Kempner wants DNC retroactive rule change

by: Juan Melli

Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:15:49 PM EDT

The resolution notes that the undersigners include "many leaders and financial supporters" of the DNC. [...]

Kempner said he sent the petition to thousands of Democratic donors and activists. In his e-mail to them, he calls Obama's "tactics" in "seeking to disenfranchise more than two million voters in Florida and Michigan" those of "division and deception."

"For whatever reason, the DNC seems to be captive of the Obama campaign," he said in an interview. "The fact is that many, many long-time supporters both financially and non-financially, that have a very different point of view. We very much want to put them on notice."

This sounds a lot like the letter from the wealthy pro-Clinton DCCC fundraisers to Nancy Pelosi threatening to take their ball and go home if she doesn't renounce her position that superdelegates should respect the democratic will of the voters. Of course, she rightly told them to go fly a kite.

Although Kempner says that "the genesis for the idea came out of a meeting of the campaign's finance committee a few weeks ago," he insists it "should not be interpreted by DNC chairman Howard Dean as a threat to withhold donations."

Got that? The campaign's biggest fundraisers came up with the idea, but really - no, seriously! - this has nothing to do with money. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

One of the great things about Dean's 50 state strategy and the DNC's Democracy Bonds program is that they've become better at raising money from small-dollar donors. Wealthy power brokers can implicitly or explicitly threaten all they want, but their leverage over the last few years has been significantly diminished. I'd be really surprised if Dean agreed to their retroactive rule change request.

Update: Chris Bowers makes a good point:

That's all well and good, but did it ever occur to these geniuses to actually send the letter to the people with actual purview over the matter? This is just a suggestion, but maybe, just maybe, instead of sending the letter to Howard Dean, they should send it to the rules committee which stripped Michigan and Florida of their delegates, to the members of the credentials committee who will hold jurisdiction over the matter, or to Nancy Pelosi, who will chair the convention itself. You know, the people with actual power over the matter.

Oh wait--doing that would require sending the letter to people like Harold Ickes, a member of Clinton's campaign and the DNC rules committee who voted to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates. I guess it would look kind of strange for the Clinton campaign to be sending petitions to members of its own campaign. So, instead of sending the petition to people who actually hold purview over the matter, they have decided instead to scapegoat Howard Dean.