It's over?
Something interesting happens when you take away Barack Obama's 59 ill-gotten Michigan delegates, giving back the four to Hillary that she rightfully earned. First, Hillary gets 73 delegates, bringing her total pledged delegate count to 1,643.5. Obama loses 59 delegates, making his total pledged delegate count 1707.5. Adjusted for justice, which was obviously not on the rules committee's minds last weekend, Obama maintains a pledged delegate lead, albeit of only 2%.
I bring this up to point out how absurdly illegitimate Barack Obama's claims of winning the nomination are. Remember kids, the superdelegates don't count until August; until one candidate concedes the race, there is no official nominee. You can call Obama the "presumptive" nominee all you want, but at this juncture, I think "presumptuous" is more fitting.
As they say though, "the fix is in." Hillary Clinton sent a letter to her supporters last night. In it, she said the following:
On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.
I must say that Hillary is being a far better sport about being screwed over than I could ever be. Then again, Hillary Clinton has something that Barack Obama, a man more than willing to dismiss nearly 18 million voters and declare himself the winner at the drop of a hat, will never have: class.
Aside from that, what struck me about the letter is that she did not expand upon her plans for Saturday. While she is effectively saying that the race is over and doing her duty to the party by endorsing Obama, there is no mention of technically conceding. This makes me wonder if she is merely doing what John Edwards did months ago, and suspending her campaign, rather than fully conceding to Obama. In suspending rather than conceding, Hillary gets to hold on to her pledged delegates until the convention. There are a couple of reasons that I can think of as to why she would want to do this: 1.) it provides a "safety net" for the Democrats should some huge scandal render Obama poisonous to the party and 2.) it provides her with political leverage - always a nice thing to have. So, here's hoping that she suspends her campaign rather than fully conceding to Obama; a concession would take her completely out of the picture and free her pledged delegates to vote for whomever was remaining in the race - that is to say: Obama.
The other thing that struck me about the letter wasn't even the letter itself, but the plethora of comments on the page where the letter is posted. Despite the fact that Hillary is endorsing Obama, the vast majority of her supporters are refusing to follow her lead. There is an avalanche of comments which are variations of the following theme: "we respect your decision, Senator Clinton and understand what you have to do. However, we can not and will not vote for Obama in the general election." The party divide is deep and the onus is on Barack Obama, should he really wish to take the mantle of nominee, to reach out to the nearly 18 million Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton. So far, he has failed in this regard.
There are many of us who simply will not vote for him in the general election. Obama lost me with his arrogance. Instead of patiently waiting for all of the votes to be counted, he jumped at the prize like a spoiled child and cried out that he'd won (not without the help of a complacent and biased media, of course). The first time I ever voted in a national election was in 2000 when I pulled the lever for Al Gore (incidentally, that was the same election in which I helped Hillary Clinton win her New York State senate seat). I remember being furious that George W. Bush had stolen the election from Gore, who was the rightful winner. I am still angry about 2000 and I see far too many parallels between that and what is happening with the Democrats' nominating process to not be angry all over again.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. In her latest column, Ann Coulter makes the argument for Hillary Clinton being the legitimate nominee:
When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College -- or, for short, "the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents" -- anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.
But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the "popular vote" has any relevance whatsoever.
She goes on to argue about the Constitutional relevance of the electoral college over the poplar vote, a stance I don't agree with, but then concludes...
…there are no constitutional rules to follow with party primaries. Primaries are specifically designed by the parties to choose their strongest candidate for the general election.
Hillary's argument that she won the popular vote is manifestly relevant to that determination. Our brave Hillary has every right to take her delegates to the Democratic National Convention and put her case to a vote. She is much closer to B. Hussein Obama than the sainted Teddy Kennedy was to Carter in 1980 when Teddy staged an obviously hopeless rules challenge at the convention. (I mean rules about choosing the candidate, not rules about crushed ice at after-parties.)
And yet every time Hillary breathes a word about her victory in the popular vote, TV hosts respond with sneering contempt at her gaucherie for even mentioning it. (Of course, if popularity mattered, networks like MSNBC wouldn't exist. That's a station that depends entirely on "superviewers.")
Despite her snarky tone, continued vilification of most things "liberal" and sad attempts at humour (though, I admit, I did find the MSNBC dig funny, namely because Keith Olbermann has become a self-parody), Coulter has her facts straight and her analysis of the situation is solid. The only reason the Democratic Party finds itself in this situation is either 1.) they are short-sighted, 2.) they are stupid, 3.) they are rigging the election or 4.) all of the above.
Incidentally, I want to comment that we live in "interesting times" when Ann Coulter is making sense and not merely raising my blood pressure. Here is a woman whose opinions have pissed me off unbelievably over the years. Here is a woman who, when Ted Rall mentioned that he might take legal action against her for libel, I pledged to donate money to Ted's cause. And now I find myself nodding my head in agreement with one of her columns...unbelievable.
Obama's vote-grabbing audacity wasn't the only thing which turned me off to supporting him, but it was the deciding factor in a cumulative series of events. The Obama presidential primary campaign, in the grand tradition of his previous campaigns, has been underhanded and unethical, seeking to win by clearing the playing field rather than levelling it and competing fairly. After Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire, Obama stripped her of support from African-Americans, smearing her and her surrogates as racists by taking quotes out of context and wilfully manipulating words. The gambit worked with an average of nine out of ten African-American's voting for him in subsequent primaries, a ratio which was not true of New Hampshire or Iowa.
His campaign also gamed the caucus states to inflate his pledged delegate count. Some call this brilliant campaigning - and it is, if you wish to win the battle but lose the war. I call it rigging the system, as most caucus states are guaranteed republican wins, unless God himself points a finger at these states and smites their registered republican voters.
Furthermore, the nature of a caucus leads to disenfranchisement. The basic premise of a caucus is that everyone stands around in a room for a few hours, and their position within the room is how they express a preference for a candidate. An oversimplification of the "system," perhaps, but that's what it boils down to. Caucuses favour those who have the stamina to wait around doing nothing for hours on end. They also favour those with flexible schedules. In both cases, those who are younger (Obama voters) generally win out. The elderly, the disabled, those who work on fixed schedules and can't get time off, parents who can't find a babysitter...all of these people are shut out in the cold by the caucus system. Add to the fact that, by its very nature, a caucus does not allow a secret ballot and you can see how voter intimidation can occur. In fact, increasing reports of caucus fraud and irregularities are coming out of Texas. Seems that a few hopey hooligans decided to bully non-believers.
And please allow me to talk about Obama's supporters for a moment…
Now, I know that not all of you are rude, dim-witted reactionaries suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome. In fact, many of you I call friends and find your company agreeable and your mental faculties fully functional, if not occasionally superior to my own. However, if what spewed upon the internet is any indication, you decent Obamaheads are either in the minority or - and I hope this is actually the case - you are grossly underrepresented.
When it is made known that I am not supporting Obama, I have been called various nasty names, smeared as a racist and had my intelligence questioned. Since coming out as not only declining to support Obama in the primary, but now in the general election as well, I am slimed as not being a true Democrat, voting against my "self-interests" (as if strangers on the internet know what my self-interests are), being a sore loser (I'm from Pennsylvania, I'm bitter, you know), I have been told to "do everyone a favour and stay home on election day" (not bloody likely) and, of course, refrains of being a dumb hick racist and all that happy horseshit.
If these are the faces of "hope and change," may I forever remain cynical and stagnant. The fact of the matter is that, unless Obama can somehow completely revamp his campaign and persona while making his policies substance and appealing to me, I don't find it outside of my self-interests to vote against him. I find it outside of my self-interests to vote for McCain, but I'm not doing that. I'm writing in a vote. You see, with this seemingly final blow to Hillary Clinton's campaign, my resources have been more or less exhausted and my voice pretty much silenced. I have only one tool left that I can use - and that is my vote. My question to Obama and his supporters is this: do you really want me to use my vote to help build something, or are you going to merely confirm that I am totally justified in the path I am taking wherein I use my vote as a weapon?
Obama is a basketball fan...well, think fast, Barack! The ball is in your court and if you are indeed to be the nominee, there are nearly 18 million of us waiting to see how you play it.