Just yesterday, I defended Hillary Clinton and her rationale for prolonging the Democratic nominating fight. Given that her own campaign chairman recently said the race would wrap up in early June, and Clinton seemed to honoring a relative cease-fire, there was no real urgency about her withdrawing.
As Jay Jacobs, a New York superdelegate and top fundraiser for Clinton, told the NYT, “I think in the end, when South Dakota and Montana go last and have their final result, she will sit back and see whether a win can be achieved or not — and if not, she is a class act and will do the class thing and get on board with the Democratic ticket.”
By last night, Clinton had made my defense of her efforts look rather foolish. In fact, looking back, I’ve defended Clinton, more than once, when people said she was putting her own interests above those of the party and the nation.
But after seeing her tactics yesterday, I’m done defending Hillary Clinton.
A day after Senator Barack Obama gathered a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defiantly sent out new signals Wednesday that she might take her fight for the nomination all the way to the party’s convention in August.
Mrs. Clinton stumped across South Florida, scene of the 2000 election debacle, pressing her case for including delegates from Florida and Michigan in the final delegate tally. On the trail and in interviews, she raised a new battle cry of determination, likening her struggle for these delegates to the nation’s historic struggles to free the slaves and grant women the right to vote.
I’m 35, and have been following politics for quite a while, and I’ve never been so disappointed with a politician I’ve admired and respected. Yesterday’s tactics weren’t just wrong, they were offensive. For that matter, they seem to be part of a deliberate strategy to tear Democrats apart and ensure a defeat in November.
For several weeks, I’ve appreciated the fact that Clinton considers herself the superior candidate, and has kept her campaign going in the hopes, from her perspective, of saving the party from itself. But after yesterday, it’s become impossible for me to consider Clinton’s intentions honorable. Her conduct is not that of a leader.
What’s so striking is the shamelessness of her reversal(s). When Florida and Michigan broke party rules and were punished by the DNC, Clinton not only supported the decision, she honored it and spoke publicly about those votes not counting. One of her own top strategists was responsible for making the decision in the first place. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.”
Clinton and her campaign insisted that this was a race for delegates, as per party rules. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.” Clinton and her campaign said the finish line was 2,025. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.”
Instead of trying to help bring the party together — Election Day is 24 weeks away — Clinton went to Florida to argue that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, his nomination will be illegitimate. And if the DNC plays by the rules Clinton used to support, it’s guilty of vote-suppression — comparable to slavery, Jim Crow, and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe.
She said “there’s a reason why so many have fought so hard and sacrificed so much. It’s because they knew that to be a citizen of this country is to have the right and responsibility to help shape its future. Not just to have your voice heard but to have it count. People have fought hard because they knew their vote was at stake and so was their children’s futures.
Those people, she said “refused to accept their assigned place as second-class citizens. Men and women who saw America not as it was, but as it could and should be, and committed themselves to extending the frontiers of our democracy. The abolitionists and all who fought to end slavery and ensure freedom came with the full right of citizenship. The tenacious women and a few brave men who gathered at the Seneca Falls convention back in 1848 to demand the right to vote.”
Desperate to get attention for her cause to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”
“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton explained. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.
Keep in mind, of course, that Florida and Michigan are not about to host a primary or a caucus. She traveled to South Florida specifically to fan the flames, undermine the legitimacy of the process, and encourage Democrats in a swing state not to trust the party and its nominee. It’s almost as if Clinton was acting as an agent of the RNC.
Clinton is attacking Democrats for playing by party rules. Worse, she supported those rules until it became self-serving to do otherwise. And now she’s characterizing anyone who disagrees with her as being an opponent of democracy.
There is no excuse for these campaign tactics. There is no defense, there is no rationale, there is spin. It is a painful example of one individual putting ego and ambition above all, consequences be damned.
It’s worth repeating: [The Democratic candidates] supported this “disenfranchisement.” … She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so.
This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.
If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.
Many Dems have been waiting for a soft landing, a graceful exit, a classy wrap-up. Clinton, for reasons that I want desperately to understand, has chosen to abandon these norms and instead choose a destructive, divisive path.
She’s playing a dangerous game in which the only winner is the Republican Party.