Hillogic, Billogic -- Leigh Saavedra

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Leigh Saavedra

Many of us kept quiet with a notion that sounded almost like treason. Afraid of being branded as conspiratorial lunatics when we first considered an outrageous idea to explain why Hillary and Bill Clinton are hanging on to a numerically lost cause, like turtles, dead, still clinging to an overhanging branch rather than falling to the water below, we tried to think it couldn't be so.

We were forgetting the most common accusation regularly made against Clinton: She will do anything to win. But what could we say? Dare we put out fuel that McCain and the Republican Machine could use against the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she was? It wasn't stopping Hillary, but -- weren't we obliged to fight and be decent at the same time?

This has been true now for some time: to hope for a legitimate, democratic win in the primaries, Hillary would require a miracle, such as 40-point spreads in a couple of coming primaries. That was about as likely as having the Republicans run an anti-war candidate. It wasn't going to happen. For some time, she has been circumventing the writing on the wall by talking about counting the popular vote in Florida.

At the same time, she insisted that the people of Michigan must have their voices heard. Never mind that she and the other candidates had signed the same pledge as in Florida. Michigan and Florida party officials had broken the rules; the consequence was that they could not have their votes count in the primaries. Like it or not, it was agreed upon by both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Obama had his name removed from the ballot. It apparently slipped Clinton's mind to have hers removed, so voters from Michigan did have one major candidate to vote for.

Despite that, the people of Michigan spoke more loudly than probably the Clintons would have liked. Sixty-eight (68) percent of black voters in the state refused to vote for the one major candidate they were offered and opted to check "uncommitted." Forty-eight (48) percent of voters between 18 and 29 refused to vote for her. But a majority of voters cast their vote for the only major candidate on the ticket, Senator Clinton.

Now, with no other possibility of winning, she is insisting that the votes she had earlier agreed to disqualify should be counted. She counts these states as "victories." It suits her needs and desires and, therefore, Clintonian logic.

Both Clintons have turned to math to try to find a way to magically turn a loss into a win. But the numbers haven't accommodated them. Still, following her win in Pennsylvania, though with a much smaller margin than had been anticipated a month earlier, she has fewer states, fewer popular votes, and fewer elected delegates.

So they have turned to the superdelegates, there to handle things in a disaster. Superdelegates were not designed to overturn the people's wishes but to be there in the event of a disaster, a true disaster. Suppose a candidate, being ahead because of a strong anti-war stance, should suddenly say he/she had a change of heart and was now supportive of the Bush wars. Then the superdelegates would have a role, to protect the wishes of the voters.

Nothing like that has happened and yet the Clintons, by their strange logic, are fighting ferociously to get superdelegates to go against the popular vote and throw their weight in with her, making it possible for her to overtake Barack Obama.

Is this democratic, both in the everyday sense of the word or in the party's? Would not Thomas Jefferson call out unrepeatable objections from the grave?

But worse, far worse, is the possibility that, knowing she cannot win the nomination, the Clintons have decided to make Barack Obama unelectable. That might be the one last-ditch effort that would put the Clintons back in the White House: Lie and twist enough things to confuse the people and frighten them from voting for Obama. It can be done. Don't we know both Clintons are strongly aware that, at least as of three weeks ago, one in ten Americans mistakenly thought Obama was a Muslim? (When recently asked if she thought Obama was a Muslim, Senator Clinton hesitated and said, "Not as far as I know." LOW BLOW and a feeble way to play with innuendos!) If they can confuse enough people as to make Obama absolutely unable to straighten out all the disinformation and be, hence, unelectable, then John McCain wins.

And what follows? Four more years of pointless wars, thousands more deaths, possible attacks on other countries, consequently inflaming the entire Mideast, greater hatred abroad for our nation, gas at $10 a gallon, and -- since the economy and war are inextricably tied together -- fat little chance of saving our economy.

Is their thinking that then, in 2012, with no chance of McCain winning a reelection at age 75, Hillary Clinton can say "I told you so" about the 2008 election that she'd used like a marionette and step in to graciously accept the nomination and presidency of a nation closer to destruction than it now is?

Personally, I had promised myself to say nothing negative about any Democratic candidate. And while I still believe that the nation would not be nearly as bad under Clinton as it would be under McCain (Clinton might live up to her word and end the Bush Wars), I do not believe we can thrive under her logic, and as she continues to try to destroy Obama's character, perhaps we must speak up. While she surpasses Bush in double digits regarding intelligence and education, I have found nothing to convince me she is any more truthful than Bush. As for her indignity about Reverend Wright, I would beg you to listen to Bill Moyers' interview to put the sound clips into perspective. Jeremiah Wright is very angry about the injustices perpetrated by people in the name of the country that he too loves and has served. You'll not get entire transcripts from those trying to ruin Obama.

And what is it that has led us to this brink? With the possibility of having the most intelligent advisers in the world around him, it was not Bush's lack of experience that took us down this road. It was, rather, his stubborness that some interpreted as "strength." Even moreso, it was his refusal to tell the people the truth and in fact, to outright lie, year after year after year.

There is no integrity in using one's logic as a tool to get whatever he or she wants, regardless of whether the factors in the logical equation are true or not. We've had eight years of this; we've had a dark stain put on a large section of our history; surely we have learned from this.

In the end, integrity may well be the most unsung of all virtues.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Leigh Saavedra, writing for many years under "Lisa Walsh Thomas" is a veteran civil rights and anti-war activist. She has published award-winning short fiction and poetry but has concentrated on political papers for the past eight years. Her work includes two books, "So Narrow the Bridge and Deep the Water" (Seal Press, Seattle) and "The Girl with Yellow Flowers in her Hair" (Pitchfork Publishing).

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