sabotage, fake polling data, swiftboating, waitlisting, electronic voting equipment, Norman Hsu, etc. - the neoconservative base he represents would be hard pressed to eclipse Clinton in November, no matter what ticket the the G.O.P. puts forward. The former First Lady and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has promised an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, along with a massive New Deal type jobs program to address the country's economic woes. Thus, all the vote-rigging ingenuity known to man probably won't make a difference if the contest isn't close. Several influential Republicans admitted as much in a February 11th story for Politico.

If, on the other hand, Obama wins the nomination (or even the VP spot), Rove's prospects brighten considerably. Largely unvetted by the press, the senator carries considerable baggage from his stint as a state legislator, particularly his 17-year relationship with Chicago slumlord Tony Rezko, currently on trial for fraud. Until the controversy over his pastor broke in March, most journalists had paid lip service to the particulars of Obama's past. And major media outlets continue to portray him as a fresh new face in American politics, a candidate whose speeches call to mind MLK and JFK, even Abraham Lincoln. For her part, the author of the November Time article, Jay Newton-Small, offered the following explanation to account for the bizarre love affair G.O.P. voters say they're having with an African American senator on the other side of the aisle. "It seems a lot of Republicans took to heart Obama's statement in his rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that 'there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.'"

Is she kidding? The conservative publication National Journal claims Senator Obama's voting record is the most liberal in Washington. Not everyone agrees with that assessment by a long shot - he supported the 2005 Cheney energy bill, for instance - but it's nevertheless hard to picture the voting pattern Newton-Small implies here: Nixon - Reagan - Bush - Dole - Bush - Obama. Still, this through-the-looking-glass rationale is widely promoted by journalists, pundits and politicians across the political spectrum. Many advance the equally suspect position that Clinton, the first-ever viable female candidate for president, represents the past.

It's what people in the news business call "spin". Last year, at the same time she commanded a huge lead in the national polls, political analysts and professional strategists retained by CNN and other broadcast networks began hammering across the notion that "the voters don't like her". The adjectives "unlikable", "divisive", "polarizing" and "untrustworthy" have been repeated over and over in connection to Clintonin the same manner that "biological warfare" and "weapons of mass destruction" were employed in the lead-up to the Iraq War. In the week before the key Indiana-North Carolina primaries, the term "panderer" saturated the air waves, effectively demolishing Clinton's impressive polling numbers by the time voters reached the ballot booth. The use of such buzzword terminology traces back to a cadre of right-wing, neoconservative ideologues who have kept the studio seats warm at the Fox News Channel since its inception in 1996. "There is no candidate on record, a front-runner for a party's nomination, who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has," Rove told Reuters last August. In February, Bush's former senior political advisor joined Fox as a part-time election analyst.

Obama himself invariably recites Rove's "high negatives" comment in press interviews whenever discussing Clinton. His often bitter criticism of her, along with other "Washington insiders", who he says want to "boil and stew all the hope out of him", represents a staple of his core political message. The other half of the stump speech, known as the I'm-a-uniter-not-a-divider pitch, is reminiscent of the Bush 2000 campaign, which Rove managed. Perhaps that's not surprising when you discover that one of Obama's speechwriters is Ben Rhodes, the brother of Fox News VP David Rhodes. (Marisa Guthrie, of BC Beat, reported this connection.) You may recall that on election night in November 2000, it was Fox that called Florida for Bush, even though the other networks declared Gore the winner after citing the exit polls. How Fox knew the polls were wrong in advance of the vote count has never been explained.

And the G.O.P. links to the Obama campaign don't end there. The Times of London reported on March 2nd that Obama is interviewing conservative Republican lawmakers like Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar for key positions in his cabinet, if he's elected in November. "Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary." the story revealed. "Some regard the outspoken Republican as a possible vice-presidential nominee although that might be regarded as a 'stretch'." Lugar is being evaluated as a potential secretary of state.

Presidential Race or Next American Idol?

Now that John McCain has been designated the Republican nominee (at least, until their convention in September), crossover voting has reached fever pitch in the remaining primary states. Shortly before Texaco and Ohio, radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham both encouraged their listeners to vote for Clinton. Since the two are long-standing critics of the senator and her husband, the unorthodox move may have simply provided cover for the larger operation on behalf of Obama. Curiously, G.O.P. frontrunner John McCain spent the weekend before his last contested primaries at home in Arizona, perhaps in deference to the crossover initiative.

In addition to Republican voters, the Clinton camp also has to the manipulation of a Madison Avenue-style publicity campaign that's allowed her rival to gain a seemingly intractable foothold among voters under thirty. Once an unknown quantity, Obama is now considered a cult icon, or a sort of Starbucks equivalent of Gandhi. Free videos touting the candidate's "rock star" status began appearing on You-Tube in 2007, especially the slickly produced "Obama Girl" clip, which features a bikini-clad actress gyrating her bottom as she lip-synchs lyrics of veneration to the candidate.

Even a cursory review of the Obama's record in Illinois and Washington does not bear out the hype. During an MSNBC interview in February, Austin State Senator Kirk Watson, an Obama endorser, was unable to list a single accomplishment of the candidate when asked. A week later, a Q and A session with a focus group for the Fox program Hannity and Colmes uncovered the same knowlege gap. (A CNN focus group yielded similar results in late April.) None of those voters supporting Obama could identify any past achievement. It was Obama's present-day venture that fascinated them, the historic nature of his quest to become the country's first African-American president, along with his inspirational oratory. (Regarding Obama's record in the U.S. Senate, the New York Times published a background piece on March 9th.)

In addition to the merchandising angle, nobody would have predicted a few years ago that progressive journalists would join in an unholy alliance with Fox News Channel in promoting this novice politician with the peculiar proximity group. Yet here we are. Ari Berman, a writer at The Nation, was seen in March popping up on Fox programs he and his staff once regarded as 24/7 campaign commercials for the Republican Party. And editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has been using CNN to promote Obama's allegedly squeaky clean credentials, claiming he gets no support from lobbyists or corporate special interests. While, the assertion is disputed by the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website, factcheck.org, and an article appearing in the Boston Globe, the "best political team in television" has never challenged vanden Heuvel on the point. In addition, the fact that the senator is known to have watered down legislation requiring nuclear giant Exelon to disclose its radiation leaks to the public doesn't seem to trouble Obama's left-leaning backers in the least. Exelon employees were among Obama's major contributors in 2006, while oil company executives and employees continue to pitch into the cause. (See the New York Times article for more on the leaks controversy.)

In a blog posted on her website the morning after the Iowa Caucus, Adrianna Huffington lauded the Illinois senator as practically the Second Coming. Like others of her stripe, she didn't have much to offer in the way of specifics, and spent the bulk of her remarks railing at Bill Clinton, who she said had conducted himself in an interview as "arrogant and entitled, dismissive and fear-mongering".

Huffington was one of several politicos swindled by the California recall referendum in 2002, which removed a Democratic governor from office. In his place, Enron's Ken Lay successfully installed Hollywood action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger and catapulted the state's old guard of Reaganites back to power in this predominantly liberal state. Candidate Huffington dropped out of the race a few days before the election, conceding the entire affair had been a set-up to divide the vote.

That she would allow herself to be bamboozled a second time is astonishing. With a few clicks of a mouse, she might have easily learned that former Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Illinois G.O.P. fielded an ill-qualified, non-state resident named Alan Keyes to run against Obama for the U.S. senate in 2004. Keyes replaced Jack Ryan, the candidate who officially won the G.O.P. primary, after Ryan was embarassed in an alleged sex scandal involving his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan. Jeri played "Seven of Nine" in the television series Star Trek Voyager, and the charge against Ryan was never corroborated. Regardless, Alan Keyes went on to pick up a staggering 27 percent of the vote, effectively handing Obama the seat.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the candiate himself "knows his way around a ballot". The newspaper published an article documenting several successful efforts by Obama to disqualify challengers in his two state senate elections by filing legal challenges against them. The Tribune has also published an in-depth report about his time in the Illinois legislature, while Newsweek offers a comparison of Obama and his rival as members of Congress.

Rezko Affair

As an attorney, Obama worked on a low-income senior housing project in which Rezko and a partner firm run by Obama's boss, Allison Davis, charged a fee of $855,000 for their services. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "In addition to the development fees, a separate Davis-owned company stood to make another $900,000 through federal tax credits." According to a January 28th overview of the Rezko/Obama connection, in 1994, the City of Chicago sued Davis's firm, Woodlawn Preservation & Investment Corporation, for maintaining slumlike conditions that included no working heat in the apartments. Obama represented the landlord in court.

Later, as a state senator, Obama wrote endorsement letters on behalf of Rezko to government agencies allocating funds to build other housing projects, even though he nowadays insists he never did his friend any favors. A 2007 Chicago Tribune article said that Rezko's firm got contracts to rehab 30 buildings, including 11 in Obama's state legislative district on the South Side. Edward McClelland, writing for Salon.com, states that "Rezko, after all, built part of his fortune by exploiting the black community that Obama had served in the state Senate, and by milking government programs meant to benefit black-owned businesses."

While it may be unclear why Obama would continue his relationship with Rezko after this point, it's indisputable that he did. In 2005, Obama approached Rezko for help in purchasing a $2 million Georgian-revival home in the historic Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. The property deal involved splitting the land into two lots, with Rezko buying the large side yard for $625,000, allowing Obama and his wife Michelle to acquire the parcel that included the mansion for $300,000 off the asking price. The Chicago Tribune reported the details of this unusual arrangement in November 2006.

Although no laws were broken in the transaction, Obama's entanglement with Rezko will surely represent a huge hurdle to his presidential aspirations if he goes on to become the Democratic nominee. The New York Times has also reported that the Obama property deal may have been an attempt by the developer to shield assets from creditors in several individual lawsuits pending at the time. Even more hair-raising, Rezko received a mysterious $3.5 million loan in April, 2007 from a longtime business associate, Nadhmi Auchi, a London-based Iraqi exile and one of the world's richest men, according to Forbes. The Pentagon has identified Auchi is a former moneyman for Saddam Hussein, the Sun-Times reports. Rezko is originally from Syria.

According to The Times of London, "Mr Auchi was convicted of corruption, given a suspended sentence and fined £1.4 million in France in 2003 for his part in the Elf affair, described as the biggest political and corporate scandal in post-war Europe." Rezko and Auchi are current partners in a major 62-acre land development in Riverside Park in Chicago. The Times also reported on February 26th that Auchi lent Rezko additional funds shortly before the purchase of the Obama property. "Under a Loan Forgiveness Agreement described in court," according to The Times, "Mr Auchi lent Mr Rezko $3.5 million in April 2005 and $11 million in September 2005, as well as the $3.5 million transferred in April 2007."

Interestingly, Auchi (the billionaire) visited Chicago in 2004, where a reception in his honor was attended by both Rezko and Emil Jones, president of the Illinois state senate. Jones was a crucial ally in Obama's 2004 U.S. senate bid, according to a CNN report. In particular, Jones added the candidate's name to a slough of bills that passed through the legislature that year, often over the protest of the bill authors. Obama himself attended the Auchi gathering, held at the posh Four Seasons hotel, but says he doesn't recall meeting the man. A prosecution witness at the Rezko trial that's underway in Chicago testified on April 14th that Obama and his wife Michelle met Auchi during a party at Rezko's home April 3, 2004.

The details concerning this international intrigue remain sparse. At first describing his relationship with Rezko as amounting to no more that "five billable hours" of law work at his firm, Obama later admitted the estate deal with Rezko was a "boneheaded" mistake. He insists, however, that he's never done any favors for Rezko, and explained at a March 14th meeting with reporters from both Chicago dailies, "This is an area where I can see sort of a lapse in judgment, where I could have said 'No, I'm not sure that's a good idea.'" Past campaign contributions from Rezko and his circle would eventually lead Obama to donate some of the money to charity.

Even here, his story continues to change. Initially, the Sun-Times put the figure of tainted cash at $168,000. In February, the senator agreed to surrender about half that amount, but only as an "abundance of caution", a senior staffer said. However, when NBC Nightly News broadcast a story about the finances, the entire sum was donated. On March 14th, the Obama campaign annouced it would surrender additional funds following an investigative report by ABC News that uncovered another $100,000 linked to Rezko associates. A March 3rd analysis by the Los Angeles Times added that Obama's various campaigns over the years were financed in part using "straw donors", individuals who take money from other sources and contribute it to the candidate under their own names. It's unclear if his current fundraising has been audited for irregularities.

And the skeletons continue to pile up in the closet. Another Iraqi ex-patriot connected to Obama, Aiham Alsammarae, posted more than $2.7 million in property as collateral to help spring Tony Rezko from jail in April, according to a story in the Sun-Times. This was a rather odd development, since Alsammarae is wanted by Interpol for the theft of $650 million in Iraqi reconstruction funds. He is the former Minister of Electricity in that country, the New York Times asserts. Newsweek reported that Alsammarae'a son sent several faxes to Obama's office in Washington prior to his escape from a Baghdad jail in December, 2006. The fugitive now resides in Illinois, apparenly without incident, and donated online to the candidate in January, February and March. (See the website RezkoWatch for more on the tale of the two Iraqis.)

But here's the strangest twist of all in the Rezko affair (so far): the federal prosecutor in the Rezko case is Patrick Fitzgerald, the former special counsel in the Valerie Plame C.I.A. leak case. If you remember, a much anticipated indictment against Karl Rove never materialized in that earlier episode. Instead, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby was tried and convicted on four counts of lying under oath. (The sentence was later commuted by President Bush.) Whether Fitzgerald is delaying indictments of Chicago Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Obama on orders from the Bush Administration is a matter of speculation. However, on April 23rd, Rove's name came up when a witness testified that in 2004, G.O.P. heavyweight Robert Kjellander lobbied Rove to replace Fitzgerald in the case, according to a report ABC News posted on its website.

Rezko trial records have turned up a scheme in which Kjellander was allegedly paid $3.1 million by the Carlyle Group in connection with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System pension fund. (The Carlyle Group is the infamous high-finance firm whose investors included both the Bush and Bin Laden families at the time of the Sept. 11th attacks.) In other trial developments, on March 10th, Obama was identified as a participant in the crafting of legislation to reduce the number of members on the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board from 15 to 9, according to the Sun-Times' Rezko Blog. The prosecution alleges that in 2003, the Planning Board was stacked by Rezko in order to steer contracts his way. In another development reported on the CBS News website, the government's principle witness, Stuart Levine, acknowledged in sworn testimony that Allison Davis (Obama's former boss) acted as go-between in the shakedown of a Hollywood financier working with a state pension fund. The trial is expected to run through May.

For more background on the Rezko/Obama relationship, read the March 2nd article in the New York Times and the investigative series in the Sun-Times. For a deeper probe into Rezko's various corporate and political connections, check out Evelyn Pringle's three-part series on the subject.

OutFoxing Fox News

Until a Saturday Night Live skit blew their cover, most national broadcast networks appeared to be actively favoring the Obama candidacy in their reporting of the primaries. Newscasters have adopted the journalistic device of shrewdly shifting most negative revelations about him onto Clinton. For instance, shortly after she first raised the Rezko matter during the South Carolina debate, the Today show's Matt Lauer confronted the New York senator with a photo taken in the1990s. It showed her and President Clinton posing with Rezko.

Lauer provided no evidence that either husband or wife had any history with the indicted developer and Clinton told him that she's appeared in thousands of courtesy photos during her two decades of public life. Regardless, Lauer's terse questioning and skeptical demeanor suggested a sinister intent on the part of Clinton. NBC repeated the maneuver when reporting on Obama's plagiarism of a speech he gave in Wisconsin. Nightly News dug up separate video clips showing Clinton and her husband both reciting the same two-line passage from the bible. This was offered as evidence that Obama's uncredited use of his friend's "Just Words" speech in 2006 reflected a standard practice among politicians.

A few other examples of media bias are worth noting. On the night before the New Hampshire primary, anchor Brian Williams accompanied Obama on the campaign trail, flashing a Newsweek cover of the senator and uttering superlatives about his meteoric rise to political stardom. In fact, Williams acted like someone undergoing a spiritual epiphany. During the same broadcast, Andrea Mitchell derided the Clinton campaign as broke, desperate, and ablaze with in-fighting. She continued along these lines the following night, assuring viewers that the senator's initial three-point lead in the vote tally would eventually evaporate. It didn't.

A common trick used by political hacks, this attempt to cast doubt on one candidate's viability while creating a bandwagon effect for another has become a regular feature of the 2008 election coverage. Shortly before Super Tuesday, both Mitchell and Meet the Press host Tim Russert claimed that the leadership of the Democratic Party was "mad as hell" at Bill Clinton and lining up to back the Illinois senator. No sources were offered to corroborate this bombshell allegation. Russert went on to explain that Ted and Caroline Kennedy's recent endorsement of Obama represented a sea change in the election, adding that because Ted's brother Bobby Kennedy had been friends with Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farmworkers, the endorsement should pave the way for Obama capturing the Latino vote.

What NBC's crack team of reporters failed to mention was that three of Bobby Kennedy's own children, as well as the son of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers union itself had already endorsed Clinton. In Nevada, Latinos in the 60,000-strong Culinary Workers Union defied their white male leadership's endorsement of Obama and helped Clinton win the caucus there. Yet while the Florida primary was showing Clinton with a 15 point lead in the polls, over at CNN, fill-in anchor Jim Acosta was declaring the Obama campaign a "runaway train" after its big South Carolina victory.

On February 10th, two days before the Maryland-Virginia-D.C. primaries, CBS anchor Katy Couric joined the Clinton-bashing extravaganza with a 60 Minutes segment spiced with multiple questions about how the candidate would deal with losing the election. The contentious exchange followed a Steve Kroft piece on Obama that seemed like an instant replay of the Williams New Hampshire epiphany. At the time CBS ran the two segments, Obama was still trailing Clinton in delegates.

To wit, if there's a runaway train in this race, it isn't either of the candidates. For the past 20 years, media outlets have become increasingly consolidated into chains owned by multinational corporations. In consequence, over time the news, entertainment and advertising divisions have become increasingly indistinguishable from one another. The NBC/MSNBC network, which has come under fire for the mysoginist undertones of some of its cable newscasters, is owned by the energy company and defense contractor General Electric. (It seems Tony Rezko obtained a $10 million loan from General Electric Capital Corp. for a chain of pizza restaurants a few years ago, according to a recent Sun-Times story.) For her part, Clinton critic Andrea Mitchell is married to former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, the man many economists blame for the current meltdown on Wall Street.

There are a few journalists who admit off-camera that Clinton has not been treated fairly in the course of the campaign. In December, Howard Kurtz published an article in the Washington Post that first exposed the widespread media bias favoring Obama. "The Illinois senator's fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's," Kurtz offered as an example of the phenomenon. "When the Washington Post reported last month that Obama used a political action committee to hand more than $180,000 to Democratic groups and candidates in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the suggestion that he might be buying support received no attention on the network newscasts." Fear of Flying novelist Erica Jong offers her take on the situation in Hillary vs. the Patriarchy, published in early February, also in the Washington Post.

Unlike her big Florida victory on January 29th, the news of Clinton's New Hampshire win was not blacked out from coast to coast the next day. Her detractors quickly rushed to fortify their positions, concerned that momentum from the dramatic comeback after losing Iowa would soon turn into an electoral tsunami. In the two weeks leading up to the South Carolina primary, Obama surrogates argued that New Hampshire's white voters had betrayed their publicly declared support of the black candidate in the secrecy of the ballot booth; hence the discrepanct between pre-election polls and the actual tally. Later, when Senator Clinton made a speech tying Martin Luther King's efforts to President Johnson's signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, highlighting the role of Johnson, the Obama camp pounced. A South Carolina staff person sent out a four-page memorandum urging spokespeople to slam her for disrespecting Dr. King.

If you tracked the coverage of the ensuing feud, you would never know that it was this document that sparked the episode. Before it surfaced on the internet, Obama insisted to reporters that neither he nor anyone on his staff had accused Clinton of any impropriety in her speech about Johnson. He said he was "baffled" by her suggestion that they were somehow involved. Democratic strategist Donna Brazille later came to his defense, railing at what she termed inexcusable slurs by former President Clinton who in a speech described Obama as a "kid" whose presidential bid amounted to a "fairy tale". (To be sure, Clinton stated that Obama's position on the Iraq War was a fairy tale, not his candidacy.)

On the heels of the Brazille accusation, South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn claimed Bill Clintons' remarks had compelled him to renege on an earlier promise to the Democratic National committee not to endorse a candidate before his state's primary. A few days later, Clyburn retracted his endorsement of Obama, but the damage was done. Black voters converged on election day to back the senator from Illinois in huge numbers. Now that the Clintons were being barbecued in the press for "playing the race card", Obama would no longer have to worry about the African American vote. (Princeton Professor Sean Wilentz wrote a long piece on this subject in The New Republic in Februrary 27th.)

In February, the Obama campaign took up the call by neoconservatives that Snator Clinton and her husband releases their tax returns for the last several years (even though he hadn't released many of his own), as well as records pertaining to her eight-year stint in the White House. On March 19th, the National Archives released the former First Lady's appointment calendar. The Clinton tax returns were published two weeks later. By contrast, CBS News reports that Obama himself has produced no documents regarding his own two terms in the state senate. "Obama's statement that he has no papers from his time in the Illinois statehouse — he left in 2004 — stands in stark contrast to the massive Clinton file stored at the National Archives: an estimated 78 million pages of documents, plus 20 million e-mail messages, packed into 36,000 boxes," according to the article. The Clinton campaign said it found "the dog ate my homework" excuse unacceptable, especially coming from a candidate who has made such a huge deal out of transparency.

Clinton Unplugged

Before the presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton historically shied away from responding to personal attacks, whether it comes from sexist Manhattan firefighters or Chris Matthews' daily disparagement of her on MSNBC's Hardball. Her campaign briefly cut off relations with NBC when another MSNBC reporter, David Schuster, said the Clintons had "pimped-out" daughter Chelsea as part of their election strategy. Over the course of several debates, however, her political reflexes sharpened to the point where nowadays, no personal attack has gone unpunished. (Accusations involving racebaiting seem to be an exception.) During a contentious April 8th radio interview, Clinton took NPR reporter Michele Norris to task for asserting that she was trying to "win ugly".

Yet Clinton has demured so far in implicating Karl Rove as one of the brains behind the G.O.P.'s covert operation to help Obama defeat her. After being targetted with offensive direct mailers in Ohio, she accused her rival of tactics "straight out of the Rove playbook", but has never mentioned the impact of the crossover voting scheme in the red states, part of the reason her opponent is still far ahead of her in the delegate count. As for the rest of the Bush Administration, all Clinton has mustered to date on the subject is her oft-repeated statement, “They’re not going to surrender the White House voluntarily." Last spring, she suggested that another terrorist attack against the United States would inevitably play into the hands of the G.O.P.

Vague as they sound, those last two remarks may prove prophetic in the event the Obama strategy fails and she goes on to win the Democratic nomination. The implications of a female president for American foreign and domestic policy are profound, especially when the candidate has promised greater oversight of corporations, federally sponsored job programs and improving women's human rights around the world. Such initiatives create jitters not only for Wall Street concerns but for the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department. Officials accused of breaking U.S. laws or violating the Geneva Conventions could ostensibly be arrested and prosecuted by a Clinton-run Justice Department.

And if that's not enough to keep Bush appointees lying awake deep into the night, their long-running wink-wink with the ayatollahs in Iran, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and the Saudi royal family would likely be curtailed if a woman were to take over in the West Wing. The Saudis especially have reason to fret now that they and their counterparts in Kuwait and the U.A.E. have started buying up huge stakes in U.S. banks. In the eyes of the oil producing countries, Condolleeza Rice and Nancy Pelosi are one thing, a Clinton White House quite another.

Last year, President Bush himself may have implemented a back-up plan to a possible Clinton Administration Part II when he signed National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51. This executive order ostensibly allows him to suspend the constitution without prior congressional approval if he declares a state of emergency (i.e. martial law) in the event of a major terrorist attack or other “decapitating” incident against the United States. According to the language in the directive, the attack need not even take place inside the country. 

Under NSPD 51, the President can cancel elections, padlock the Capitol dome and send the Supreme Court justices home. The directive also assigns his homeland security assistant - a low-level position exempt from senate confirmation - to administer what has been dubbed the Enduring Constitutional Government.  (Here’s the text of the directive.)

Michigan and Florida, Delegates and the Conventions

Dean has called on all superdelegates to state their candidate preference before July 1st. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has echoed the sentiment, saying "things will be done" to make sure a nominee is named before the convention. (See the various statements.) However, the extent of their authority to subvert the Democratic process is unclear. Clinton has been under pressure from Obama supporters to quit the race, since a protracted battle (they say) is hurting the Democratic Party. Some pundits and journalists have also raised the prospect of violence at the convention should the nominee not be resolved beforehand. Both CNN and Fox were already using this "there will be blood" scenario in their election-reporting title graphics on the night of the Texas/Ohio primaries. While the rules don't require Clinton to cede the nomination before the ballots are cast at the covention, the pressure on her to do so continues.

Regarding those intensifying calls, Sarah Churchwell of the Independent (U.K.) wrote on May 8th,"A similar argument was advanced in 2000, pressuring Gore to concede the presidency to Bush, or risk a 'constitutional crisis' – American code for 'rip the country apart'. He was told he couldn't win, that the people had spoken, that he should concede graciously and let the system work – the one the Republicans were busy rigging. So he conceded. That turned out well, didn't it?"

A resolution before the convention would derail Clinton's plan to support a floor fight to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida, as well as lobbying both Obama's pledged and superdelegates to jump ship and vote for her. Historically, such a scenario has been on the table for decades, and in 1984 was employed with relish by candidates Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson when they competed against frontrunner Walter Mondale in San Francisco. ("This is a convention, not a coronation," Jackson quipped at the time, while a huge protest rally against U.S. military operations in Central America raged outside.) Although it's rarely mentioned in the press, legally no determination of a nominee can carry any legitimacy until the first ballot is taken in August. After all, that's what conventions are for.

To muddy the waters further, global warming crusader Al Gore, who says he'd like to be president, may also be jockeying to enter the fray as a "draft" candidate at the proceedings in Denver. There is also John Edwards, who refuses to endorse either Clinton or Obama. In Gore's case, he has avoided the scrutiny of a protracted primary battle this year, and for good reason. Most voters have forgotten that while vice-president under Bill Clinton, the Nobel prizewinner failed miserably in pressing for senate ratification of the Kyoto Treaty in 1998, issuing a press release instead. In his role as president of the U.S. Senate, Gore was also criticized (as noted above) for blocking challenges from a dozen African American congressmembers in certifying the vote in the 2000 presidential election. That episode is recounted in painful detail at the beginning of Michael Moore's documentary film Fahrenheit 911.

Meanwhile, the January primary votes by Florida and Michigan (the country's 4th and 8th most populous states, respectively) remain unresolved. Both states' pledged and superdelegates were stripped by the Democratic National Committee for holding primaries before February 5th. Clinton won 50 percent of Florida's popular vote, Obama 33 percent, and John Edwards 16 percent. The state's party officials explained to the DNC rules committee in August, 2007 that Florida's Republican-controlled legislature set the date for the primary, not them. The change was attached as an amendment to a popular bill requiring all electronic voting equipment to include paper receipts. A December 17th article in The Nation suggests that Howard Dean and the DNC unnecessarily antagonized voters by refusing to an grant exemption to the early primary date. More recently, investigative journalist Wayne Barrett published a detailed analysis of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to move up both elections.

Clinton said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report on March 6th that she wanted the Florida delegation to be credentialed at the convention and rejected Obama's proposal that a caucus be held instead. "I would not accept a caucus. I think that would be a great disservice to the 2 million people who turned out and voted. I think that they want their votes counted. And you know a lot of people would be disenfranchised because of the timing and whatever the particular rules were. This is really going to be a serious challenge for the Democratic Party because the voters in Michigan and Florida are the ones being hurt, and certainly with respect to Florida the Democrats were dragged into doing what they did by a Republican governor and a Republican Legislature. They didn't have any choice whatsoever. And I don't think that there should be any do-over or any kind of a second run in Florida. I think Florida should be seated."

Michigan held its primary on January 15th. Since Obama, Edwards and Biden voluntarily pulled their names from the ballot beforehand, the votes for Clinton cannot be said to represent a mandate. However, there's more to this story than the mainstream press has reported. According to an October 11th article by Lynda Waddington of the Iowa Independent, "The campaign for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, arguably fearing a poor showing in Michigan, reached out to the others with a desire of leaving New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the only candidate on the ballot. The hope was that such a move would provide one more political obstacle for the Clinton campaign to overcome in Iowa."

And the plot thickens. In the case of Florida, strategist Donna Brazille, an African American superdelegate and paid analyst for both CNN and ABC, had also served on the DNC rules committee when it stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates. It was Brazille who argued forcefully in August, 2007 for this draconian measure, even after Florida's party chairwoman painstaking described to the committee the Republican legistalure's scheme to move up the primary date. With its high percentage of Hispanic voters, New York retirees and relatively low percentage of African Americans, Florida could have been forecast early on as problem state for the Obama campaign. In Michigan, the candidacy of native son Mit Romney precluded the possiblity of a large crossover vote of Republicans on the candidate's behalf. Thus it, too, would have favored Clinton. Had the DNC not sanctioned these states, she would therefore have hauled in the lion's share of over 300 delegates up for grabs, reversing the delegate count and adding to her momentum going into Super Tuesday. Arguably, the race would have ended as originally expected on February 5th.

Soldiering on, the Clinton campaign pulled together $10 million in private funding to redo the primary in Michigan. When Senator Obama refused to endorse the plan, however, the state legislature declined to schedule a new vote. Meanwhile, Florida is in the midst of swapping out old voting machinery around the state and installing new machines, making a new primary there logistically impossible. Wary of ballot tampering, the Florida congressional delegation has so far refused to back a vote-by-mail proposal and insists the record-breaking turnout of 1.75 million democrats there on January 29th speaks for itself.

Without the contested states in her column, Clinton may be unable to catch up with her opponent in either pledged delegates or the popular vote. She has pledged to put up a credentials fight in August, and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the former candidate, recently backed the idea of an "open convention". As Obama's image has become tarnished in the eyes of white, working class voters, it's possible that many pledged delegates will defect at the convention and vote for Clinton. Still, the road to the White House remains an uphill climb for the once inevitable female candidate. Thanks to Karl Rove and his friends in the shadows, the Democratic nominee may ultimately be determined by the G.O.P., with a big assist from the mainstream media, the Democratic Party establishment, and the left.

If the plot line here sounds vaguely familiar, that's because playwright Henrik Ibsen envisioned it long ago in his classic Enemy of the People. For an even longer opus on the subject of political chicanery than the one you've just read, check out the play. The parallels between fiction and reality may surprise you.

- Rosemary Regello editor@thecityedition.com

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