After nearly non-stop lobbying since the Democratic race ended, it looks like Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic National Convention after all:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name will be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention, a symbolic move approved by the Obama campaign in an effort to soothe a lingering rift with Clinton supporters.
The decision was reached this week, according to Democratic officials, and will be announced later today. It comes after long negotiations on both sides, with many backers of Mrs. Clinton vigorously pushing for her candidacy to be validated by giving her delegates the chance to support her through a roll call vote.
For Democrats inside the convention center in Denver, as well as the television audience at home, it could create some interesting moments. After the state-by-state roll is tallied, Mrs. Clinton is expected to turn over her cache of delegates to Senator Barack Obama.
Notwithstanding the political fantasies being spun by some, I don’t see this as some sort of covert means for Clinton to steal the nomination from Obama. That simply isn’t going to happen absent a confluence of events over the next two weeks that would sound bizarre to a writer of political thrillers.
At the same time, though, I don’t buy the idea that Hillary is insisting on this solely to reward the people who stood by her during the campaign. Somehow, I’ve got to think that there are other motives involved, and that Hillary may be borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook:
In 1976, Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford in a bid to become the Republican Party’s candidate for president. Reagan soon established himself as the conservative candidate with the support of like-minded organizations such as the American Conservative Union which became key components of his political base, while President Ford was considered a more moderate Republican.[58]
Reagan’s campaign relied on a strategy crafted by campaign manager John Sears of winning a few primaries early to seriously damage the lift-off of Ford’s campaign, such as his victories in North Carolina, Texas, and California, but the strategy disintegrated.[59] Reagan ended up losing New Hampshire and later Florida.[60]
As the party’s 1976 convention in Kansas City, Missouri neared, Ford appeared close to victory. Acknowledging his party’s moderate wing, Reagan chose moderate Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. Nonetheless, Ford narrowly won, with 1,187 delegates to Reagan’s 1,070.[60]
Reagan’s concession speech emphasized the dangers of nuclear war and the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Although he lost the nomination, Reagan received 307 write-in votes in New Hampshire, 388 votes as an Independent on Wyoming’s ballot, and a single electoral vote from a Washington State “faithless elector” in the November election,[61] in which Ford lost to the Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter.
Four years later, of course, Reagan was elected President.
If, by some chance, Obama loses this year, then Clinton will become the most prominent candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2012. How she performs at the convention in Denver could have quite an impact on what happens in that situation.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
If Obama loses, then Clinton would have an interesting choice in 2012 given that she is also up for re-election to her New York Senate seat.