September 06, 2012

NYC Letter: Pants On Fire XVI -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Day 1,321 of CHOPE
D-minus 135 Days

No Wait Encore Edition

We suppose between Political Whoredom, Big Stupid, and now Pants On Fire (début just yesterday!), DWS could be her very own daily feature.

That might be more than you, dear skimmer, could stomach skimming. Certainly more than we could stomach writing.

We indulge DWS this week because, as the DNC chair, she is lying in front of more cameras than usual while the Democrats hold their convention to nominate someone to run for president for them.*

First a little table setting. The 2012 Democratic platform had two telling departures from the 2008 platform: Jerusalem and God were tossed. A party platform describes party ideology and agenda items in language meant to attract voters and encourage straight party-ticket voting. The Democrat party, which has become the party of weird, simply can't help mussing with traditional American comfort politics, in these two instances recognizing the Jerusalem of Yahweh and invoking the God of the Second Jersualem. Suffice it to say the DNC made a botch of something as simple as TV window dressing. The botch quickly started to suck valuable ink and priceless air time away from the scripted Potemkin convention. Spokespersons were dispatched to spin the botch away. Look, here's DWS to explain it all.

DNC CHAIR ON WHY
GOD/JERUSALEM WERE OVERLOOKED:
THE PLATFORM IS MANY PAGES LONG
CHARLOTTE September 5, 2012 (BF)

Both omissions together, double-spaced, do not make up a page.

The no-Jerusalem and Godless platform began to dominate discussions by journalists impaneled to gush over Democrat personalities. Mr. Obama was forced to intervene.

A Democratic official says the president was unhappy about the platform changes when he heard about them. He told his staff to convey his opposition right away, which set the wheels in motion to reinstate.

On the "God" part, the official said, his response to hearing it was, "Why was it changed in the first place?"**

But putting the passages back in the platform — a move Democratic officials appeared to think would go smoothly — caused loud objections in the convention hall.

CONVENTION FLOOR CHAOS:
DEMOCRATS ALTER PLATFORM,
DISAGREE

CHARLOTTE September 5, 2012 (CNN) - In a rare display of just how quickly a tightly scripted national political convention can unwind, Democrats on Wednesday struggled to complete a voice vote amending their party platform to include language referring to Jerusalem and God.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention's chairman, attempted to preside over a rubberstamp vote to unbotch the omission botches. He hadn't bothered to whip the necessary two-thirds votes on the floor and to his surprise the how-I-hear-it voice vote from the floor was convincingly divided on the restoration. He called for the vote three times -- each with the same result. On the third vote Mr. Villaraigosa wised up, heard two-thirds where a moment before he heard halvesies, and pronounced the restoration passed to a chorus of boos.

Observers were dubious - at best - as to whether the affirmative votes outweighed those in the negative, much less reached the two-thirds vote required. Regardless, the chairman ruled in favor of the amendments.

With the unbotch botched on national television, a befuddled media stirred itself to ask, "Wha-happened? Was that -- disunity?" Look, here's DWS to explain it all.

DNC CHAIR DENIES 'DISCORD
'OVER JERUSALEM VOTE

September 5, 2012 (Politico) - Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Wednesday denied any "discord" over the Democratic Party’s decision to return "God" and "Jerusalem" to the party platform, and said the move "absolutely" received the two-thirds delegate vote required. DWS on CNN:
Well, really, it was essentially a technical oversight. And President Obama, because he personally believes that Jerusalem is and always should remain the capital of Israel [Ed.: Ah, yeah: "Carney would not say whether President Obama believes it's Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. For nearly a minute, in response to repeated questioning, Carney only says that "our position hasn't changed" and that he hasn't gotten that question in a while."], he made sure that we amended the platform to reflect his personal view as well as reflect the language that we had in the platform in 2008.

Stop. Just stop. "Technical oversight"? Here's how a platform committee goes about the important business of writing the party's platform. Someone produces the previous convention's party platform. What the party deems stays, stays, what it wants added is added, what it instructs to be chucked, is chucked. Someone, usually someone who has lost a committee bar bet, then cuts and pastes everything into a new MSWord document. A PDF is circulated and spelling errors are corrected and "technical oversights" are caught and fixed by layers and layers and layers of party review and approval. To plead "technical oversight" is to admit that God and Jerusalem are of such niggling insignificance to the Democrats that nobody caught the omissions. Either the Democrat party abandoned God and Jerusalem or it is wholly incompetent. DWS thinks the party loses fewer votes with the latter explanation.

Some delegates booed the measure, but Wasserman Schultz denied that there was a rift in the convention hall.

"There wasn’t any discord," Florida’s first Jewish congresswoman said, adding that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention chairman who presided over the vote, "had to just make sure that we had a two-thirds vote and when he realized that we did we moved forward."

"And did you really think that it was two-thirds? It seemed like a lot of people felt like maybe it wasn’t quite there," CNN reporter Brianna Keilar asked. DWS:

It was absolutely a two-thirds.

Allahpundit at Hot Air comments:

Whereas other top flacks try to twist facts and shade the truth, [DWS will] tell you straight to your face that you didn't just see and hear what you’ve seen and heard 20 times on cable news and YouTube this afternoon. That’s how you get to be chair of the DNC and a member of Congress instead of some no-name spokesman somewhere.

A reminder, pay no attention to the disarray!

OBAMA CAMP: OUR CONVENTION WILL BE BETTER

August 31, 2012 (Politico) - Obama campaign officials predicted on Friday that Democrats will do a much better job delivering a substantive message at their convention than they say Republicans did at theirs. Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager:
Our goal next week is to bring the choice in the election into focus for the American people, and I think throughout the week, that choice will be crystal clear.

Mission accomplished, Steph!

CHOPE.

Encore.

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* Hint, it looks like it might be that articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking guy again. The light-skinned guy, the one with the on-off Negro dialect switch. You know the guy. The one who was bellhopping a couple of conventions ago. That guy. Yeah. He's the money-pick at the convention.

** Maybe he should ask the articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking guy:

Obama had seen the language prior to the convention, a campaign source said, but did not seek to change it until after Republicans jumped on the omissions of God and Jerusalem late Wednesday.
 Posted by Damian at September 6, 2012 04:45 PM
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