Political Theater

Marathon, FL
No LL

There seems to be delicious political theater is about to unfold. Thursday's NYT said, "With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan..."

Meanwhile, the WSJ the other day published an Op Ed by Theodore Olsen. Mr. Olsen is the former solicitor general and he represented Bush in the famous Bush V. Gore Supreme Court Case.

Mr. Olsen anticipates (with apparent relish) that the spat about seating Democratic delegates from Florida and Michigan will lead to litigation. He says, "Surely no one familiar with her history would doubt that [Clinton's] take-no-prisoners campaign team would do whatever it took to capture the nomination, including all manner of challenges to Obama delegates and tidal waves of litigation."

Senator Clinton will be arguing "Count every vote" while Senator Obama will argue "Don't change the rules after the election." In other words, it would be a replay of Bush V. Gore.

At that point Mr. Olsen says, "The array of battle-tested Democratic lawyers who fought for recounts, changes in ballot counting procedures, and even re-votes in Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 would separate into two camps. Half of them would be relying on the suddenly-respectable Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision that overturned the Florida courts' post-hoc election rules changes. The other half would be preaching a new-found respect for "federalism" and demanding that the high court leave the Florida court decisions alone."

He further wonders, "... would Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the dissenters in Bush v. Gore, feel as strongly about not intervening if Sen. Obama was fighting against an effort to change a presidential election by changing the rules after the fact?"

Finally, he makes an offer. "If it does happen, I'd be more than happy to loan Sen. Obama the winning briefs that helped secure the election of the legitimate winner of the 2000 election, George W. Bush."

No matter what your politics, you must agree that this would be political theater at its most dramatic.