Day: June 2, 2008

Camp Clinton is showing signs of folding, according to the big guns.

HufPo:

Hillary Clinton has summoned top donors and backers to attend her New York speech tomorrow night in an unusual move that is being widely interpreted to mean she plans to suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama – if not that night, within a day or two.

Obama and Clinton spoke Sunday night and agreed that their staffs should begin negotiations over post-primary activities, according to reliable sources. In addition to seeking Obama’s help in raising money to pay off some $20 million-plus in debts, Clinton is known to want Obama to assist black officials who endorsed her and who are now taking constituent heat…

“This has never happened before,” one donor said, referring to the personalized request by email to attend the event in New York Tuesday night…

In an afternoon conference call today with about two dozen top fundraisers, Clinton strategist Harold Ickes spoke in very conciliatory terms about Obama, in contrast to his tougher rhetoric in public and on television, according to sources. He told the participants that Clinton wants to “significantly” help Obama, but he did not go so far as saying that she will announce withdrawal — that is the prerogative of the candidate.

Politico:

Members of Hillary Clinton’s advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending, two Clinton staffers tell my colleague Amie Parnes.

The advance staffers — most of them now in Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana — are being given the options of going to New York for a final day Tuesday, or going home, the aides said. The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed — at least — some of its staff…

UPDATE: Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee says the advance staffers haven’t been let go or told to find other jobs, just sent home. They aren’t typically paid for off days. “We just haven’t figured out our schedule past Tuesday,” he said.

Except to deliver a public scolding to Democrats in Florida and Michigan — and to expend a lot of hot air — it is hard to see what good came out of the day long meeting of the DNC Rules Committee on Saturday. In fact, it was much like watching a toothless tiger picking his teeth.
The seating of delegates is the prerogative of the nominee. Both Obama and Clinton have told Sen. Levin that they would seat the full delegations from Florida and Michigan.
The Rules Committee rules don’t matter. It’s up to the presumptive nominee — when we get one — to decide who gets seated at the Democratic Convention:

[It] seems that even though the committee voted to give the delegates from Michigan and Florida only half a vote each at the convention, they will end up getting full votes.

That is the prerogative of the nominee. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan says that both Senator Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton have told him that if they were nominated they would give the delegates full voting strength.

“We’re assured we’re going to get a full vote,” Mr. Levin said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

He added: “And both candidates have said that they want Michigan’s delegation to have a full vote. She said that yesterday and Senator Obama has said that he can guarantee that the Michigan delegation will be seated and they’ll have a full voice at the convention, when he has enough delegates to know that he’s the nominee.”

This raises some interesting questions — like whether the rules matter.

So what is really going on here?

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