An Orderly Process

I hope the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee resolves the Michigan and Florida mess at its meeting this weekend by seating at least half the delegations in sensible proportions based on objective criteria. I also hope on June 4, the day after the last primaries, nearly all the remaining undeclared superdelegates announce their endorsements. I assume this will confirm Obama as the presumptive nominee, and in short order Clinton will concede and endorse him. (And if she considers fighting on, I hope a majority of her superdelegates make it plain to her campaign that they will switch and render her a Huckabee-like figure.)

I hope all this comes true not because the nomination fight might hurt Obama substantively, although that is a risk. I hope all this because taking the battle to the convention makes the Democrats as a party look like it can't run its own business. There are people who think a summer of the Obama v. Clinton show followed by a convention floor fight would be morally just, politically productive, just plain fun, or some combination of the three. I think they don't understand the electoral disaster they're courting.

A central theme that Democrats are running on this year - especially the presidential candidates, but all congressional candidates, too - is competence. The issue that lies at the center of our criticisms of Bush and the congressional Republicans is that they can't (or won't) do the job they were hired to do. The decision to invade Iraq - incompetence. Abandonment of the pursuit of al Qaeda and the failure to kill bin Laden - incompetence. Katrina - incompetence. The economic whirlpool created by the real estate crisis and gas prices - incompetence (whether it can be fairly laid at Bush's feet or not). Failure of the Congress to act as a check on the Executive - arrogance, corruption, but most of all, incompetence. The list goes on.

I think it's hard to overstate how inept we will look to independent voters if we don't have a nominee until August 28th, especially because the overwhelming likelihood is that the end result will be that Obama will be that nominee anyway. You already knew that he would win it, the public will say, so why couldn't you have wrapped it up back in June? If we look like buffoons at this governance business, why should the public want to trade one bunch of jackasses for another?

The problem is not caused by, but it certainly would be exacerbated by, the media. Tim Russert declaring the nomination decided after North Carolina was both descriptive and normative. The Villagers now expect the Democratic party to move on, and will be accordingly vicious if their expectations are not met. The summer is a silly season for news, and jawing about how the Dems are eating their own will fill the time nicely. I don't advocate caving in to the Villagers' demands, but their behavior is a factor to consider.

Right now, the people are still voting. Right now, we are simply letting the process play out as designed. Short-circuiting that process by pressuring a viable candidate like Clinton out early would have been delegitimatizing to the nominee and the DNC. But allowing an almost-certainly pointless brawl to drag on for nearly three months after the primaries are complete is far worse, because it undermines the main benefit all Democratic candidates everywhere are offering voters this fall.

Comments

[zenpundit]

Hillary isn't conceding without some major, more than she deserves, face-saving, future-viability enhancing,contributions-generating, consolation prize. And right now, neither Obama nor the Democratic Party are willing to ante up, so the Clintons are going to go the Gotterdamerung route.

You're a sharp fellow Mithras, you know this to be true.

[Mithras]

zen-
The Clintons respond to incentives. Some are carrots, and some are sticks. In any event, even when she made her ill-chosen remark about RFK, she was referencing nomination processes that went all the way to June. I take that to be foreshadowing on her part.

Whether or not that's true, at some point the yield curve from championing the Lost Cause enters negative territory. I don't doubt she will position herself as the hero of feminists and conservative, white working-class Dems. (See? Obama is truly a uniter if he can bring those two groups together.) That really is her best hope for future fundraising success within the party. Once the FL/MI issue is decided and the supers declare, she won't be able to win any new fans. Her big donors are already maxed out. The Obama v. McCain storyline will crowd her off the front page. It's Theater 101: Any performer knows you take your bow when the cheers will be loudest, so she will pick her moment, but (I hope) it won't be long. She announced on 1/20/07, so maybe she'll pick the 20th of June.

Perhaps there will be some sort of inducement offered for her to endorse Obama sooner rather than later, or at all, but I doubt it will be anything dramatic. She won't be VP. I think key components would be an agreement that Obama will hire a few of her staffers - in what roles, I don't know - and that he will order his people not to talk badly about her to the media. Whether she can impose message discipline on her own people is another question.