The Hard Margin.

After murking Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s primaries, The New York Times is reporting that Democrats are saying Barack Obama’s lead among delegates may be too much for Hillary to make up, even if she takes Ohio and Texas in March and Pennsylvania in April.

Clinton has been calling for the DNC, helmed by Howard Dean, to reinstate the delegates from Michigan and Florida for a few weeks now. NAACP chairman Julian Bond, in a letter to Dean, said he wants those delegates counted, too. (The NAACP hasn’t officially endorsed a candidate.)

When the Democratic National Committee adopted the rules in question, it was suspected by some that they would be discriminatory for states with large African American populations. It seemed a harsh rule to disenfranchise millions of our voters just to appease the fewer thousands of white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Al Sharpton disagrees, and said that to do so would be a “grave injustice,” and doesn’t buy Bonds’s assertion that reinstating those delegates disenfranchises those populations, and questions the timing of Bonds’s appeal. (Sharpton hasn’t endorsed a candidate, either.)

“That claim, if true, should have been made many months ago before the decision was made to strip these states of their delegates, and, once the decision was made, it should have been vigorously objected to and contested by those who felt it disenfranchised voters,” Sharpton wrote. “To raise that claim now smacks of politics in its form most raw and undercuts the moral authority behind such an argument.”

One Drop over at TooSense thinks that the NAACP’s move is back-scratching for the Clinton campaign, and emblematic of how the traditional civil rights establishment has cast its lot with the Clintons.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.

Latest posts by G.D. (see all)

  • Out with the old. In with the new. Isn’t XM-169 the shit? They are seriously wrecking my work productivity though because I only have XM in the car so I’m constantly sittin’ in the parking lot when I should be at my desk. Gotta get one of those XM portable players.

  • Oh, Julian…

  • LH

    This begs the question of whether Bond would want the delegates reinstated if Obama were trailing Clinton. I can’t be sure but I doubt it.

    Sharpton’s argument has some traction.

  • Ok, I went away, did some more reading on this, and I’m back. My conclusion: Al Sharpton is wrong. I don’t know how, or why, but I can just *feel* it.

    But on a more serious note, it sounds like it’s really a matter of fairness. I’m not sure why this request wasn’t made earlier (or maybe it was, and we just didn’t hear about it). I don’t buy it that Bond is out to get Obama.

  • LH

    shanio: What do you think Bond’s motivation is, particularly considering that the NAACP is, ostensibly at least, non-partisan?

    Do you believe that Bond would weigh in on, say, reseating Republican delegates? Or if it were Clinton who had more delegates than Obama?

    I believe that Bond has (once again) tipped his hand.

  • Shani: that good, reflexive Sharpton hate? You’d be surprised at how often he’s right. He is, obviously, wildly problematic, but he often takes unpopular stands that need to be taken. He doesn’t bother me as much as he seems to bother some folks, though he certainly pisses me off (calling Clarence Thomas an ‘Uncle Tom’ while *picketing on the justice’s front lawn with a busload of people, for starters).

    I don’t know if I buy that Bond is out to sabotage Obama, either. But his timing is odd, considering the delegates in those states were stripped months ago. How he could argue that these would even be fair elections anyway — when essentially one of the major candidates (Clinton) bothered to show up for them — makes me question his motives.

  • LH: I think Bond would would have written that letter if Clinton were in the lead. But it’s clear you don’t (or at least are suspicious), and I would really like to know why. Like I said, I think the motivation is a matter of fairness. Yes, the NAACP is non-partisan, but voting isn’t really a partisan issue.

    G.D. I was mostly kidding about Sharpton. Mostly. I’ll concede that he is often right, but *his* motivation is suspect.

  • LH

    I have my doubts about the nature of Bond’s interest because he’s a part of the Old Guard, which, as near as I can tell, isn’t exactly overjoyed with Obama or his prospects. I agree that voting isn’t a partisan issue, but I’ll ask you again if you think he’d weigh in on whether or not Republican delegates had been stripped.

    If Bond’s interest were about fairness, why didn’t he speak up once it was announced that Michigan and Florida would be stripped of their respective delegates? It’s not as though the decision came at the 12th hour.

  • quadmoniker

    I do have to say, I actually think this is a partisan issue. In that, this has to do with political parties. This is a Democratic nominating contest. I don’t think it’s exactly the same as an election, the result of which would be to place a candidate in a seat. This isn’t a case where each vote “counts,” either. The delegates are awarded on a proportional system in each district, so how much your vote counts kinda depends on where you live. It’s also a closed primary, so independents can’t vote, it’s strictly a party contest. The party has rules, and Florida chose to break them, though they knew they knew the consequences. I think reinstating them now would just be political gaming. What about all the Florida voters who didn’t bother to vote because they thought it WOULDN’T count? Does discounting them really make the process any fairer?

  • L.H. Considering how few blacks are Republican supporters, probably not.