Hillary Clinton just acted out an excellent bit of political theater. This was the one stumbling block that could have upstaged Obama’s acceptance speech; the nomination process where delegates declare their support and vote for their nominee. Clinton herself stepped up to do an end-run around the nomination process to hand the Democratic ticket to Obama.
The roll call is a ceremonial piece where each state declares the number of delegates supporting each of the candidates. Down the alphabet Speaker Pelosi went. From Alaska to California and Florida to Georgia with the overwhelming numbers of delegates going to Obama. Even the contentious Michigan went 125 to 27 for Barack.
But then the crowd started to swell when HRC walked down to the New York delegation, Illinois was next but they just yielded their turn to New York. She took the mic and declared the state’s delegates for Obama and made a motion to suspend the rules and have Obama nominated by acclimation. Huge roar from the crowd. It’s like watching a good movie where you know the what the ending is, but still thoroughly enjoy watching it unfold.
Immediately, Nancy Pelosi asked for a second to the motion and then quickly asked if there would be any discussion, the Ayes (huge roar) and then the Nays. And without waiting for a response she said that there was a two-thirds majority and that was that.
Again, it looks like Obama turned an apparent weakness into a dramatic success.
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Title of the week — for any media. Thanks for the post. I hadn’t seen it explained like that anywhere else.
You can find much better play-by-play commentary here:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/live-from-denver-watching-the-roll-call/
And thanks about the title. It seemed like it was the only way to describe ritualized political suicide.
In the end, she committed a generous act of political theater that made her look far more gracious than any of the nonsense she’s spouted for the past few weeks about “unity.” It’s not the ending she wanted, but at least she got to go out with a memorable bang.
“seppuku”–great comparison!