Does Hillary Really Have Nothing To Lose By Paying For The Do-Over Voting?

After writing about the conversation I had with my friend regarding the Democratic candidates splitting the cost of paying for a do-over vote in Florida and Michigan, I get a call from this same friend the very next morning gloating as he had just heard James Carville make the exact proposal on CNN,then rip into Obama man Tom Daschle for hemming and hawing over this idea.

My friend was estatic with an "I told you so" air about him. However, as I had been out all morning with my family, and was taking my friend's call deep in the play area of Hanna Park, I told my friend I'd have to get back to him once I had checked into this "news."

And check into it I did. For 24 straight hours I have searched news sites, blog sites, porn sites and social networking sites. Nothing nothing nothing on this story and no mention of Carvel and Daschle having this early Sunday morning CNN discussion.

Finally, in the depths of a blog called America Blog, I found something comparable on this issue and telling in its view of a Clinton paid for do-over. I know, this isn't the exact same as a cost splitting proposal. But it does wholly exemplify the desperation that is the Clinton campaign.

Effort by rich Clinton supporters to finance Michigan re-vote actually undermined the re-vote
by Joe Sudbay (DC) · 3/23/2008 08:52:00 PM ET

I didn't get a chance to write about this last week, but as we continue to hear complaining about the fact that Michigan isn't having another vote, it's important.

There was just something incredibly unseemly about a group of Clinton supporters offering to raise the money for the Michigan primary re-vote. It literally reeked of trying to buy an election ("Dear Michigan, your vote finally counts because Hillary paid for your election"). I mean, seriously, that sounded like something you'd expect in a third-world dictatorship, not the United States. So for all of Clinton's feigned outrage over no progress in Michigan, the fault lies with her and her wealthy backers:

Michigan officials bear considerable responsibility for the mess they have helped to create, and a revote is one way out, though that looks increasingly unlikely given the political stalemate. But Rendell and Corzine took matters into their own hands without thinking through the consequences. Their letter to Granholm creates the impression that a Michigan do-over would be Clinton-financed contest designed to save her candidacy.

The integrity of the Democratic nomination contest already is in question -- remember, they are supposedly still counting votes in the Texas caucuses that were held on March 4 -- and this only adds to public cynicism.

It does look like Clinton's big dollar funders were going to buy the re-vote. It just looks that way. You have to admit, when Clinton's supporters look like they're trying to buy a new election for her, it really does diminish all that moral outrage she's been spewing about holding fair elections.

(John Edwards, are you paying attention? This kind of profligate spending by monied special interests is exactly the kind of thing you railed about during your campaign.)

So that's the best I can find on this subject. Despite the above, the "paying for the election," my friend's position is that Hillary has nothing to lose flipping the bill for the do-overs as mathematicians all over the world have confirmed, using complex computer addition software, that she's done for.