Opinion: Hillary Clinton’s brother is one unhappy camper

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While Democratic honchos sought today to untangle the problems caused by the rogue Florida and Michigan primaries, the party was in danger of losing a high-profile vote -- that of Tony Rodham , the brother of Hillary Clinton.

[UPDATE: Correction from the original post; our reporter got it right, but we wrote Hugh when we meant Tony. Many, many apologies. And our thanks to readers who caught our error].

The Times’ Faye Fiore found Rodham sitting in an Irish-themed bar across the street from the Washington hotel where the Democratic rules committee was grappling with the mess. He was drinking a pint ... and fuming.

“I’m just here to make sure Americans are represented by one vote for every person,’ he said, parroting the Clinton line that the results in the two states should be reflected in their totality at the Democratic convention.

With the Democratic National Committee likely to settle on, at some unknown point, a different solution that results in fewer delegates for Clinton, Rodham opined: ‘What the DNC and (Chairman) Howard Dean are doing is an absolute disgrace.”

The upshot?

Rodham, a self-described “yellow dog Democrat all my life,” is unsure who he would support in November if Clinton is not the party’s standard bearer.

‘If my sister doesn’t end up with the nomination, I gotta take a look at who I’m gonna vote for,” he said.

Horrors.

Does that mean, Fiore asked, Rodham would vote for Republican John McCain?

“I didn’t say that. It could be Bob Barr,” he said, referring to the Libertarian presidential candidate who, as a House member from Georgia, was a prime player in the impeachment of Rodham’s brother-in-law, Bill Clinton).

With that, Rodham paid his check and gathered his family: his son (the grandson of California Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose daughter, Nicole, was once married to Rodham), his baby by his second marriage, asleep in a stroller, and his pregnant wife. They headed back ...

toward the committee meeting.

“I’m going to go yell at the DNC meeting or wherever they’ll let me in,” he said.

-- Don Frederick