WASHINGTON — With Saturday night’s rules- committee battle behind them, the Democratic Party’s elite appear to have finally made up their minds to publicly back presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The tension was palpable Saturday when protesters shouted and booed the committee as it ruled that Florida and Michigan delegates will be allowed to cast but half a vote each during the Democratic National Convention, and allocated some of Michigan’s delegates to Obama, eroding the advantage those votes would have given his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But party leaders, who repeatedly called for unity during the Saturday negotiations, say the rulings set the course for Democrats to line up behind a single candidate.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, party chairman Howard Dean urged superdelegates to commit and do so quickly.
“We do not want to go to the convention and have a big fight at the convention and lose the presidency,” Dean said.
On a different Sunday-morning television news program, superdelegate Donna Brazile said she expects many of her peers to go public with their support for Obama on Wednesday, after primary ballots are cast Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana.
Brazile’s arguments on the party’s rules committee Saturday worked to the benefit of the Illinois senator, and Obama’s supporters gave her a standing ovation when the committee’s members returned from a private meeting Saturday to cast their votes.
Yvonne Atkinson Gates, a Nevada superdelegate and member of the rules committee, came out Sunday in support of Obama.
All this, on top of last week’s statements by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the superdelegates needed to make up their minds, has had the effect of showing Clinton the door.
“I think that’s what we’re all expecting,” said Robert Eisinger, a political scientist from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “I think we’re moving forward in what appears to be the end of the end.”
“Going into Sunday, the math was bad (for Clinton),” said Tom Schaller, a political analyst and author of “Whistling Past Dixie.” “If Hillary Clinton had gotten 100 percent of what she asked for, it still would have been hard. The numbers are virtually impossible for her now without some kind of wholesale defection of Obama superdelegates.”
Meanwhile, Clinton won the Puerto Rico primary Sunday, and she continues to campaign hard in the last two primaries in Montana and South Dakota.
She signaled in her victory speech on the island that she plans to keep trying to win superdelegates with her argument that she is more electable.
“We are winning the popular vote,” Clinton said. “. . . We are winning these votes in swing states and among the very swing voters Democrats must win to take back the White House.”
One of her top aides, rules-committee member Harold Ickes, continued Sunday to say the campaign may appeal the committee’s ruling.
As for the talk about party unity that the elite promised Saturday, questions remain among party activists on the ground.
“I think it’s clear that even if a majority of Clinton supporters back Obama at the end, the campaigns themselves are pretty hostile to one another,” said Ryan Miller, a member of D.C. for Obama.
Polls by the Pew Foundation indicate white women are slipping away from the Obama campaign, and several women interviewed after the rules- committee decision said they would rather vote for the Republican nominee, John McCain, than Obama.
“I believe it’s an injustice what’s happening today, what’s happening this whole election, and I won’t stand by the Democratic Party,” said Krista Duffy, 29, of Lansing, Mich.
Clinton could help dispel the hard feelings, experts say, but will she?
“It will be interesting to see,” Schaller said. Citing a theory that Clinton thinks Obama will implode in the general election, the analyst said: “If it’s true . . . that she wants him to fail in 2012 with an I-told-you-so message, she won’t.”
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
