Campaign Official Thinks Obama Got “F*cked” in Florida?
By Deb Cupples on June 14, 2008 at 8:50 AM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, DNC, Delegates, Florida, Superdelegates
Apparently, the spirit of unity has filled Florida’s air like West-Nile-infected misquotes swarming around the swamps after dusk. Equally apparent is that some Obama campaign officials have an awfully warped sense of reality (and decency, for that matter).
Today, the Miami Herald blog Naked Politics reports:
"So much for party unity: As Florida Dems prepare for Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner aimed at bringing the party ‘together once and for all,’ a spat over the Obama campaign’s decision to replace some already-designated Florida delegates with Obama backers has intensified.
"And how. DNC member Jon Ausma [sic] late Thursday e-mailed Dems (and reporters) choice sections of what he says were e-mails from Obama’s Florida finance chair Kirk Wagar — in which Wagar curses Ausman out and criticizes Sen. Bill Nelson and party director Leonard Joseph.
"The highlights: ‘You (Jon Ausman) f&^%ed us. We are dealing with it. You need to accept the fact that you f*&^ed us.’"
So that no one is confused, “*&^” stands for “uck.” Naturally, Obama’s finance chair sent out an email “apology,” which states in part:
"’I apologize for the profanity that you were subjected to,’ he said in the e-mail. ‘It is a vice of mine that I try to minimize but seems to rear it’s head with more frequency when I deal with Jon.’"
First, that’s not an actual apology. Instead, Mr. Wagar merely hurled the blame for his own word choice at someone else, using a tactic that parents hear every day: "But the other kid made me say those things."
Second, Mr. Wagar’s vulgarity and bellicosity are not surprising, given how some Obama supporters have conducted themselves around the blogosphere over the last five months.
But I don’t need to focus on the atrocious-manners angle, because Larry covered it here and my co-blogger at Buck Naked Politics covered it in a post titled "Further Proof that the Obama Campaign Needs to Grow up."
What troubles me is Mr. Wagar’s implication that Obama’s campaign has been somehow victimized.
Admittedly, I don’t know precisely how Mr. Wagar thinks that Florida’s Hillary-supporting leaders have f*cked Obama’s campaign.
At the same time, I cannot imagine a scenario involving Florida in which anyone could validly argue that the Obama campaign got f*cked. Quite the opposite is true.
Less than a month ago — in a move that an Obama campaign representative argued for – the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) chose, in effect, to count only 50% of Florida Democrats’ primary votes.
Many of my fellow Florida Dems, even many Obama supporters, perceive that as disenfranchisement. Many of us Floridians could not help but reminisce about George Bush’s push to stop Florida’s vote recounts back in 2000.
And many Floridians have noticed that Obama’s campaign benefited from the disenfranchisement. Would Obama have clinched the nomination even if 100% of Florida’s votes had been counted?
Probably, but if Florida’s delegates had been fully counted, the "magic number" would have increased by more than 50 — meaning that Obama likely would not have clinched the nomination on the very night of the last two states’ primaries.
Instead, Obama would have had to delay his victory speech a few days (or maybe weeks) while he rounded up 50+ super-delegates.
Apparently, Obama’s campaign didn’t want to wait the extra days (or didn’t want to have to persuade super-delegates to stop supporting Hillary Clinton).
The RBC heard the demands and eagerly gave Obama’s campaign what it wanted (the cutting of Florida’s vote in half), despite the fact that the DNC’s own Delegate Selection Rules would have allowed the RBC to restore 100% of Florida Democratic delegates (see e.g., Rule 21-c-7).
Many Floridians flatly resent said disenfranchisement — regardless of how candidates, party leaders, and the media have tried to spin it.
You can use the finest polishing cloth and feverishly apply the elbow grease, but the proverbial turd will still end up looking like just what it is.
Back to my point: if anyone in the Democratic Party got f*cked with respect to Florida, it is Florida’s voters and the state’s Democratic leaders who answer to them.
Reality and decency being what they are, Obama’s campaign officials should refrain from trying to play the wounded and resentful victim. It’s just bad theater.
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