Rep. Mahoney, uncommitted superdelegate, meets Clinton, Obama, then stays that way
The Times' Peter Wallsten had a revealing conversation Thursday with Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida. He's an uncommitted Democratic superdelegate and the fellow who won the House seat that once belonged to Republican Rep. Mark Foley. (Don't look for any text messaging joke here.)
Mahoney's been busy the last couple of days involved in presidential politics. And if his impressions are any indication, you better stop holding your breath for Sen. Hillary Clinton to give up her uphill return quest for the White House anytime soon.
Mahoney met with her for a half-hour at the Democratic National Committee offices on Wednesday. And he met with Sen. Barack Obama today on the Hill.
Both encounters are part of an ongoing series of meetings and phone calls between courting candidates and their staffers and uncommitted superdelegates that go on around the clock largely out of public view.
"She wasn't talking exit," Mahoney reports about Clinton. "She's talking winning."
Mahoney said little about the session between Obama and other Democratic members of Congress today. But the sum total of both gatherings was insufficient to change Mahoney's mind about not committing to one candidate.
"I don't feel compelled to make any decisions before the convention," he said.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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this June thing is just a way for Hillary's team to try to get her critics off her back. She will take this all the way to the convention, trying to dig up the "wright" kind of dirt and seat the Fla & Mi results along the way.
Posted by: keith | May 08, 2008 at 11:04 PM
Why should this woman, Mrs. Clinton, be a bastion for women's rights and needs, when she: 1) has only risen in political life mostly, NOT through her own political accomplishment, but by shadowing that of her husband's, 2) has employed Machiavellian tactics throughout her candidacy, which perpetuate the negative and unfair stereotypical idea, that women are underhanded, conniving, unfair, and untrustworthy, 3) has little regard not just for, and towards women, but for, and towards us all, since her greatest concern, is to undermine the prospective democratic candidate, in order to ensure that a republican one, win the election, thus making certain that she may run again, in 2012, 4) has, as an ever perpetual vestige, a husband with an ego of a megalomaniac, which will, one way or the other, invariably, serve to further divide and antagonize the public from one political persuasion towards that of another? Why? Why are these women not seeing this?!!! And since when, does beauty, race or gender, for that matter, all which, arbitrary consequences of birth, confer any important bearing on a person's sense entitlement to anything?!!! Since last that I have checked, our nation professes itself to be one of merit (even if not always acts in accordance to this ideal)!!!!
Posted by: susanne | May 08, 2008 at 11:47 PM
Do you think that these SUPER-cowardly delegates are more mindfully of the bullishness the Clintons are able and capable of imposing on their respective political careers, than they are, towards the responsibility that they hold towards the Democratic Party and the American people they profess to represent?!! Do you think?!! These SUPER-COWARDLY DELEGATES are willing to have the democratic party loose this time, so that their cowardice be accommodated!!!!!! We are living in the last throws of a democracy, and not in a healthy one!!!
Posted by: susanne | May 09, 2008 at 12:03 AM