Sound divisive? Dastardly? Deranged? Maybe to normal folks like you and me. But to Elaine Kamarck, this is business as usual. A lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Kamarck served as an official in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 1997 and as a senior policy adviser to Al Gore during his 2000 run. Now she’s a superdelegate and a member of the DNC’s Rules Committee–which means she has a pair of front-row seats for the loony spectacle that’s about to unfold. This morning, Stumper asked Kamarck (a Hillary supporter, yes, but a stickler for the rules above all else) for her take on what’s in store for Democrats over the next six months, from pledged-delegate poaching to the possibility that her old boss–the treehugger, not the former prez–will throw his hat in the ring. The road ahead:
Has the Democratic Party gotten itself into a mess? The only thing that is surprising is that we have two really strong candidates. That’s what’s throwing everybody into a tizzy. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the party. The party has run a process that has been absolutely consistent with the rules. Different campaigns have argued at different times against the rules. A couple of weeks ago, the Obama campaign was arguing that superdelegates ought to vote the way their constituencies vote. That’s not in the rules. We’re not going to change the rules to make that happen. You may like it, you may not like it, but it’s not in the rules. Similarly, the Clinton campaign was arguing to seat Florida and Michigan. Sorry, that’s not in the rules. [DNC Chairman] Howard Dean has been quite consistent and quite impartial in saying, “Look, these are the rules, you all agreed to them, there are absolutely no secrets about this, this is the most open party in the history of the United States, and this is what we’re going to do.” The closeness of this race is absolutely unparalleled, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the rules.
What’s the next step? There is a provision under democratic rules for Michigan and Florida to reapply–to submit a new delegate selection plan to the Rules Committee of the DNC and have it approved. The plan would have to meet all the rules–and frankly, the only rule they didn’t meet was the timing rule, so it would–and then they can hold another election in June. It’s very important, and I think Dean understands this, to make these provisions–because we certainly wouldn’t want to not seat two swing states at our convention. The irony of this is that these two states both decided to move up their primaries out of a desire to be kingmakers–and they might end up being kingmakers in the end. So you think there will be a do-over? Yes. I think there is a consensus forming around a do-over. There is a provision in the rules for it. We would have to go through a process to do it. The sticking point, of course, would be that in each state the Democrats would have to come up with the money to put on the do-over. Because I don’t think taxpayers would have much patience for spending their money on it. But, if they can come up with it in the state, I think they will have a do-over. And that will take at least one piece of this out.
What if Florida and Michigan don’t decide the race, though? There will be 80 days between the last primary in June and the convention in August–with no more votes to battle over. Let me point you in the direction of two prior conventions: the 1976 Republican convention and the 1980 Democratic convention. What happens after Florida and Michigan is that there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 individuals selected as delegates. If the two campaigns continue, if nobody drops out, they will then turn their focus on those 4,000 people, which includes the superdelegates. And there will be an intense effort to move people from one camp to the other.
We’re talking pledged delegates? Right. The fact of the matter is, there isn’t one hell of a huge difference between pledged delegates and superdelegates.
No one is bound. Right. No one at these conventions is bound. They haven’t been bound since 1980. What we will see is each candidate will set up a very elaborate, very expensive war room. They will make sure not only that all their delegates are locked down, but they will try to raid the other candidate’s delegates.
This is before the convention? If they stay in the race, this will be going on all summer.
And it’s all behind the scenes? All behind the scenes, of course.
So what will the media be reporting on? You will know who these delegates are. You will be calling them up just like you call up superdelegates. You will be tracking rumors that somebody is switching from Hillary to Obama, or Obama to Hillary. You will be trying to cover a complex set of interactions. Believe me, there will be plenty of public posturing, and the campaign will go on. Hillary and Obama will be continually campaigning and trying to convince the public that one of them has the edge, in the hopes of swaying the delegates. But they won’t be trying to convince people to vote for them, right? They’ll basically spend nearly three months saying, “This is how you voted, and this is why it means that I won.” Doesn’t that seem a little absurd? Well, the people will have voted, and the results will have basically been a draw–which is what happened between Reagan and Ford in 1976. Then the second stage is the delegates. Think of this in stages. Look, this is not an odd part of our American political system. Think of the Constitution. If there is no electoral college winner, what happens? It goes to the House of Representatives. In other words, all political systems have some mechanism for breaking the tie.
Speaking of breaking the tie, what about the superdelegates? At some point, the uncommitted ones have to make a decision to put either Clinton or Obama over the top. Does Dean step in and broker some sort of solution? No, because he’d have to take a side, and it would be completely inappropriate for him to do that. He controls the apparatus of the nomination and the apparatus at the convention, so he really has to remain for as long as possible a neutral broker of a process. Now, it’s possible that you might see a Nancy Pelosi, a Jimmy Carter, a Walter Mondale, an Al Gore–some party elders–moving in one direction or another and therefore signaling to other superdelegates that that’s where they should go. There are people out there who still haven’t committed and whose actions would probably be important.
You mean moving for one candidate or the other? Yeah. I jokingly say that there are superdelegates and then there are a handful of superduperdelegates. If his wife weren’t running, the most superduper delegate would be Bill Clinton. But he’s out of the running. He’s out of the running. The interesting thing about this and the reason there’s so much confusion is that voters are really worried about there being a backroom. Well, the real problem here is that there is no backroom. There is no smoke-filled room. These superdelegates will make decisions based on a whole variety of calculations–including who wins in their particular congressional district of their particular state.
So you see it being a free-for-all with people making decisions based on their own criteria? Yes. It will be that.
But the other option is that, instead of endorsing a particular candidate, the party elders will say “I’m for this criterion. I’m for choosing the candidate with the most pledged delegates. The superdelegates should go for whomever that person is.” No.
There won’t be a top-down process argument? No, there won’t. The reason is, there isn’t any one process that works. I’ll give you my own example. I’m a superdelegate. I’m from Massachusetts. I sit with the Massachusetts delegation. But I am not from Massachusetts. I’m an at-large member of the DNC. So I’m elected by the full Democratic National Committee, as are some other of the at-large DNC members, like Donna Brazille and others. Now, Hillary won Massachusetts. I’m a Hillary supporter and have been for a long time. Does that mean I should be for Hillary because she won my state? Or what if Obama has slightly more delegates and votes nationally, and he’s the national winner? Does that mean I should vote for him? Either one makes sense. There are too many options. I promise you this. There will be no process intervention here, and for one important reason–that, too, would be changing the rules in the middle of the game.
It won’t come from the party, obviously. But can’t you imagine a free-agent superdelegate saying, “This is the way we should decide”? I mean, you’ve already seen people like Nancy Pelosi suggest process arguments–she said that the superdelegates should back the candidate who won the most delegates. Sure, you can certainly see people coming up with decision rules, arguing over them and convincing other superdelegates. Absolutely. There will be a lot of discussion in the press and among the party elders, and it may be that a consensus will emerge. But what will not happen is that it will not be formed into a rule. Because those of us on the Rules Committee say, “We did this. And we’re not going to change it in the middle of the process.”
Okay, so we’ve made it to the convention. What if the pledged delegates stick with their candidates and the superdelegate still haven’t decided? Then you’d possibly have a second ballot. When the vote comes in Denver and no one gets to the magic number, the convention will adjourn, and they’ll probably spend a lot of time horse trading. If no one wins on the first ballot, then all hell breaks loose. Because most delegates really feel pledged on the first ballot. But when you get beyond that, who the hell knows? Maybe they’ll call on some other third person to come in and break the tie. It’s happened in the past.
Like Al Gore. It’s possible.
Would he be interested? You said that. I didn’t.
What about the public opinion element of this? If Obama creates an opinion climate where people are accepting his premise that a lead in votes and delegates by the end of primaries means that “the people have spoken,” don’t you think Democrats will be pissed if all this horsetrading is still going on? If he can make people really upset about it, it should begin to show up in public opinion polls, it should begin to show up in ways that would then potentially move delegates into his camp. If, in fact, there is public upset, if the members of Congress are hearing this, if elected delegates are hearing this, if at-large delegates are hearing this, then yeah–then that will work. But it has to work.
Now let’s discuss the general election. Does this extended infighting–I mean, months and months of nothing but horsetrading–hurt both potential Democratic nominees and help McCain? It is possible that it will hurt. But it is not clear yet. So far, this process has created enormous energy and turnout and scads of money of the Democratic side. There’s this ridiculous article in today’s New York Times that says Howard Dean doesn’t have any money. Of course he doesn’t have any money. The two Democrats have raised a quarter of a billion dollars. Now, don’t you think that the minute there’s a nominee a quarter of billion dollars goes straight to the Democratic party? Ridiculous. On the day that we have a nominee, this party is going to see a flood of money that’s probably going to take all their servers down.The Democratic party is bigger, healthier, more robust than it’s been in my lifetime. There’s just a staggering amount of interest that this race has brought out.
One thing that kept the Reagan-Ford race going was that it was conservatives really taking over the Republican Party. This year, there isn’t the same kind of ideological division–and that’s a good thing. If, in the course of the campaign, the general electorate doesn’t know what the hell this party is about–as, frankly, they didn’t in 1976 with the Republicans–then you have a really hard time in the general election conveying who you are and what you’re about. It’s a very quick pivot after the convention. But this year, there’s no ideological division between the two of them. You can’t argue that this is about liberal or conservative or whatever. People know what they’re going to get from the Democratic nominee, and they’re not going to be confused about where the party is.
But the risk within the party is that without policy difference to latch onto, people so identify with either Obama or the Clinton personaly that they’re really divided and angry in the end. Do you think Clinton people would stay home if Obama is the nominee, or vice versa? They won’t do it. They threaten to, though. They always threaten at this point, but there’s plenty of evidence that, in fact, it never happens. Committed partisans always turn out to vote.
