When Credentials Fights Were About Democracy

Today, of course, the Democrats’ Rules & Bylaws Committee meets to decide the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations, which were stripped of all delegates after state leaders flouted party rules and moved up their primaries. Hillary Clinton had no problem with this decision in 2007—she even said the Michigan primary wouldn’t count—but after falling behind in 2008, she started comparing those demanding a full seating of the two delegations to democracy advocates in Zimbabwe, abolitionists, suffragettes, and defenders of Al Gore’s position in the 2000 recount.

Clinton has never quite explained how she reached this morally absolutist conclusion after having such a differing position on the issue only a few months earlier. Her comments are particularly objectionable because they trivialize the occasions in which credentials fights really were about basic issues of justice, democracy, and fairness.

Perhaps the best example of such a fight came in 1964, when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party—a biracial group of civil rights activists—challenged the credentials of the mostly pro-Goldwater, segregationist Mississippi regulars. After considerable effort, Lyndon Johnson (who feared a disruption to the convention) and his aides brokered a compromise. The Mississippi regulars would be seated, but with two caveats: two MFDP members would receive credentials as at-large convention delegates; and racial discrimination would be taken into account in future credentials fights.

As he expected, Johnson received criticism for the deal from some liberals. To his astonishment, however, some of his Southern allies attacked the compromise as too favorable to the MFDP. Johnson’s frustration boiled over in a conversation with Georgia governor Carl Sanders, his strongest supporter among the ranks of the South’s governors. The clip below (full transcript below the jump) references Mississippi’s segregationist senators, James Eastland and John Stennis, as well as its even more segregationist governor, Ross Barnett.


The Clinton forces might want to keep 1964 in mind as they offer hyperbolic arguments about the alleged immorality of the party’s attempts to enforce its calendar in 2008.

President Johnson: What’s happening is we’re doing four or five things. Number one: we’re coming in there and seating the state of Mississippi. Every damn one of them. Now, they oughtn’t to be, Carl. They oughtn’t to …

Carl Sanders: I don’t—

President Johnson: You and I just can’t survive our political modern life with these goddamned fellows down there that are eating them for breakfast every morning. They’ve got to quit that. And they’ve got to let ‘em vote. And they’ve got to let ‘em shave. And they’ve got to let ’em eat, and things like that. And they don’t do it.

However much we love [Democratic Senators] Jim Eastland and John Stennis, they get a governor like Ross Barnett, and he’s messing around there with [George] Wallace, and they won’t let one [black] man go in a precinct convention. Now, that’s—we’ve got to put a stop to that, because that’s just like the old days, by God, when they wouldn’t let them go in and cast a vote of any kind. And you’ve put a stop to it in your state.

But we’re going to ignore that. We’re going to say, “Hell, yes, you did it. You’re wrong. You violated the ’57 law, and you violated the ’60 law, and you violated the ’64 law, but we’re going to seat you—every damn one of you. You lily white babies, we’re going to salute you.”