Everything You Never Wanted To Know About the Credentials Committee

In the past couple of days, there have been numerous breakdowns of the structure of the Credentials Committee, since Hillary Clinton mentioned being willing to take the fight to it on Sunday.

You can see the various takes of Chris Beam, Greg Sargeant, and David Paul Kuhn. Of course, Angelo gave his own explanation last week, that actually goes into the relevant questions a bit deeper. (UPDATE: Marc Ambinder points out that Kuhn in Politico got the number of people on the Committee wrong. Of course, Angelo had it at the right number, 186. Sigh.)

If you want a brief version, it’s this: Taking the fight to the convention is a futile choice. She’d have to convince Howard Dean’s faction to go along, and it seems the one thing Dean is concerned about is assuming the rules and sanctions he laid out maintain credibility.

Once again, though, it comes down to Dean being both the cause and failed solution. If Dean’s block of supporters announced support for a particular position vis-a-vis the Credentials Committee, it would be very difficult for both campaigns to balk, as they woul dhave to work together to get around it (and that is the most likely at all).


But most of all, after reading those explanations: Does that sound like any way to resolve an election? It just seems preposterous. The irony is that the Democrats created all these rules and regulations only for them to backfire upon actually using them. The Republican process is far more streamlined with less regulation and is far less controversial. Food for thought.

The Republicans have taken to trying to exploit that difference today. It’s hard to see this breaking through, but it’s clear that there’s definitely a low level of confidence in the Democratic nominating process among actual Democrats on the ground.

Contrast that to the Republicans: the only controversy there was all states being winner take all.

In a related note, Harold Ickes never answer my questions.

Isn’t it odd when a bunch of new media members all decide to write the same extensively long explanaiton at the same arbitrary point in time? I was asking open questions to Ickes last month about the Committee, and now we get standard explanations (that don’t answer the question I posed, for the record) from three different sources. Odd.

Related at 2008 Central:

Question for Harold Ickes

Clinton Suggests Possible Credentials Fight