To start off, my credentials as a super-delegate are suspect. 1) It is not certain that Commissioner of Baseball is the kind of Officeholder that the Party had in mind when it created this class of delegates, and 2) Even so, no one in Major League Baseball actually followed any of my edicts when I declared myself commissioner during the 1994 strike. Had they done so, you would have a round-robin triple elikmination league championship tournament using two division champions and a single wild card; a showcase schedule in DC featuring set-aside home games from franchise who have box office problems in their respective cities, and a revenue sharing plan based on winning games (expanding really, on the team share from post-season income) so that the incentive to compete isn't diminished. I digress.
Anyway, if I'm a Super-Delegate, I have three goals. They overlap but are generally in this order:
- Determining which candidate would make the better president.
- Determining which candidate stands the better chance of beating John McCain.
- Determinining which candidate would be the better titular head of the Democratic Party.
Here's what I want to know:
1. Toward the better president.
Senator Clinton: Your first four years as a senator - your diligence, your ability to "work well with others" - did much to convince me that you will make a good president. However, the running of your campaign has undermined the position you've put forward that you are ready from day one to run the country. Look hard at both and tell me a) what the difference is, and b) how you will govern better than you have campaigned.
Senator Obama: As much as I long for a post-partisan Monroe-esque era of good feelings in which you as president could appeal to the mutual interests of the entire country and work for a more consensus based model for government, convincing me isn't what you need to do. You will need to convince the 18 to 25 percent of this country who will not only vote Republican, but will support any obstruction that like-minded Republicans throw your way. How do you propose to separate reasonable Republicans from this core/base?
Senator Clinton: Forget justifying your Iraq vote for a minute. What steps will you take to prevent us having to consider military action in the next several steps of this Global War on Terrorism. Oh, and it would help if you would say whether you believe the war began on 9/11/2001, at some point during the Reagan administration, or when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun.
Senator Obama: Rightly or not, as you establish your credibility on security issues, it will be important what kinds of people surround you on security decisions. I know it is unfair to name names, but that is exactly what I'm asking you. Who do you consider credible either as informal advisors on foreign and security policy, and if possible who would you consider key figures in your administration.
Both of you: Go back and read the Broder column on Bill Bradley's criteria for what you should know, have done and be able to do to effectively become president. Never mind that Broder didn't choose to follow up on this with either of you so far. Address Bradley's criteria, briefly but throughly.
Both of you: It has been opined that neither of you will get past the status quo to establish your respective health plans. Convince me otherwise. In doing so, you might want to address the whole "nanny state" bugaboo of how much of our health dollar is paying for chronic and some would contend lifestyle-triggered conditions.
Both of you: It will be grossly unfair, but it was also unfair for Jimmy Carter and his failure to properly deal with it was the linchpin for defeating him in 1980. This country has economic troubles that defy categorization as recession. I've heard both of your speeches but let's be reflective for a few minutes. Look at the economy from three - and maybe I really mean four - perspectives: As it affects the investor, the worker, the consumer and possibly the nature of worth itself. By the last, I mean that in some point during the 70s, America shifted to having a Petroleum Standard to measure and impact the worth of everything else. For better or worse, the economy depended on protecting a low price for gasoline - even when this was contrary to having a sane energy policy. I digress. Anyway, talk to me about the whole economy, what plagues it and what you can do to both prfevent a collapse and deal with what problems we already have.
Both of you (this is an updated item, by the way): Will you commit to reversing the trend toward privatization of government functions by the awarding of contracts that has gotten so out of hand during the Bush years. Blackwater is the wild extreme of this, but it extends throughout both our Iraq policy and many of our domestic programs. My own problems with it include, a) it maintains the fiction that government must resemble business, and b) that lack of accontability has any place in a democratic society.
2. Toward the better candidate for president.
Senator Clinton: I assume you read Scammon and Wattenburg's The Real Majority at some point from Smith days to last week, because you and your campaign people seem to embrace its "Quadcali" demographic theory of ignoring most of the couantry to devise a winning electoral-strategy. It doesn't work. It started to not work in 1976 and it so doesn't work now that you have to Gerry-rig "Quadcali" into a tight state majority that can be easily picked off by a reasonably adept opposition sniper. Will you please, please acknowledge that, with limitations, the best hope for winning the presidency is a campaign much closer to the 50-state model of the 2006 midterms than Quadcali or any other 50+1 configuration?
Senator Obama: A presidential election does differ somewhat from a mid-term election or even the concerns on the rest of the ballot in a presidential year. It wasn't clear in 1976 because the previous cycle we basically lost the whole frigging country (despite our guy being right about everything and the best person I've ever voted for), but the disquieting thing many of us realized as the 1980 nomination process unfolded was that Carter built up an insurmountable lead over Ted Kennedy with states Carter/Mondale had lost in 1976 and had no real chance of winning in 1980. I think this had a little to do with creating super-delegates, but I could be wrong. Anway, convince me that you can seriously bring a half dozen of states into play that Senator Clinton would not. If you are going to include Texas, I'm willing to listen but please wait until I swallow my coffee before you speak its name.
Both of you: What is your strategy relative to the western states? I say this because our party continues to have this notion about reaching out to the South, and it is fruitless. We will either win those states with national candidates or we won't. Dukakis, however, began inroads to the western states that really made the difference in 1992 and would have in 2004 if we hadn't been so concerned with getting back a couple of southnern states. The 50-state strategy results in 2006 revealed, among other things, a hybrid set of impulses in western voters - call it progressive, Main Street, good-government, libertarian, common sense-ism if you like - that is going to be open to a candidate who successfully argues that an activist government won't necessarily be an intrusive one, a consensus government won't necessaaily be a discriminatory one, a friendly government won't necessarily be a crony-infested one, and a principled foreign policy won't necessarilyh be a weak one. How do you fit that model and how would you a) keep WA and OR in the dem column, b) bring NM back into the column, and c) add some combination of CO, AZ, NV and even UT?
Both of you: Forget the reality of Dick Cheney for a minute, that he is Dickensian miscreant who stains the Senate chamber with his profanity, can't even hit quail in a quail farm, fights to tear down the country he purports to swore to uphold, and everything else about him that has made the last eight years so unbearable. In 2000, his self-selection had this going for it (thanks, in part, to his Dem counter-part pretty much conceding the vp debate to him, but that's another issue entirely): He established a different model for a running mate than the regional balance model or the partner-in-presidency model that worked re Al Gore. He was an emergency president in waiting, someone the public wouldn't necessarily have voted for but would have felt (falsely, but again ignore the reality) confident with if something had in fact happened to an at-that-point figurative President Bush. And we all know better than to take on the CW that Bush's "lack of an heir" because of Cheney's age and steadfast unpopularity is why the GOP field was so bleak, don't we? The field is bleak because the party is now weak. Anyway, we have several elder statesmen who would inspire the same confidence only with a better temperament and set of policy goals. Without committing to this kind of running mate, can you discuss the merits of picking a Bob Graham, a Bruce Babbitt, a Mario Cuomo (someone Sen Clinton couldn't technically choose because of Article II) a Gary Hart, a Joe Biden or even a George Mitchell to run with you?
3. Toward the better titular head of the Democratic Party.
Senator Clinton: Tell me what you think of Howard Dean's leadership. I could care less that he isn't a political ally of yours. What do you think? Would you support encouraging him to stay on another four years?
Senator Clinton: If you win this nomination, it will be in a way that a large part of the party, including frankly the generation of Demodcrats we will need to build greater successes during the next 20 years, will not consider particularly legitimate. What would you do about that?
Senator Clinton: Not to be disrespectul, but when are you going to stop talking as if you get your points from the GOP?
Senator Obama: If you win this nomination, you will have to deal a lot of the same kinds of concerns that President Carter dealt with as an outsider winning in 1976. You will get pressure from your own base to do something about problems in other sectors of the party. Want an example? Joe Lieberman. What will you do to bring peace within the factions of our party.
Senator Obama: How about you? Would you try to keep Howard Dean as DNC chair? If he isn't interested, what would you look for in a party chairman?
Both of you: Will you fight to bring about a sane primary schedule? My own idea of what that would involve three or four small-state caucuses in January, small state primaries in February, neighboring-state caucuses and primaries (no more than four at a time) in March and April and single big-state primaries each week in May and early June. Making this happen would involve working with each state's government. How committed would you be to making the effort to get the states to put aside parochial interests and work for getting us better candidates for president?
Both of you: What do you propose to do about Michigan and Florida at the convention? I have stated elsewhere my own preference, which is to seat full primary-selected delegations, deny seats to any state superdelegate involved in the setting of the early primaries, and then in some way reduce or even eliminate the delegation's vote only on the president vote. But what do you want to do?
Both of you: One of you is going to lose this nominmation and attend the convention as a super-delegate. Will you each commit right now to using that position to place a motion on the floor condemning any member of either house of congress's Democratic caucus who chooses to not actively support the national Democratic Ticket?
Sen. Clinton: Related question. Have you talked to Sen. Lieberman about his support for Sen. McCain? We know from him that you didn't seek his endorsement, and frankly congrulations for that, but have you made it clear to him how inappropriate a path he is on considering the promises he made to his state's voters to "do what I can" to bring about a 2008 presidential victory for the Democrats. It is snarky but OK to respond to this that Lieberman is in fact doing your bidding, that no Democrat wanted his support this time around, and giving his support to the Republicans will help sink their chances on the boat called Joe-mentum.
Both of you: We need to win as many state legislative seats as possible to reverse the 2000 re-districting. How extensively are you prepared to physically campaign in a wide array of legislative districts in 2008 and particualrly in the 2010 midterms?