If you watched the Sunday talk shows today, all you heard was Howard Dean and other Democrats insisting on how unified the Democrats are and are going to be. But if you watched Saturday's Democratic Party Rules Committee meeting concerning what to do about Florida and Michigan, you saw why Dean and co. might be whistling past the graveyard.
I watched it while playing on the floor with my son. Time magazine saw the divisions the same way I did:
"The noise they made was the sound of the Democratic Party fracturing: one third for Obama cheering, one third for Clinton booing and the rest, including the chagrined members of the panel, frantically hushing both sides as if to say, 'Don't go there, don't show the Republicans how dysfunctional we are.' It was also a cry of desperation, because the panel's ruling virtually ensured that the door was slamming on Clinton, who with three races to go now has little chance of overcoming Obama's lead. The meeting only went downhill from there, with committee co-chair Alexis Herman pounding the gavel in a vain attempt to restore order and Harold Ickes, a senior Clinton advisor and member of the committee, claiming the panel was "hijacking" democracy and threatening to appeal the ruling well into the summer....Ickes' angry sermon, as it turned out, was just the prelude to a near total meltdown at the end. The other committee members grimaced at the shouts of derision, which included chants of "McCain 08,""Bastards," and "Denver," an echo of their hopes that Clinton would take her case all the way to the Democratic National Convention to be held in August in Denver. After the meeting adjourned, women sat on the floor sobbing, while others, like Pennsylvania voter Betty Jean King, 60, a retired teacher from Shippensburg, ranted to television cameras: "If it's not Hillary, I'm voting for McCain. 17 million people voted for Hillary and I'm telling you many of them are going to defect."
Stay tuned. You would think that the only rational thing for Hillary Clinton to do would be to bow out gracefully. But this weekend, there really are precious few signs that she's about to do that.
