So this is what Shakespeare meant.
I don’t understand the Florida, Michigan, caucuses, superdelegates, superheroes, and whatever else it takes to get the Democratic Party nomination. So here I am, shamelessly taking stuff from Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish about some of Hillary Clinton and her campaigns shenanigans moves. It is well-worth reading especially if you are a superhero or person of significance in the Democratic Party. And if you are such a person and you are reading this blog, I would make an excellent speech writer. Hire me.
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.
- CBS News
So how did Hillary end up with the Florida and Michigan situation?
From The New York Times in September 2007
PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Sept. 1 — Three of the major Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday pledged not to campaign in Florida, Michigan and other states trying to leapfrog the 2008 primary calendar, a move that solidified the importance of the opening contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Hours after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina agreed to sign a loyalty pledge put forward by party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York followed suit. The decision seemed to dash any hopes of Mrs. Clinton relying on a strong showing in Florida as a springboard to the nomination.
“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.
Analysis of the Florida and Michigan situation
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.
I don’t know much about infidelity, and I don’t know much about running for president. But I would imagine that enduring my husbands public, gratuitous infidelity and sexual harassment would be significantly more damaging than losing a presidential nomination. Surely if she can get through that, she can put her head down now, bow out somewhat gracefully, keeping in mind of course that a gracious bow out should have happened a month or two ago at the latest.
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May 25, 2008 at 6:08 pm
brendanberkley
Hillary’s toast. But as Mike Huckabee said when he was still in (and when I was actually cheering for a Republican), the only people who were telling him to quit were his detractors. His supporters told him to keep on going, so why would you do what your opponents tell you to? She knows that if Obama gets the nomination, he’ll probably win, and the field probably won’t want Hillary eight years from now.
But while her husband’s scandal had to be pretty devastating and painful, I don’t think it damaged her at all because it wasn’t her fault – she was a victim. You never really heard anything about her while the whole thing was going down, at least not in my limited memory. In this campaign, she’s been beaten soundly, which has caused her to say and do numerous things that are 100% her fault.
Humble pie is tough to eat sometimes.