Clinton: Open Thread
by tgirschJune 2nd, 2008
After this weekend’s events (in particular, the Michigan and Florida seating) and the Clinton campaign’s reaction to them, I’m left with no conclusion other than that Clinton simply doesn’t care about the health and interests Democratic party — she wants the nomination, and doesn’t seem to care if she has to tear the party apart to get it. I could be wrong about this, but I simply cannot come up with another logical conclusion.
Discuss.
Categories: News & Current Events, Politics |
The doings by the Clintonites at the RBC was a disgrace. Under the guise of counting all the votes, they really meant count only those votes Hillary deems worthy and made horrendous comments invoking everything from Civil Rights to lying about their own involvement in dishing out and accepting the rules in the first place. Their testimony was a hypocritical farce and the appeal to the Cred Comm. comment was not about unity by any stretch of the imagination.
I fully expect her to suspend her campaign tomorrow night while still claiming she won the popular vote. If that happens, there is going to be a furor that I think will simply be too much to overcome.
I tend to agree with you, but with one caveat. I think most presidential candidates would do just about anything if they thought it would get them to the White House. No proof, just a gut feeling.
For me, the difference with HRC was her seeming sense of entitlement that clouded her judgement as to what might actually give her a real chance to succeed. What I mean by that is this. A typical candidate, while willing to deal with the devil if it would in fact get them into the White House, would not compromise their integrity on a long shot. Thus the general appearance of selflessness. Clinton, on the other hand, seemed to think this was within her grasp and thus was willing to go to any length with the deluded idea that by doing so she would actually win. Instead, she played all her trump cards and lost, which puts her in the worst possible light.
So, for me, what really differentiated her was her willingness to scorch the earth for a losing cause.
Note: I would not stake my reputation on the cogentivity of this comment. And yes, I know that is not a word.
“I could be wrong about this, but I simply cannot come up with another logical conclusion.”
I hope you are right.
I hope Hillary doesn’t drop out tonight and that her husband will keep talking. Maybe Michelle Obama and Bill could hold a joint press conference. That would be great.
I don’t know. I think there’s a perspective from which this is simply the obviously right thing for her to do.
This is the biggest competitive contest, for the highest prize, in all the world. And it’s for a position she not only wants but feels she can use effectively and to advantage if she wins it. And she’s ambitious, confident, and competitive, as you have to be even to approach that level. So, in that position, being that kind of person, what do you do?
You’re in a hard-fought race in which, for most of the last half, the gap between candidates in both state-committed delegates and overall delegates has been less than 5%. It currently stands at 4-5% in both categories. You have won a majority of all votes counted. Your opponent keeps pretending he has “clinched” the nomination and you should drop out before the convention, but that rests entirely on a lead among delegates who haven’t officially cast their votes and won’t, and can’t, until the convention (the superdelegates); part of that lead rests on “privately committed” superdelegates who haven’t even openly stated a preference. Neither candidate has clinched the nomination, and the total of uncommitted or secretly committed delegates is currently twice the size of the gap between candidates’ declared superdelegate totals. If you win even a reasonable percentage of the uncommitted superdelegates, and as few as a couple dozen so-called committed superdelegates shift your way, you will lead in both vote totals and delegate counts. And that’s not even counting the 50% of your votes, and delegates, from Florida that were trashed for procedural reasons. Both candidates have shown strengths, but you have trounced your opponent in the biggest states, including some important swing states, and he has largely prevailed in marginal states with weird “caucus” voting systems that don’t apply in the general election.
In other words, the race is hair-splitting close, you can still win it mathematically, and you will win it if only a small number of superdelegates change their minds - as some already have done in one direction or the other (or both, in at least one case). Neither candidate will have officially clinched it until the convention, when the superdelegates vote - and a lot can happen in that time.
Besides which, you know that the calls for “unity” - meaning you have a duty to quit the race for your opponent’s benefit - and complaints about the long campaign, are crap - there have been half a dozen or more multi-ballot conventions between the two parties in the 20th century, and many more races that were close up to or even during the convention. Campaigning right down to the convention is hardly some kind of sin - it’s ordinary politics. (This campaign is long because it started early, not because it’s finishing late.) The claim you have a duty to bow out three months early is just pressure tactics - as was the complaining when you (gracelessly) pointed out that many unexpected things happen before a nomination is sewn up.
So what do you do?
If you’re the kind of person who can and does pursue this office to begin with, you fight like hell in every way you can. You’re the kind of person who doesn’t give up in the ninth inning, who doesn’t quit a game just because they’re behind, who never gives up a fight until they’re knocked out - you’re the Pete Rose of politics, because you have to be even to be in this race, and you don’t give up just because you’re lagging by 4% with almost three months left to go. And you don’t care how much your opponent’s whiny cult complains that you’re denying your competitor some sort of moral right by actually . . . competing against him. You know it could - even if it probably won’t - still go your way, and you do everything you can to play the game until it’s over - not just until your opponent says it’s over so he won’t have to keep competing with you.
From that perspective - the perspective of a confident, ambitious competitor - fighting “till the last dog dies”, as Bill famously promised - is just the obvious thing to do. Nobody asks why Pete Rose never quit in the ninth inning, or suggested he had some kind of moral duty to let his opponents win the game as soon as they got tired of playing. If your opponent really deserves the win, they have to earn it, at the time the final official tally is made - not weeks in advance because their PR reps say it’s so. And if you’re the kind of person who’s in this race and willing to win it, you might wonder about an opponent who can’t or won’t trust himself to win it for real.
And as for party unity, you have to make a decision about that, but you realize also that every party faces this question every election, and especially every contested election; you bear no special burden or duty in that regard. And you realize there’s a long tradition of power-brokering up to and during conventions as well, and that nobody previously would ever have been expected to forfeit their leverage over party platform, appointments, a Veep slot, or what have you, just because their opponent wants them to drop out for nothing. And you may imagine that if your opponent feels mortally wounded by competition from within his own party, by people who largely agree with his policies, there may be some question how he expects to withstand real attacks from the right wing.
So what do you do? And - why should you do what nobody else has ever been demanded to do in a similar position?
I will say this. I was convinced there was no chance HRC would be the VP selection. Given how well she has done in the recent elections, I’m no longer so sure.
Another thing. I bet if the Rev Wright tapes surfaced before the first primary, HRC would be the nominee tonight and not Obama.
It is time, and has been time for at least a couple of weeks and probably more, for Senator Obama’s supporters to follow his lead in easing up on Hillary. John W. McCain is the opponent. Obama cannot win without the support of Hillary Clinton’s voters. Hillary and Obama tied and he won on a coin toss. Every Democrat should now swear to speak no evil of fellow Democrats. We are in a tough race. There will be folks who can be won over who will NOT be if the oversensitivity and bickering at the Clintons continues. Senator Clinton was gracious in congratulating Senator Obama last night. She has consistently emphasized her friendship with him and her admiration of him and her determination to do all she can to make the Democratic party victorious in November. Like almost all candidates who lose a very close primary campaign she is holding on to her delegates to influence the convention in the direction her voters (half of the Democratic vote!) support. That does not mean she is being a bad sport.
I guess I am saying to my friends who have been with Senator Obama a little longer than I have: Grow up. This was a VERY tight primary campaign. CNN gave three different accounts of estimated votes in the primaries and caucuses. Two versions gave Clinton a narrow popular victory and one gave Obama a slight lead. It was close!!! In every such campaign all the candidates are guilty of exaggerating their opponents faults and their own positive attributes.
Every true Obama supporter should find a way to assume the best about every Democrat and interpret every utterance from every Democrat as support for our candidate. We should be praising Hillary Clinton for her graciousness last evening. We should be gracious winners.
I lived through 1968 and 1980. I remember what a divided party did to our candidates. Now that the primaries are over we come together or we lose. It’s that simple.
Now raise your right hands and repeat after me…
“I remember what a divided party did to our candidates.”
I remember what your candidates did to you, especially that joke of a president you ran in 1980. Running another ultra-liberal socialist is going to have the same result. You are not going to fill out his empty suit in five months.
Morris still thinks this is the “ownership society”. Sorry, buddy, a semi-black man has reached the nomination
threshhold and the bad old world is upside down.
The Democrats WILL get a unity ticket and in August,
if all goes well Obama and Clinton will be on one ticket.
No one can predict what may happen if our country is really
unified and the playing field is leveled. That old wingnut
“socialist” junkyard dog epithet isn’t going to hunt.
So, please, try to be realistic.
Even McCain is reaching out to the whole public instead of the corporations. Business is not going to be conducted with private enterprise running roughshod over a mixed economy which has been brought to its knees by republican overspending. Heck, Dubya won’t even put his name to a new GI Bill to help the troops he has sent in harms way when
they return home.
“Morris still thinks this is the “ownership society”
Was that supposed to make sense? I can’t “still” think something I’ve never thought.
“Dubya won’t even put his name to a new GI Bill to help the troops he has sent in harms way when they return home.”
The bill is a bad bill. He would sign a good bill.
“Even McCain is reaching out to the whole public instead of the corporations”
Who owns corporations? The public. Citizens who have every right to petition their government. Try to be realistic.
Wait, the public owns the corperations? And you call us socialists?!
I know, I know, you don’t actually mean any old citizen has an equal effect of the behavior of every corperation. Heck, that’d be too much like politics, with one-man-one-vote.
Now, what was that about corperations not having interests that conflict with the public?
You are a real nut.
Good debate tactic Morris. Lose the argument on the merits and then resort to personal attack. It has served you well.
What merit?
“Lose the argument on the merits and then resort to personal attack.”
I appreciate the fact that you or anyone else on this site has never attacked me personally. I know liberals are so kind and openminded it would never cross their minds to do so. Thank you for your love of diversity. You are my example and hero.
Morris, I attack you because you are douche bag, not because I lose an argument to you.
Of course, you have never lost an argument. Your closed mind would never allow it.
There’s that pesky reading comprehension thing again.
Actually, Ted has argued with me that you (Morris) could be reasoned with. I’m sure he’s willing to admit that he lost that argument…
“There’s that pesky reading comprehension thing again.”
Yes, you need to work on that.
OK, I’ll spell it out for you. I wrote “Morris, I attack you because you are douche bag, not because I lose an argument to you.” Upon close examination of this sentence, you will note that it makes no statement concerning the frequency of my winning or losing arguments. It only explains why I insult you. Because you are a douche bag. It is not even necessary for me to have engaged you in a single debate for this to be true, much less for me to have been victorious.
In response, you (the douche bag in question) wrote “Of course, you have never lost an argument.” Since I made no claim as to the outcome of any arguments, your statement illustrates a lack of reading comprehension. Either that or you suffer from some form of writing Tourettes.