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Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D - Denver) is looking towards the general election, and has turned her energy to drawing the contrast between the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, and his Republican opponent John McCain.
Rep. DeGette was a vocal supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primary battle, and served as a National Co-Chair of Clinton's Health Care Policy Task Force. It is a significant rebuttal to media claims of division within the party that such a champion of the Clinton campaign has aligned her strength behind the new Democratic Party standard bearer.
DeGette met in a private conversation with Senator Obama, when he visited Colorado on May 28th for an education town hall in Thornton. During that conversation, they spoke of the need to unify the party quickly. Rep. DeGette found the Senator, "gracious," and said that he, "recognizes the need to bring Clinton supporters into the campaign on an equal basis and that he can not win in November without them."
[more of the exclusive interview follows] |
Senator Obama also acknowledged concerns about the funding of this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver, and assured Rep. DeGette that he would assist in seeing to it that the Convention was a fully funded and successful event.
DeGette is one of the prime advocates in the House of Representatives for the Democratic proposals on stem cell research and the children's health insurance program. When asked her opinion on Sen. Obama's plan she said it was far better than Sen. McCain's plan, "which is no plan at all," and that there would be an, "inevitable evolution," as the plan moved through the Congress and that she expected the final measure to be a, "universal plan that works." DeGette indicated that she was looking forward to her involvement in shaping the legislation along with Sen. Clinton - should Sen. Clinton continue her service in the Senate.
As to the possibility that Sen. Clinton might instead be the Party's nominee for Vice President, Rep. DeGette stated that it was the right of the nominee to make that choice and that she would respect and support whatever decision that Sen. Obama made. DeGette repeated her unambiguous assertion that Senator Obama was in fact the nominee of the party.
Rep. DeGette had also spoken on this matter during a conference call yesterday that Sen. Clinton had held with 10 to 15 key allies in the House of Representatives. Rep. DeGette and her colleagues reportedly urged the Senator to begin the process of unification, and to do so by the end of the week. Following that conversation and others, the Senator has announced that she will be suspending her campaign on Saturday.
Rep. DeGette is a 'super-delegate', and while pledged to Clinton, is not legally bound to vote for Clinton at the convention even if the Senator chooses not to release her delegates. When asked if she considers herself an, "Obama Delegate," at this point, she replied that she has seen the media talk about how, "so-and-so shifts their support," and it was not like that. In fact it was now a, "...moot point, as Senator Obama is the Democratic nominee. You can say that I am a 'Democratic delegate.'"
Asked if Obama would be raising funds outside of Colorado for the convention, or if we could expect visits in that regard in coming weeks, she first corrected the structure of a question that had suggested, "low funding," by saying that the funding was not low, although it was, "behind where we would like it to be," and then indicated that she expected both direct fund raising efforts by the candidate and for the candidate to release fund raising staff from his campaign to aid the project.
Asked if she would be assisting Sen. Clinton in raising the funds needed to retire debt from the lengthy campaign, Rep. DeGette said that it was, "far too early," to begin discussing that process.
Asked if it was far too early to speculate on Sen. Clinton's future role, Rep. Degette answered that one thing she has learned in Congress is to, "never speculate on what the Senate might do," but she invoked the story of Sen. Kennedy who after losing his presidential bid became a, "giant of the Senate."
DeGette's eyes were clearly on unity, and she seemed to prefer a discussion that would keep our focus on, "the real opponent, John McCain." Still, she answered questions about the process leading to the nomination. At the Congressional District 1 Assembly, she had said that she would not use her position as a super-delegate to overturn the will of the voters. There has been a lot of discussion about various metrics that can be used to count the popular vote. She was asked, as a Representative of a caucus state which measure she used to weigh this. She said, "I think it doesn't matter how you measure it, because by all measures Obama won the popular vote. If you are going to play in this game, you are going to have to play by the rules. Both candidates played by the rules, and Senator Obama won."
Looking to the future, the Representative did not voice an opinion on how the delegate selection process should be done, but she did say, "I think we need to look at a lot of issues," including super-delegates, proportional vs. winner take all voting, and if caucuses still made sense in our modern, "24 hour news cycle."
Sen. Obama today released a plan that would call for the DNC to refuse funds from lobbyists and corporate PACs. When asked her opinion on that as a policy, she said, "the DNC is going to have to make that decision." When asked if as a general rule she felt refusing PAC dollars was good policy, she said each candidate had to make their own decisions on that and personally she felt, "it's hard to see someone buying a vote for a $1000 or $3000 donation." "The key," she said, "is disclosure." Rep. Degette said that if a candidate said who was giving and why they were giving, then the transparency was the important factor.
The final, somewhat off topic question, put to the Representative was about a major issue confronting both lobbyists and the public, on which we can expect the Vice Chair of the Commerce Committee to take a solid role: telecom immunity.
Would she support retro-active telecom immunity?
"No! What sense is there in that? We're not going to have retroactive immunity. Not if I can help it."
Diana DeGette threaded a difficult needle today. She was a loyal and vocal supporter of a candidate, when the vast majority of her constituents had voted in a different direction. She took an active role in the dialog about the future of the party, and she will be taking the conversation forward to November. With so much of the media narrative focused on if the Democrats can become united, DeGette stands as an indication that at the core, they always were.
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