Letters to the Editor
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@ ProudTexasGirl
Unfortunately, the Democratic party has this thing called a "primary" where voters in every state take part in nominating the candidate of their choice. So the eventually nominee is very likely the one with the most states, votes and delegates ... not the one you decide is less likely to win in November based on this week's national polls. Which, by the way, are the opposite of the national polls that supported Obama for the past several months, back when you had some other flim-flam rationale for nominating Hillary Clinton.
So many Hillary supporters are under this delusion that months and months of votes don't matter and we should all just pick our (really their) preferred candidate based on some fleeting political calculus when it comes to the fall. Let me ask you folks something: Let's say all the states vote and as expected, Obama leads in states, votes, and pledged delegates, but Hillary ends up with the nomination anyway, either by managing to get FL/MI delegates seated or convincing superdelegates to overwhelmingly support her. Do you honestly believe that Hillary can win the nomination that way and still garner enough support among independents (fully one third of voters, and a block that McCain is surprisingly strong with) and former Obama backers to win, without even a mandate from her own party's voters?
If the superdelegates choose that route, the only word for it is "racist." Because it would mean that even in a year when everything is trending toward the Dems, the party establishment still doesn't trust its own voters to support the African American candidate.
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It's very simple: if the Party installs as its nominee a candidate with fewer pledged delegates, the Party is going down.
If HRC rolls into the convention with more pledged delegates than Obama, every Obama supporter must accept defeat and support the nominee. Anything less would be sour grapes at best, and utterly anti-Democratic at worst.
If, however, the Party installs as its nominee a candidate with fewer pledged delegates, Chicago-68 will look like a garden party and the Democrats will have no better claim on democratic principles than Robert Mugabe.
The calculus is so simple it's hardly worth discussing. The only hope for a Democratic victory is a united party in the Fall. The only hope for a united party is a candidate that has won the nomination, fairly and squarely, abiding by the agreed-upon rules, and without the assistance of backroom wheeling-and-dealing by the Party elite.
So get out there and drum up votes for your candidate.
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Democrats: Keep your eyes on the prize
As a Democrat, I don't understand other Democrats who say they will defect to McCain or sit out the election if their preferred candidate doesn't win the nomination.
That seems terribly childish and self-defeating...what my mother used to call "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Does anyone really think we can survive another Republican administration with a continuation of the disastrous Bush foreign policy and the idiotic GOP approach to economics (cut taxes but don't decrease government spending)?
Come on, people. Either Hillary of Barack can do the job. We can fight like cats and dogs during the primary season, but when the big contest comes around we need to close ranks and act like mature Democrats.
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She's trying to strong arm congressional Democrats to support her Clinton/McCain gas tax holiday scheme
There's no way she can win the nomination. The math dooms her. There will be no 2012 for her. After this campaign she will be dead to the Democratic Party. I think its becoming very clear. She's looking past the primaries to an independant run. She's becoming more "Republican" by the day. She's trying to wrap herself in the "compassionate conservative" mantle Georg Bush promised. Now she's trying to bully congressional Democrats to go on record supporting her Clinton/McCain gas tax holiday scheme. She's deliberately trying to fuck her own party.
If her loyal doners get on board we will see an Obama/McCain/Clinton contest, and all she'll really be doing is handing the White House to the Republicans.
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"In the best interest of the Democratic party...."
"Most uncommitted superdelegates recognize that they may be forced to make a decision on a nominee in the best interests of the Democratic Party."
Best interests of the Democratic Party? What does that mean?
I think there's been a pretty decisive shift in the paradigm surrounding the superdelegates and their purpose. The reason for the superdelegates, as I understood it, was to exercise a check on the primary process should voters nominate a loser, or be in the process of nominating a candidate who cannot win the general election. I'm pretty sure the superdelegates no longer primarily care about winning the general election. What they're most concerned about is finger prints. They don't want to be specifically blamed for denying Obama the nomination.
My guess is that Obama will win no matter how badly he comes out of this. Facts, such as electability, are not going to prevent the superdelegates from giving Obama the nomination "on principle." The media certainly has had a hand in this. After all, since the Iowa caucuses, the news media has drummed it into the heads of Americans that Hillary cannot win, that she needs to admit defeat now (originally proposed in January), that she is the origin of all bad feelings in the party, and that if Obama is not the nominee then it is because of the machinations of the evil she-bitch, Hillary, who is apparently every media darling's punch line.
Don't expect any profiles in courage from the uncommitted superdelegates. They're not going to act in the interest of the Democratic party. They're going to act in the interest of their next re-election bid. The party would rather lose working class whites and older voters than certain other constituencies. It's a decision they have to make. A Hobson's choice, really. If Obama doesn't get the nod, there will be enormously destructive consequences for the Democratic Party politically.
We really need to re-think how we choose our nominee, but I'm not holding my breath. I do admire the way that the Republican party was able so easily and relatively quickly to get rid of its weak (I would say, flaky) frontrunning candidates in order to focus on the only one of the bunch who could defeat a Democrat this year. The Republicans have a candidate that is not liked by key constituencies in the Republican party, but who will appeal to the general electorate. We've been participating in a process that will end up doing the exact opposite I fear.