America's Sad Sack

Lanny Davis, who continues to claim that he's not a part of the Clinton campaign but just an interested citizen and supporter, lost his shit on the DNC member who made the presentation on behalf of seating delegates in Florida, which you'd think Davis would like, but apparently he didn't propose that Clinton get 5,000 delegates and a pony so it wasn't good enough for ol' Lanny:

A brief but spittle-filled shouting match broke out in the halls of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing on Saturday between a committee member and a surrogate for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Lanny Davis, the colorful, committed, and sometimes unrestrained Clinton supporter deliberately interrupted a small gathering of press who had come to hear Jon Ausman, a DNC member, explain the basis of his proposed Florida delegation compromise.

"I'll tell you what," Davis chimed in, "the Clinton campaign's position has been misrepresented by this wonderful love-fest, and the lady who testified for us was saying that the Obama campaign and your proposal is not generous. But it is in fact unfair. If you want to hear, now that the love-fest is over, why don't you come over and hear the counterpoint to this completely disingenuous argument." [...]

Ausman: [My proposal] is very generous, because Obama was initially fighting for a situation where Clinton would net 6 delegates, now it's 19.

Davis: Don't say you're being generous.

Ausman: I can say we're being generous.

Davis: But you're allowed to and I'm allowed to disagree...

Ausman: But I'm the one who's on the petition...

Reporter: Ok ok, why don't we --

Ausman: Are you a representative of Clinton?

Davis: No, I'm actually just a person...

Ausman: Are you a designated representative of Clinton?

Davis: I am not a designated representative.

Ausman: Then why don't we have a designated representative speak for Clinton and you be silent?

He also heckled a press conference of Florida leaders who were stressing unity and seeking to come to agreement and put this entire mess behind them.

As Jane Hamsher notes, this is the guy who claimed that bloggers were the uncouth shrieking harpies back in 2006:

Lanny, Lanny. Please. To quote -- well, you -- can't we all just get along?

"My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field."

Anger just isn't the way, Lanny. Politics is a gentleman's game, part of the fine tradition of Cicero and the great orators. We lower ourselves and our American ideals when we lose our temper and engage in this kind of coarse, angry, spittle-flecked vitriol.

I don't expect the type of Clinton supporters who rallied outside the Marriott and feted the guy who claims he had gay sex with Obama and passes out fliers reading "Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex" to agree with me, but it is an unadulterated joy of this primary to see someone like Lanny Davis so thoroughly discredited that he'll never get another job in a Democratic Administration ever again. Unfortunately, and this is something to think about in the future, he may still get on television as a "Democratic strategist," and will undermine a President Obama at any opportunity. Because it's personal to him. What a role model. No, actually, what a sad shell of a man.

UPDATE: This is over, Clinton netted 24 delegates on the day and we finally have "the math", with MI and FL being seated fully with 1/2 votes (which is what the Republicans did as punishment for states moving up). Harold Ickes apparently also lost his shit, cursing on live television and claiming that Clinton reserves her right to take this to the credentials committee, which basically means that she's keeping the option wide open of taking this to Denver. The only way that doesn't happen is if superdelegates don't overwhelmingly go to Obama's side in the next week. And even then, this move my Clinton and Ickes signals to their supporters that today's decision is, in their eyes, illegitimate.

Sigh.

UPDATE II: The General takes us down memory lane on Lanny Davis:



UPDATE III: Daily Kos has done me the good favor of interpreting the math. Based on the compromises reached today, Barack Obama is at 2,053 delegates with 2,117 required for nomination. So he's 64 delegates away, and still up by plenty. (I think they should have seated Michigan as 1/2 votes at 73-55, he'd get nominated anyway and there was no reason to chip 4 delegates away, but Michigan's leaders essentially hijacked the process and the whole thing was flawed anyway, so what are ya gonna do?). Given that Obama is probably going to win 40-45 delegates in Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, this means that another 20 superdelegates or so and it's all over.