Dean Above the Fray

Jason Horowitz has an interesting exchange at this weeks DNC pow-wow with major Clinton and Obama fundraisers:

At that point Clinton campaign finance chair Hassan Nemazee spoke up. He said Dean's response sounded to him as if the DNC chairman were "essentially trying to kick the can down the road" and that the chairman was not exhibiting the type of leadership one would expect. Nemazee said that since the campaigns obviously could not reach a solution on their own before June, Dean's argument amounted to passing the buck.

Dean then responded, heatedly, that in his experience, those who sought the intervention of party leadership were motivated by their own particular agendas. And that was not the sort of leadership he intended to provide.

Nemazee answered that he had in know way insinuated that Dean should bring about a particular outcome, and was only calling for the chairman to take a more active role in exercising leadership. Nemazee said it needed to happen before the primaries, not after.

That to me sounds like a level of desperation that we have not seen the Hillary Clinton admit to. What Nemazee's action here says is that she does not believe that time is on Hillary Clinton's side. The position of the Hillary camp, or at least this member of it, is that their only chance is for Dean to intervene, to intervene now, and force all the superdelegates to go on record.

And the reason they want it to happen now is that the superdelegates seem to be slipping away the longer this goes on. Dean is indeed playing it safe, but neither is he being unfair to either side. He is simply letting the process unfold the way it was designed to. That the process as it stands now will cost Hillary the nomination, well, that's not his fault.

That Hillary is losing is not a good enough reason to change the process mid campaign. Unless you are on Hillary's staff of course.