Clinton Campaign's Revote Blunder

With hopes for do-over primaries in Michigan and Florida growing dimmer by the hour, Senator Clinton's campaign may have bungled one of Mrs. Clinton's last opportunities to close the gap with the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama.

The downfall of Mrs. Clinton's strategy may have been that her push for new elections in those states came too late.

In a little-noticed comment that may have conflated wish with reality, the former first lady's top adviser on delegate issues, Harold Ickes, told reporters on Tuesday, "She has urged for weeks now that there should be reruns of those primaries."

In fact, Mrs. Clinton and her campaign publicly endorsed revotes in both states on March 12, only six days before Mr. Ickes and the rest of the Clinton crew began taunting Mr. Obama for dragging his feet in working out a compromise.

For more than six weeks, beginning four days before the January 29 primary in Florida, Mrs. Clinton's camp took the inflexible position that the delegates from the Florida and Michigan primaries should be selected and seated based solely on the results of those votes, despite the fact there was virtually no campaigning in either state and Mr. Obama and most other Democrats had pulled their names from the Michigan ballot. That position never found traction with Democratic leaders, even those friendly to Mrs. Clinton, in part because it gave too much weight to her "victories" in those states and in part because her own backers, such as Mr. Ickes, voted for the sanctions against states that jumped the calendar. "This is just so nakedly self-serving," a Democratic political consultant who said he voted for Mrs. Clinton, Garry South, said. "I just think it's too clever by half."

"The notion that delegates would be apportioned to each candidate by a vote that didn't count was on the face of it ludicrous," another Democratic strategist, Peter Fenn, said. "The only option people were willing to look at was, 'Should we revote this thing?'"

Yet the Clinton campaign clung stubbornly to the count-the-votes-as-is line, chewing up valuable time when Mrs. Clinton and her operation could have been mounting a full-court press to get Mr. Obama to work out a compromise to stage new primaries.

As revote talk began to intensify early this month, reporters on the regular Clinton campaign conference calls asked about the proposals. The party-line response remained that the campaign was monitoring the situation but wanted the previous votes accepted.

Last week, as Mrs. Clinton shifted her stance, one of her top surrogates, Paul Begala, conceded on CNN that recognizing the January results was "untenable" — which prompts the question of why the Clinton campaign stood by its guns for so long.

"All I can think of is that it was a negotiating position," Mr. Fenn said. The idea seemed to be that Mrs. Clinton would have more leverage to draw Mr. Obama into a revote or a partial award of delegates if she began with the most uncompromising position.

The problem with the Clinton camp's approach is that made-from-scratch primaries can't be planned overnight. Some may have thought the Democratic Party rules allowing primaries through June 10 meant the issue could be punted through until April or later, but it is now apparent that was wrong. Legislative calendars in Florida and Michigan, the need to accommodate military voters, and the fact that both states are subject to so-called pre-clearance from the Justice Department mean states need time to plan to reduce the chances of a fiasco.

Mrs. Clinton seemed to recognize this, belatedly, on Tuesday when she ripped up her campaign schedule to race to Detroit to implore the state to pass a new primary, something she officially opposed just six days earlier.

"The sand is rapidly running out of the hourglass," Mr. Fenn said, as he puzzled about why the former first lady didn't call for a revote after she won Ohio and Texas, or even sooner. "I'm not sure that folks were quite aware of the crunch on the calendar," he said.

Of course, any strategic misstep only matters if there was some real chance of revotes. The objections that Mr. Obama's campaign offered to the Michigan plan were legitimate. The thorniest was the issue of whether people who voted in the Republican primary, thinking the Democratic one wouldn't count, could take part in the new round of voting. Some of the legal concerns the Obama camp raised may have been unfounded since political parties have wide latitude to devise their own nominating processes.

All in all, they seem like the kind of objections that could be worked out in a couple of weeks, but not a couple of days.

Even if the revotes were never worked out, Mr. Obama would have been on the spot for a week or more, struggling to explain his opposition. It looks now that the pressure will be off him in just a day or two.

By haughtily holding out for a whole loaf, Mrs. Clinton's campaign may have missed out on the 60% of the loaf she needed. This may not rank as high on the blunder list as the decision to essentially skip the caucus states, but in retrospect it could be a close second.

jgerstein@nysun.com