Clinton Still Wants it Both Ways
“You can declare yourself anything, but if you don’t have the votes, it doesn’t matter.” - Hillary Clinton
Campaigning in the Oregon primary, the former First Lady said today that her opponent, Barack Obama, is getting ahead of himself, acting like the party’s nominee before the final contest are over.
Despite virtually no mathematical chance of winning, Clinton carries on because - as she loves to say - every vote should count!
That is, unless said vote came from a caucus state, or from a red state, or … well, anywhere, if she ends up behind Obama and needs the superdelegates to overturn five months’ worth of results to name her the winner. Semantics.
Reviving her hypocritical pitch that many states Barack Obama won, like Alaska, Idaho or Utah, matter less than Ohio, West Virginia and the like since they would not be competitive for Democrats in November regardless.
Anybody “who’s really analyzing this” should come to the same conclusions, she says. Sorry, Mrs. Clinton, but we’ve been analyzing this for more than a year now, and have determined that slightly more than half of the Democratic party voters want your opponent to represent them. Are we wrong?
This is the same candidate who said in recent days, in reference to Michigan, “You don’t tell some states they can’t vote and other states that have already had the opportunity that they’re somehow more important.”
Therein lies the great incongruence of Clinton’s fight. Either the votes should count, or they don’t and superdelegates must overturn them. Settle on your argument and run with it! It’s not that difficult!
This complete nonsense is as damaging to the Democratic party as it is illogical, but her blatant double-talk continues, day to day and even sentence to sentence.
“I’m going to make my case and I’m going to make it until we have a nominee, but we’re not going to have one today and we’re not going to have one tomorrow and we’re not going to have one the next day,” Clinton said.
Yes. But eventually we will, Hillary. The only question is how badly you choose to continue sabotaging him in the meantime.
NATIONAL
May 19th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I wish everyone would stop focusing on how the votes are being split in the Democratic primaries and start focusing on how they will be split in the general election. Obama is preaching to the choir and only getting (about) half the vote.
He’s going to be labeled the next Ross Perot or Ralph Nader because he can’t win the general election but is going to adversely impact (from a Democrat’s point of view) the outcome.
I love him but the Republican’s play dirty - have we already forgotten the WMDs?
May 19th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
There is no double-talk, but that unjustified characterization seems to fit your decidedly one-sided argument. There are rules for primary votes and for superdelegate votes and both have their roles. In a nominating process as tight as this with all the ins and outs of primary and caucus voting rules state by state, you have the voice of the electorate in a virtual draw between Obama and Clinton. You then have you have the aberration in the process caused by Florida and Michigan politics that would have made the reality and, even more, the perception of this vote that is so close, even closer. The voters in those states did nothing to lose their voice in this selection process and by including their voice at the end of this process will still have affected the perception of the people’s voice during the campaign process to the advantage of Obama. So every high-horsed outsider’s comment that takes unequivocal sides on this aspect of this process sounds like an idiot ranting. The candidates and their campaign people unfortunately can only be expected to be more unequivocal in their advocating for the position that advantages their candidate, but someone trying to analyze the situation needs to see beyond that.
The superdelegates role is to use their judgment. To use their judgment as they are intended to would not be overturning a virtual draw that has resulted in a pledged delegate distribution that is also very close but has favored Obama for his success in smaller mostly caucus states, where the voice of the people is more narrowly defined and less inclusive of the general voting public.
Obama has had the advantage of many of these rules, so that in fact he has slightly more votes when all styles of voting are included. But if winning a primary is a show of greater strength in a state and that strength reinforced by equal or better performance in current polls against McCain in virtually all the close key states that Democrats will very likely need to win in November, if the superdelegates do not use their judgment, then they are not fulfilling the responsibility of their position.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I seriously don’t understand the point of the superdelegates. I mean, how do they represent the people’s voice?
Anyways, Michigan and Florida broke the rules and we should all know that rules are rules. We certainly cannot count the votes from those states “AS IS” because the votes were inconsistent due to [A] a number of voters not voting because they knew their vote wouldn’t count because of the DNC rules and [B], Obama’s name was removed from both states as per DNC rules while Clinton’s name remained in only one of the ballots. As a result, Clinton won both states unfairly. And to create a RE-VOTE requires a lot of money and resources as well as time. The tax payer won’t cover it, Obama’s campaign didn’t want to cover it because of the rules and the fact that Obama’s campaign needs the money to fund its campaign against McCain. And to top it all off, the time limit for a re-vote had already come to pass.
When I look at the campaign management of both democrats so far, sometimes I tend to think maybe there was a reason why the votes from both states didn’t count. I guess fate or God wanted us all to have more time to analyze both Obama and Clinton before we jump to conclusion.
I’m a Floridian and I support Obama. I don’t know about you guys, but the votes from Michigan and Florida are the least of my concerns when I look at McCain.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
In the Olympic games if you get a head start or early start you can get disqualified. What if your boss tells you that you cant come into work early and clock in 30min before your shift and you do anyways, what is going to happen? your probably going to get fired. I don’t want my son thinking that it is ok to not follow the rules because if you wine about it enough you wont have to deal with the aftermath. Furthermore, I understand that she is not going to give up and keep fighting, and she is trying to at very least be a role model. I’m sorry, although it is great to fight and not give up in some cases you really do have to know when enough is enough. I want a smart president ( im not saying she is stupid, she is a very intelligent human being)not someone who has the facts and information ( math,loss of super delegates…) but still does not make the right decision. What a waist of money, instead of pouring her own money into a lost cause she could donate it to the middle working class struggling to buy grocery’s, put gas in there cars and keep there homes. After all those are her people.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:03 am
p.s. I do feel bad for the people who live in florida and just went to vote. Im not sure exactly what happened but im pretty sure the citizins didnt build some voting booths and did as they pleased. Florida is the jinxed state, first they need a recount over and over and over, then they vote too early. Maybe they figured out the approximate amount of time a recount would be and voted early so they would be accurate by the proper time.