Gov. Strickland: "Let us go to Michigan and Florida!"

Ohio's governor and prominent Hillary Clinton supporter Ted Strickland came dangerously close to a Howard Dean moment just now, warming up the crowd for Hillary's victory speech in Columbus, as he listed the states that Hillary will now continue to "fight" in -- concluding, to loud cheers and applause, "And let us go to Michigan and Florida!"

Fox News's Brit Hume and Bill Kristol then proceeded to talk at length about a possible credentials/rules fight at the convention over those states' disputed delegate slates from the January primaries, but IMHO, they missed the point entirely. Strickland's comments appeared to pretty straightforwardly confirm Hillary's pivot to a new strategy on Michigan and Florida: pressing for a re-vote instead of (indefensibly) demanding that the earlier null-and-void primaries be honored.

This strategic shift, predicted several weeks ago by blogger FlyOnTheWall, is exactly what Team Clinton should be doing, and although Hillary might well win those states again, I would support a re-vote, as I explained yesterday and elaborated earlier today. If you're going to count those states, re-votes (actually the first real votes, since the previous primaries were intrinsically meaningless) are the way to do it.

On the other hand, Hillary herself just asserted in her victory speech that "we've won Florida... [and] Michigan." Hmm.

UPDATE: Here are Governor Strickland's comments, followed by an entertaining Fox News roundtable discussion of the issue:

Comments

[Marty West]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5FzCeV0ZFc