Dean's warning: End race by July 1 or lose
WASHINGTON (AP) - March 28, 2008 In an interview with The Associated Press, Dean also said he
hopes the Democratic nominee will be determined shortly after the
voting ends in early June and that he will encourage the
superdelegates who will play a role to make up their minds before
the August convention in Denver.
Dean said the charges and countercharges between Clinton and
Obama have gotten too personal at times. He declined to say how
they have crossed the line, but he said he's made it clear
privately when it has happened.
"You do not want to demoralize the base of the Democratic Party
by having the Democrats attack each other," he said Thursday
during the interview in his office at Democratic National Committee
headquarters. "Let the media and the Republicans and the talking
heads on cable television attack and carry on, fulminate at the
mouth. The supporters should keep their mouths shut about this
stuff on both sides because that is harmful to the potential
victory of a Democrat."
Superdelegates - the nearly 800 party and elected officials who
can support whomever they choose at the convention, regardless of
what happens in the primaries - should make up their minds before
August to avoid a fight at the convention, Dean said.
"There is no point in waiting," he said. The Democratic
political organization "is as good or better as the Republicans,'
and we haven't been able to say that for about 30 years. But that
all doesn't make any difference if people are really disenchanted
or demoralized by a convention that's really ugly and nasty."
Dean commented during a wide-ranging, 40-minute interview about
his leadership during a nominating season that has lasted longer
than most expected and that has left the party with some tough
issues to resolve. Among them:
- Florida and Michigan Democrats brazenly violated party rules
by holding primaries ahead of schedule and lost their delegates to
the convention as punishment. Both states are now demanding that
they not be shut out of the decision-making process because of it.
- Since neither Clinton nor Obama are likely to secure the
nomination with just the delegates won in the primaries and
caucuses, the nominee will probably be determined by the
superdelegates. That has some activists objecting that insiders
could overturn the will of the voters.
- Dean has raised record amounts of money - the $51.5 million
the DNC brought in in 2007 was a record for a non-election year.
And he's spent it, too, on trying to build organizations in the 50
states. Campaign finance reports this month show the party with
$4.5 million after accounting for debt, compared with $25 million
for the Republican National Committee - and the Democrats have no
nominee to help replenish the coffers.
- Not to mention that Clinton's and Obama's campaigns spend
every day trying to tear each other down - and are unlikely to stop
anytime soon - while Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the certain
Republican nominee, is busy preparing for the general election.
Even Dean said he doesn't expect the campaign to end until the last
nominating contest is held in June.
Dean, the former governor of Vermont and 2004 presidential
candidate, said he knows his critics say he should take a bigger
leadership role in resolving some of these disputes. But he said
that's not his role. Rather, he thinks of himself as a referee who
enforces the rules in a close basketball game.
"Somebody is going to lose," Dean said. "My job is to make
sure the person who loses feels like they have been treated fairly
so that their supporters will support the winner."
But former Michigan Gov. James Blanchard said the DNC has
handled the situation badly.
"They have put their rules ahead of common sense, of electing a
Democratic president, of the voters in two major states,"
Blanchard, a Clinton supporter, said during the taping of Michigan
public television's "Off the Record" program. "They're treating
the rules like they're the U.S. Constitution or the Ten
Commandments. They've lost their way."
Dean said the massive numbers of people showing up to
participate in Democratic nominating contests across the country
gives him encouragement that the eventual nominee will be
well-positioned to win the White House.
He said it is good for the candidates to debate controversies
like the incendiary sermons by Obama's pastor and Clinton's
different accounts of danger on a trip to Bosnia as first lady. If
Democrats didn't deal with them now, he said Republicans will
surely make use of them in the fall.
Dean also reflected the concerns of many Democrats who worry
about Obama and Clinton tearing each other down.
"What I don't want to do is have the Democrats make a stupid
mistake in April and then be sorry they said that in October and
end up with some more right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court,"
he said.
Dean's supporters say he's working behind the scenes to resolve
some of the issues. He's been consulting with party stalwarts about
how to wrap up the nomination quickly after the voting ends in
June, including former Vice President Al Gore, former presidential
candidate John Edwards, former Sen. George Mitchell, former
President Carter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and former New
York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
"There'll be some nasty fights if it goes to convention, and
people will walk out," Dean said. "But I've also been talking to
a fairly significant number of, by and large, nonaligned people
about how we might resolve this."
Dean wouldn't talk in detail about what the plan is, but it
likely involves encouraging superdelegates to pick a candidate
shortly after the voting ends. He said he will not encourage any
delegate to vote one way or another.
"I am going to stand up for the rules, and I know I'm doing the
right thing most of the time because I've got both Clinton people
and Obama people mad at me," he said.
For instance, while Obama's campaign has been encouraging
superdelegates to support the candidate with the most pledged
delegates - which almost certainly will be Obama - Dean says the
rules don't require that and superdelegates are free to chose who
they want.
On the other side, Clinton has been arguing lately that even
pledged delegates - awarded to a candidate based on the outcome of
state contests - aren't bound to vote for that candidate at the
convention. Dean called that "a very technical argument."
"You aren't going to get pledged delegates to move unless
something really shocking happens," he said. And he thinks it
unlikely the superdelegates would support a candidate who did not
have the most pledged delegates.
Dean also said the Michigan and Florida delegates will be seated
at the convention. But he won't force a resolution because he said
there's nothing the Obama and Clinton campaigns can support at this
point.
"You bring both sides together and say, `Don't you think it's
time that the two campaigns made a deal on how we're going to do
this?"' Dean said. "Let me just say that the campaigns believe
that kind of a deal is premature right now."
---
Associated Press Writer Kathy Barks Hoffman in Lansing, Mich.,
contributed to this report.