Politics: Democratic Party Primaries

Harold Ickes, a top advisor to the Clinton campaign stated today that Hilary Clinton would win the nomination based on votes from Superdelegates, and that the number of state primaries won by Barack Obama would be irrelevant to their decision. I tend to think that some of this is grandstanding on the part of Team Clinton, but there is a part of me that tends to think they believe this.

If this is the case, it essentially means that HRC believes that she should be the nominee regardless of what the voters want. The pure amount of gall that this position requires is frightening, particularly from a part that claimed aggrieved status over voting issues and disenfranchisement after the 2000 presidential election (hanging chads, anyone?)

I don't think anyone who has read this blog regularly is unaware of my admiration and support for Barack Obama, and so you may choose to see this as a biased opinion, but the willingness of Team Clinton to change the rules of the game to suit her goal of ultimate power is, to me, an indication that she should absolutely be prevented from ascending to the presidency at all costs. The aforementioned Harold Ickes was part of the DNC who supported the sanctioning of delegates from Florida and Michigan in response to those two state legislatures moving up their primary dates.

This was not a response to changes in the date mind you. The DNC knew that both states were considering moving up their primary dates into the time frames generally held by Iowa and New Hampshire, and passed a resolution telling both states that if they did move up their primaries to before February 5th then they would be stripped of their delegates for the Democratic National Convention. The legislatures in both states moved the dates ahead in spite of this warning. Team Clinton is now arguing that the DNC is disenfranchising voters, when it is the voters elected representatives who in fact took the steps to disenfranchise them.

Clinton, Obama, Edwards et. al all signed a pledge to not campaign in Florida and Michigan, with full understanding that the primaries basically counted for nothing. But now that Hillary is behind she is fighting for those uncontested delegates. Anything that is to her advantage, anything for power.

And now Team Clinton wants the Superdelegates to subvert the will of the people of the Democratic Party and nominate her even though more states and more voters have said loudly and clearly they prefer Barack Obama to be their nominee. Is this the sort of grace and sense of fairplay that we want in our president? I think not.

Team Clinton even had an MSNBC staffer suspended, and MSNBC kow-towing to the campaign because he had the audacity to state that the Clintons were pimping Chelsea out. He in fact was asking a question of a guest, and said something to the effect of "aren't they pimping her out in some weird way?". The Clintons claimed aggrieved status (they're good at that), and threw a big old hissy-cow (thank you Steven Brust). Now a good reporter is suspended indefinitely for asking a valid question.

Team Clinton has had Chelsea personally imploring super-delegates. She even went out to dinner with some 21-year old superdelegate in the past couple of weeks. Their daughter, who was previously only involved in the campaign as a silent presence, is now working behind the scenes to cajole superdelegates into voting for her mom? Likely promising favors from her mom's campaign in the process. This means that the Clintons are using their daughters charm and youth and persuasiveness to gain favor.

Sounds like pimping out to me.