I hope those who already understand what I write here will bear with me as I try to clarify for others who are trying to learn so much so quickly about the ways and wiles of the DNC, its rules, its use of its rules, and most significantly the difference between having a roll call vote with Senator Clinton on the ballot and having Senator Clinton in nomination for the candidacy before that roll call happens.
Let's start with an analogy. Baseball games often begin with some person designated to throw out the first pitch - indeed, George W. Bush did this for the first game of the Washington Nationals' first season in their new stadium. But throwing that "first pitch" did not make Bush a true pitcher, it added him to no team roster. That is is because the entire episode iwas completely symbolic, a ritual that had no consequences for the outcome of the particular game itself.
Similarly a person's name can be put on a roll call ballot at the Convention for purely symbolic reasons. Indeed from the time of the adoption of the McGovern Commission's proposed rules for electing a Democratic presidential nominee until this year, all such roll call ballots including candidates other than the eventual nominee were only symbolic.
Why were these past episodes only symbolic, with nothing at stake for choosing a Party nominee? Because in each past case the eventual nominee had arrived at the Convention already in possession of a sufficient number of pledged delegates to make the vote at the Convention irrelevant.
This year the Democratic National Party faces a situation it has never faced before. No candidate comes into the Convention with enough votes from the primary/caucus events to qualify automatically as the nominee. The McGovern Commission rules, which are in effect, technically turn choice of the nominee to the superdelegates.
But there are two steps to making sure that superdelegates have the opportunity to exercise the responsibility the rules grant them.
- It is not sufficient for Senator Clinton's name to simply be listed on a ballot on which a roll call vote is taken.
- It is necessary that Senator Clinton's name be put into nomination as nonsymbolic contender in the convention roll call voting process.
There are different ways for a candidate's name to be put in nomination. And a candidate offered nomination may decline it. He or she may also accept nomination but decline candidacy. It is not my place to judge whether Senator Clinton or Senator Obama should be willing to have their names placed in nomination or whether either should be willing to accept a candidacy determined by uncoerced, unpressured superdelegates.
As a rank and file Democrat, it is my place to to demand that the DNC provide Senator Clinton and Senator Obama equal opportunitees to decide to be nominees and to accept nomination if voted it at the Convention.
I do demand that - if you do too, you might want to help The Denver Group, a political action group formed specifically to make this demand heard loud and clear from Washington, DC, to Chicago, IL, to Denver, CO and to every single state where anybody cast a vote for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton with faith that her own Party would act according to its own rules and according to basic democratic principles which have for decades been championed by Democrats of all types.
That does not seem like too much to ask; indeed it seems ridiculous that a request must be made in the first place.
