Need for party unity trumps drama of possibly contentious roll call vote

M.E. Sprengelmeyerand Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 28, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Barry Guiterrez / The Rocky

Sen. Hillary Clinton, with Sen. Charles Schumer, left, watches after calling on Democratic delegates to nominate Sen. Barack Obama by acclamation.

The most-hyped - and potentially most explosive - moment of this heavily scripted Democratic National Convention turned out to be a big, celebratory dud.

But few Democrats were complaining about the lack of fireworks during the historic presidential roll call vote that made Barack Obama, by acclamation, the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

It simply had to be that way.

Sen. Barack Obama had too much at stake. History shows - in 1980, 1972, 1968 and beyond - that nothing sets a party on the way to a humiliating defeat in November like a noisy, intra-family squabble at the summer convention.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had too much at stake. How can she come back and ask for Democrats' support in her next run for president - and there probably will be a next time - if she's blamed for costing the party the White House this year?

And so, they made peace.

Knowing the lessons of history, parties like their nomination fights to end in unanimity - a voice vote ending with all rival factions pulling together and acclaiming the nominee unanimously.

Democrats tried that with Sen. John Kerry in 2004. But a plucky group of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's delegates, including the biggest faction from Colorado, said they just wanted their voices heard, their votes counted. So the party moved on.

Unanimity is not the norm. It's an exception. But in recent days, as Clinton's more vocal backers paraded through the streets under the "Party Unity My A . . . ," or PUMA, banner, it was treated by some media outlets as a replay of the knock-down, drag-out conventions of days of yore.

The hype shouldn't surprise anyone. There are so few unscripted news stories at these conventions that 15,000 journalists get giddy at the thought of having some actual journalism to perform.

So the Clinton-Obama hype grew and grew, with some Clinton delegates fanning the flames with the idea that they should do something remarkable: actually cast the votes they were elected to cast. If they didn't get their way, some, like one of Clinton's floor whips, Maryland delegate Michael Eaves, predicted there could be unseemly jeers if Obama were elected by acclamation.

He had been part of the group of 300 delegates who signed petitions placing Clinton's name into nomination, triggering party rules that required the party to decide the nomination the way it's almost always decided: with a roll call vote of states.

For weeks, various media reports speculated on the behind-the-scenes negotiations it would take to turn this potentially explosive situation into a peaceful show of unity.

If anyone in attendance thought that this was an actual nail-biter of a contest, an early string of states signaled where the results were headed.

First, Arkansas threw its votes to Obama. Massachusetts, won by Sen. Clinton in the primaries, gave Obama more votes. And a lot of heads turned when New Jersey, the state across the river from Clinton's Senate district and a state she won on Super Tuesday, gave its votes to Obama unanimously.

With Obama leading by more than 1,000 delegate votes and within a few hundred of clinching, it should have become obvious to the most ardent Clinton backers in the crowd that to continue the tally would mean diminishing Clinton's accomplishment as the first legitimate female candidate for the White House.

And so, the alphabet worked its way to New Mexico, where the delegation chair took glee in deferring to Obama's home state of Illinois. And in the Illinois delegation, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley took glee, first in predicting a Cubs-White Sox World Series, and then in deferring to Clinton's home state of New York.

There, Sen. Clinton was ready to make the ultimate rallying call: "I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules and suspend the future conduct of the roll call vote," Clinton said. "All votes cast by the delegates will be counted and I move Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the nominee of the Democratic Party as the president of the United States."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the permanent convention chair, asked for a second. She asked for the ayes. The noise was deafening. She asked for the nays - quickly. There was hardly time to blink.

And the ayes have it.

Up in the nosebleed seats, in the Maryland delegation, disappointed Clinton fan Eaves decided to applaud - but not too loudly.

"I was cheering for the process of our party," he explained. "It's an excitement for our party. It's a vital point for our party to see Sen. Clinton be so gracious and classy at a time when she is deserving of the nomination herself."

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