Harold Ickes is a Lying P.O.S.

Hillary Clinton is surrounded by people of low character and dubious morals, as her lying cheating husband typifies. People like Grunwald and Penn and Wolfson simply are hacks who deserve banishment into political limbo.

But Harold Ickes is a special case. Way back in the day I worked for him in the N.Y. Primary out of a Columbus Circle office. I was sent by Ickes with young John Podesta as my assistant to work in the most conservative state district in New York, we were told, Bay Ridge where the Norwegian population almost outnumbered Oslo and the shipping magnates had huge palatial estates facing the Verrazano Bridge.

Back then, Ickes was touted as a Karl Rove of the left. However, his skill level never exceeded mediocre and his nasty personal politics left him the perpetual bridesmaid as the Democrats again and again missed the brass ring. And when they did succeed, as in '92, much more talented and personable types like John Podesta were elevated to the senior levels, while Ickes was relegated to a backstairs junkyard dog role doing summary executions, carving up the political cadavers, and disposing of them with his customary ruthlessness.

I'm happy to see him still out there punching while the media barely conceal their contempt for this nasty piece of work. It's no secret the media despises Ickes:

Ickes also said Clinton didn't vote on the DNC rules. But Ickes did. And he voted in August to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates as a sitting member of the Rules and Bylaws Commission.

“There’s been no change,” Ickes said, adding that he was then acting as a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee “not acting as an agent of Sen. Clinton. We had promulgated rules -- if Florida and Michigan violated those rules” they’d be stripped of their delegates. “We stripped them of all their delegates in order to prevent campaigns to campaign in those states.”

In fact, however, that was not why Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates. They were stripped of their delegates because they violated party rules by moving up their contest dates before Feb. 5. A pledge to not campaign in those states did not come about until one was put forward by the four early states allowed to go before Feb. 5 by the DNC -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Clinton was the last to sign this pledge.

“Those were the rules, and we thought we had an obligation to enforce them,” Ickes acknowledged today on the call even while trying to convince members of the media that Florida’s and Michigan’s delegations should not only be seated at the convention, but should also have full voting rights and that delegates should be allocated based on voting that took place in those states -- even though in Michigan, Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot and uncommitted got 41% of the vote to Clinton’s 55%.

My guess is that even if Hillary were somehow to lie, cheat, and finagle her way to get the Democratic nomination through the dirty tricks of scumbags like Ickes, she would not win the general election.

And in the ultra-remote possibility she won, Ickes would once again be kept in the back room, unlike his distinguished father who served as FDR's Secretary of the Interior.

You really want to keep sausage-making gurus like Ickes behind the scenes...