BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

March 6, 2008

If you wanted to compare the playbook of the Clinton campaign since New Hampshire, you'd find the right precedent in the Bush v. Gore race, only Clinton would be channeling Bush, not Gore.

Let's look at the facts -- as our columnist P.M. Carpenter [0]-- has pointed out today. By almost all media projections, Obama will finish the run of primaries ahead in the popular primary vote, ahead in pledged delegates, and ahead in the number of states won. In a democracy, we call this winning the election. And to boot, Obama has won by consistently bigger margins than Clinton, and has led McCain in most polls. (Obama will probably even end up beating Clinton in delegates awarded in the Texas primary, where she barely won the contest in the popular vote -- and allegedly with the help of dittoheads who Limbaugh told to vote for her because she would unify the Republican Party against her and be the weaker Dem candidate in the fall.)

But Clinton rules have a different set of standards, just like Bush did. They bring the heavy artillery representing the entrenched moneyed interests of the Republicrat status quo in D.C. to redefine democracy. It's no longer who wins the election; it's who bullies their way into mugging the process through threatened lawsuits, flip-flopping like a dying fish about DNC rules that the Clinton campaign originally agreed to, bullying superdelegates, and denying that the will of the people counts for anything.

So, the Clinton campaign today (and if Obama had lost 12 straight primaries, you can be sure the Clinton campaign would have "worked the refs" hard enough to have made him withdraw long ago) is doing what Bush did in 2000, shaking down democracy.

As P.M. Carpenter notes, not only is this against our Constitutional foundations and everything we progressives have fought for since the election was stolen from Al Gore in 2000, her specious arguments are grounded in, well, "fantasy." She claims she won the big states, which certainly hurts the feelings of the residents of states like Virginia where Obama won by wide margins and showed that he might be able to pull a new electoral vote rich state into the Democratic column come November.

As Carpenter points out -- even if you forgive the Clinton campaign for trying to overturn the will of the people, which is like absolving Bush of stealing the 2000 contest -- her "big state" theory doesn't hold water. Obama will win the big states she won (with Texas being a stretch for either of them in November, and Ohio being up for grabs for either of them). All Clinton did was win the loyal economically needy vote of the base Democrats who are going to vote Democratic no matter what. Clinton has shown virtually no reach outside of a fixed and defined core of traditional Dem voters (who are loyal to Hillary, even though she has done virtually nothing for them, despite all her packaged rhetoric of "results." The reality is Clinton has no economic record to speak of or foreign policy record other than supporting Bush's War and cluster bombs. She is a series of evolving "slogans.") Obama has shown that he can draw in independents and Republicans, which will be vital in a race against McCain, and may pull in one or two red states, which he has pretty much swept as compared to Clinton. All Clinton has done is win in almost all Blue States, while showing that the ceiling of her support is very low in a general election.

Meanwhile, not content to rob the majority vote, Clinton is elevating John McCain as a more worthy candidate to protect America than Obama. That is not just larceny, it is a betrayal of the most reprehensible sort. In essence, Clinton has, like a child who can't have his/her rattle, indicated that if she doesn't heist the nomination, she will ensure that Obama loses so that she can run again in 2012.

Now, all the women out there for whom Hillary is a symbol (and Clinton has said that women project onto her what they want to see in her), she is only a symbol. She is not a progressive. She is a DLC "triangulator" who has actually "solved" very few problems, sold out poor women and their children in the "welfare reform" act of 1996, passed very little significant legislation, has virtually no foreign policy experience, and values playing the "I'm tougher than the boys are" card, when she's not playing the gender card.

If you want a progressive candidate for president, look to someone like my Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, [0] who opposed the Iraq War and knew what was coming when Clinton chose political expediency. (Schakowsky is also a progressive on almost every major issue where it counts, whereas Clinton is a politically calculating centrist who changes positions to meet the needs of her campaign). As P.M. Carpenter notes, there are potential progressive female political candidates who also are strong Feminists in practice -- not just word -- but Hillary Clinton is not one of them.

Electing a symbol may make many women feel better, just as electing George W. Bush made many people of good faith believe that they were really electing a man of God, but what they got was a man of war. There are a large number of women in politics who are not just symbols, but actually have a record of feminism, progressivism, results, and, most importantly, a respect for the will of the people and a desire to beat the Republicans, not just promote their own political interests. Hillary Clinton, we repeat, is not one of them.

BuzzFlash came of age during the emotionally exhausting and demoralizing robbery of democracy in 2000.

Hillary Clinton is planning to perform a similar heist of the nomination of the Democratic Party or destroy the chances for Barack Obama to win in the fall in the process.

It will be like 2000 all over again -- and democracy will suffer once again, but this time at the hands of a putative Democrat who is playing us like a fiddle.

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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