Letter From America
Rules? What rules?
IF and when Hillary Clinton quits running for the Democratic presidential nomination, she will do so kicking and screaming. In the meantime, she is busy exposing Barack Obama's weaknesses to the fullest. The West Virginia primary on May 13, which, as expected, Hillary won in a landslide (66% to 27%), is a case in point.
West Virginia is a lilywhite state. It ranks near the bottom in education and income among the fifty states. In other words, it is full of; in Hillary's own words "hard working Americans, white Americans" who are Hillary's core constituency now. By running in West Virginia, Hillary forced a huge number of Democrats to vote against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. So much for grace.
In her victory speech Hillary was defiant. She blamed the pundits for her predicament, not her hopeless delegate math. She called the race close although she has absolutely no chance of catching Obama's pledged delegates. She proclaimed herself the better candidate who can win the swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, neglecting to mention that Obama too had won swing states like Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Virginia.
Her speech was directed mostly at the super delegates, beseeching them to freeze their support for Obama. Unable to win the game according to the existing rules, Hillary wants to change the rules in the middle of the game. The Democratic National Committee uses 2,025 as the number of delegates denoting a nominating majority, but Hillary now says the number is 2209! (Obama is about 150 delegates away from clinching the nomination). The claim is part of Clinton's argument that delegates from Michigan and Florida must be included.
But, when the Democratic National Committee was disqualifying those states' delegates for holding their primaries in January in violation of the rules, Hillary was fully on board.
Surprisingly, most media pundits interpreted Hillary's May 6 speech, after she narrowly won Indiana and was blown out in North Carolina, as a concession speech, paving the way for her withdrawal from the race. Instead, with very little sleep, she was campaigning in West Virginia the very next morning! And she camped there until the election.
West Virginia is a tiny state with only 28 pledged delegates. It is not going to change the delegate count by much. Obama wrote it off and made only one token campaign appearance in the state. But listening to Hillary, her consigliere Terry MacAliffe and hit- man Wolfson, one would have assumed that it was another "game changer."
No Democrat has won the presidency without West Virginia, Hillary reminded the West Virginians, adding that John F. Kennedy won the 1960 nomination because West Virginians backed him.
At any moment, the writer was expecting Hillary to break into the late John Denver's 1971 super hit country song about West Virginia:
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads. Unfortunately, even mountain momma cannot secure the nomination for Hillary. She made way too many costly mistakes. She was the establishment candidate ("experienced") when people were looking for change. She ran on the platform of inevitability and entitlement and failed to take Obama seriously early on. Her unwillingness to aplologise for her vote to authorise the Iraq war cost her dearly. She ignored the caucus states. With her overwhelming monetary advantage, she figured that she would clinch the nomination on February 5, "Super Tuesday." When she did not, there was no back-up plan, and she ran out of money. Obama, raising small amounts of money from millions of donors through the internet, was prepared for the long haul and ran off eleven victories in a row, effectively ending the contest. Hillary and Bill made one crucial blunder: by playing the race card they alienated the African-Americans, who had originally backed Hillary but in the end endorsed Obama, 9 to 1. And when Hillary attempted to make white racism respectable and played the "white card," she angered the super delegates, a majority of whom now back Obama. Hillary's argument about Obama's inexperience is legitimate, but the Democratic voters have rejected her as an alternative. Against that, she sounds almost delusional in arguing to super delegates that she would be a better general election candidate. On the basis of what? Every poll shows Democrats prefer Obama over Hillary as their presidential candidate, and Obama beats John McCain more handily in hypothetical match-ups than Hillary. Indeed, after her narrow victory in Indiana and his landslide win in North Carolina, she is now further behind in delegates and popular votes than she was before the Pennsylvania primary. Even while Obama was going through the roughest patch of the campaign, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his own slight of small-town Americans threatening to undermine him, Clinton could not persuade voters that she should be the nominee. Which explains why she is calling the rules unfair. It would be tough to play golf with Hillary. She would be demanding mulligans after every shot! Lately, Hillary has been criticising her party's proportional way of apportioning delegates, saying: "If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee." I just have had an epiphany! There were good reasons why Hillary was cosying up to Republican Fox News Channel and giving interviews to her Republican nemesis Bill O'Reilly. Next time, Hillary Clinton is going to run as a Republican!
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads. Unfortunately, even mountain momma cannot secure the nomination for Hillary. She made way too many costly mistakes. She was the establishment candidate ("experienced") when people were looking for change. She ran on the platform of inevitability and entitlement and failed to take Obama seriously early on. Her unwillingness to aplologise for her vote to authorise the Iraq war cost her dearly. She ignored the caucus states. With her overwhelming monetary advantage, she figured that she would clinch the nomination on February 5, "Super Tuesday." When she did not, there was no back-up plan, and she ran out of money. Obama, raising small amounts of money from millions of donors through the internet, was prepared for the long haul and ran off eleven victories in a row, effectively ending the contest. Hillary and Bill made one crucial blunder: by playing the race card they alienated the African-Americans, who had originally backed Hillary but in the end endorsed Obama, 9 to 1. And when Hillary attempted to make white racism respectable and played the "white card," she angered the super delegates, a majority of whom now back Obama. Hillary's argument about Obama's inexperience is legitimate, but the Democratic voters have rejected her as an alternative. Against that, she sounds almost delusional in arguing to super delegates that she would be a better general election candidate. On the basis of what? Every poll shows Democrats prefer Obama over Hillary as their presidential candidate, and Obama beats John McCain more handily in hypothetical match-ups than Hillary. Indeed, after her narrow victory in Indiana and his landslide win in North Carolina, she is now further behind in delegates and popular votes than she was before the Pennsylvania primary. Even while Obama was going through the roughest patch of the campaign, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his own slight of small-town Americans threatening to undermine him, Clinton could not persuade voters that she should be the nominee. Which explains why she is calling the rules unfair. It would be tough to play golf with Hillary. She would be demanding mulligans after every shot! Lately, Hillary has been criticising her party's proportional way of apportioning delegates, saying: "If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee." I just have had an epiphany! There were good reasons why Hillary was cosying up to Republican Fox News Channel and giving interviews to her Republican nemesis Bill O'Reilly. Next time, Hillary Clinton is going to run as a Republican!
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