Letters to the Editor

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Two of the site's top staffers say Hillary Clinton has no chance at the nomination, and wonder why no one else will say it.
  • Once again...

    The relevant points of the Florida/Michigan situation:

    1) Although the Republican parties of both states hatched the plan to move up the primaries, the Democratic elected officials of both states overwhelmingly went along with the plan, despite knowing full well what the consequences would be.

    2) None of the Democratic candidates made any fuss about Florida and Michigan losing their delegates prior to those primaries. All of them stuck to the DNC party line, which was that if these states moved up their primaries, they'd lose their delegates. Nobody campaigned in them. And in Michigan, most of the candidates had the decency to remove their names from the ballots in protest. Hillary, hedging her bets, did not.

    3) At the time of those primaries, Hillary enjoyed much greater name recognition than any other candidate, by far. When you can't campaign in a state and introduce yourself to voters, any election essentially becomes a popularity contest, favoring the already-known candidates.

    4) Barack Obama isn't "obstructing justice" or "disenfranchising voters" by refusing to push harder (or at all) for revotes or for the delegates to be seated. Those two states made their choice, and it's not Obama's responsibility to clean up their mess for them. Does having no revote favor him? Yes, in the sense that, as things stand now, there's no way Hillary will catch him in delegates or popular votes. But it's not like he lifted a finger to have their delegates thrown out. They did it to themselves and have no one to blame but themselves, with the possible exception of the DNC. At worst, he's guilty of not working to overturn a situation that benefits him and was none of his doing.

    5) Hillary Clinton's new-found populism is just that: new-found. See point #2. She could not be more obvious about wanting these delegates seated solely for the purpose of picking up much-needed delegates that she's failed to win in the other 44 contests, and she knows that the 10 remaining contests aren't going to be enough for her to make up for lost time and missed opportunities.