Last week, in supporting their campaign's decision to "stay in it until the end," former President Clinton said words to the effect of "real Democrats want every vote to count," and also, it could be implied, "want to count every vote." Thus, he said there would be no pulling back, pulling out of the remaining primary contests. Those voters who had not yet had a chance to vote in a Democratic primary had every right to have their votes counted, for their candidates of choice. From the Clintons' perspective, this is the case even though it is virtually impossible for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination barring:

a) some disastrous new information coming out about Sen. Obama,
b) getting the rules vis-à-vis the Florida and Michigan delegations changed,
c) her receiving some totally unpredicted results in the remaining primaries to garner a totally unpredicted number of yet-to-be-elected pledged delegates going her way,
d) her suddenly reversing the trending of super-delegate endorsement announcements towards Sen. Obama (as reported on BuzzFlash [1]),
e) her convincing committed Obama delegates that they should actually vote for her while at the same time, given the rule she would like to have adopted that there is no such thing as "committed" delegates, being able to hold onto all of hers).

At any rate, it has now been reliably reported (by a rapporteur who has his/her tongue firmly planted in her/his cheek) that Bill Clinton, in his drive to have every vote count, is inviting back into the remaining primaries every other Democratic candidate for the nomination who has previously dropped out (with a couple of exceptions). He has thus clearly stated that he wants all of those Democrats who did not originally support either his wife or Senator Obama to have their voices heard between now and the last primaries to be held in early June. Actually, he is determined to have those contests be carried "all the way to the convention," regardless of given candidate's personal preference. "This is only being fair, and completely Democratic [or was it democratic]" the former President was quoted as saying.

And so, he has invited back into the campaign, former Senator Edwards (who has not yet endorsed either his wife or Senator Obama), Senator Biden (who has not yet endorsed either his wife or Senator Obama), and Senator Dodd (who has endorsed Sen. Obama, but rather quietly and anyway is a very senior Democratic Senator). The former President pointedly excluded Gov. Richardson from his list, describing him as "a traitor, and we cannot have traitors running for President," former Sen. Gravel, describing him as a "joke, not even having the grace to hire good writers like good Democrats do (see his wife's appearance with Jay Leno and her attempt to make a joke out of the "Bosnia-sniper-fire" fiasco," and Rep. Kucinich, whom he described as "not a real Democrat" for he is for single-payer health insurance, establishing a Department of Peace, and complete, immediate, and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq.

Asked how he would propose to fund his proposal, "by borrowing, of course. After all, we are for providing the broadest foundation for democracy in our country." He went on to say that if President Bush can borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to support what he claims is the establishment of democracy in the Middle East, an effort that the former President's wife once voted to support, there is no reason why their campaign should not borrow a few million to support this new effort at spreading democracy that he is proposing. The former President did leave the proposed source of those borrowed funds unspecified, but sources noted that he was looking into the possibility of starting with a request to the government of Colombia, once his wife's real position on "free trade" (otherwise known as the free export of capital and jobs) was clarified.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net [2]; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare [3].

 

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