It’s part of a last-gasp strategy aimed at prolonging her campaign by convincing the party to alter the nomination math. By seating the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations, she would not only gain a significant number of delegates but also bolster her popular vote argument with the superdelegates.
The new Florida and Michigan offensive will kick off in earnest today with three campaign events in South Florida – though she’ll have to share the state with Obama, who begins a three-day campaign swing there – and will likely also include campaigning in Michigan. That’s in addition to an already circulating online petition and escalating campaign rhetoric casting Clinton as best-positioned to carry the two important big states in the fall against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain – partly because of her fight against disenfranchising Democrats there.
In an intentional bit of symbolism, Clinton’s three campaign stops will be in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade counties – the three jurisdictions where Democrats allege voters were disenfranchised during the 2000 presidential election.
Clinton campaign officials acknowledge the target audience for the offensive is not only voters but the superdelegates who will ultimately decide the nomination as voters and the party officials who will meet May 31 to effectively rule on the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations.
“What’s driving this effort is primarily the belief that every voice and every vote should count, something that Sen. Clinton believes very strongly,” said campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee. “And we hope that everyone shares that same value, including superdelegates, DNC members and all Democrats.”
He said more than 360,000 people had added their names to an online petition supporting the seating of the states’ delegates. And he said the campaign has been asking supporters to take that message to members of the Democratic National Committee and its Rules and Bylaws Committee.
The previously little-known committee will meet before the next primary in Puerto Rico June 1 to decide whether, or how, to allocate delegate votes from the two states. The DNC stripped the states of their delegate votes for holding their primaries earlier than the party wanted.
Clinton, who won both states’ primaries (Obama wasn’t on the ballot in Michigan), has repeatedly called for the panel to seat the delegations at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, an outcome that would cut into Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.
David McDonald, an uncommitted Washington state superdelegate who sits on the rules committee, said he wouldn’t be swayed by “mere publicity and a claim to be able to win the states.”
Still, Obama doesn’t appear inclined to let Clinton have the Florida and Michigan stages to herself.
He also arrived today in Florida and will be spending three days campaigning here, seeking to win over voters who sided with Clinton by a margin of 50 percent to 33 percent in the unsanctioned Jan. 29 primary. Last week, he paid his first visit this year to Michigan, touring a Chrysler plant, holding a town hall in Macomb County and a rally in Grand Rapids.
It’s unlikely that the rules committee will back a solution that significantly boosts Clinton’s pledged delegate tally.
But she has portrayed her effort to seat the delegations as a fight to protect voters’ franchise in the two states.
“I’m going on now to campaign in Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico – and I’m going to be standing up for the voters of Florida and Michigan,” she told supporters during her Kentucky victory speech Tuesday. “Democrats in those two states cast 2.3 million votes and they deserve to have those votes counted. That’s why I’m going to keep making our case until we have a nominee whoever she may be.”
Expect to hear more Florida and Michigan talk in the coming days, said Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, who said the campaign will “probably” travel to Michigan soon.
“The reason you probably hear more frequency is we have a lot fewer contests coming up,” he said Tuesday night. “They’re two of the five remaining events that are going to be very important to determine who the nominee of the Democratic Party is. So before, you heard a lot of talk about Pennsylvania and Indiana and North Carolina. Now, we have obviously Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Montana – and to resolve these two important states.”
Thunderous applause filled the Louisville hotel ballroom where Clinton held her Kentucky victory party when she delivered the Florida-and-Michigan line, but McAuliffe admitted superdelegates are the main audience for the appeal.
The goal seems to be implanting the idea that Clinton would fare better than Obama against McCain in Florida and Michigan in November partly because of her support for seating the two delegations.
It’s a theory that has become increasingly prominent in the campaign’s message over the last few days.
McAuliffe asserted Tuesday “it makes it a lot easier for our Electoral College map if Florida and Michigan are excited about the upcoming elections and don’t feel they were disenfranchised in the nominating process. So our argument’s always been – and all the different maps and the recent polling data show it – Hillary Clinton beats John McCain … in Ohio. She beats him in Florida. She wins Pennsylvania. She wins states we’ve got to win.”
A late April poll by Quinnipiac University found Clinton leading McCain 49 percent to 41 percent among Florida voters, while Obama and McCain were tied.
And Bill Clinton Tuesday morning told reporters that not seating the states’ delegations “violates our values and is dumb politics.”
It would alienate those states’ voters in the general election, he asserted, adding “we’re going to decapitate them, smush them, step on them, act like they never existed, act like they never voted.”
Carrie Budoff Brown and Avi Zenilman contributed to this report.
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