A champion of Democracy?

What is it with Senator Clinton, anyway? In previous blog posts, I’ve discussed her unreliable memory (or her casual relationship with the truth, depending on your interpretation). Does she not realize that the rest of us have no such memory problems?

We remember her statements that the caucuses (as opposed to primaries) are undemocratic. We remember her complaining (loudly) about the DNC’s decision to disenfranchise millions of voters in Florida and Michigan due to their violation of DNC rules. (Never mind that her own campaign adviser, Harold Ickes, voted to strip the delegates, in compliance with party rules.) She, evidently, has been trying to set herself up as the only true champion of the voters, claiming to care so much about them that she is willing to throw the entire primary season into chaos in an effort to restore "the will of millions of voters" to the forefront. In my opinion, a laudable goal.

But now she points out that in most primaries, the "pledged" delegates won by a candidate are not actually pledged to support the candidate that "won" their votes at the National Convention. She clearly intends to attempt to poach Obama delegates under party rules which allow those delegates to ignore the "will of the voters" that she pretends to support.

Even more strange, she has spent months telling us the difference between so-called pledged delegates and the powerful "superdelegates" is that the latter are expected to exercise judgment independent of the voters. Yet, now, she tells us that, in fact, ALL delegates should exercise their own judgment and ignore what the voters in their respective states demand. I agree with her interpretation of the role of superdelegates. After all, if the party had intended those leaders to be bound to the vote in their states, there would have been no need to create a separate name for them; the party would simply have added their numbers to the ranks of pledged delegates. But for this very reason, one cannot reasonably argue that "pledged" delegates have the same power of independent judgment as superdelegates ... Again, if each group were expected to behave in the same manner, there would be no need to separate them.

One further piece of evidence that Senator Clinton is not nearly has concerned about "democracy" as she says ... She wants the delegates in Michigan to be seated as-is, even though she ran uncontested there, since her opponent removed his name from the ballot when the delegates were stripped. Does this sound familiar? It should. That’s how Saddam Hussein always managed to win 100% of the vote in Iraq .. he was the only one running! And we all remember when she told Senator Obama that he had no right to run in this election because it was "hers". Is this really democracy, when you only want to run in a race by yourself?

What these things show is that Senator Clinton doesn’t care about the voters or the voting process ... She cares only about winning, fairly or not. This is the sense of entitlement she entered the race with, but unfortunately for her, the rest of us aren’t buying what she’s selling.

(I thought about adding some comments about her mega-wealthy donors who sent a threatening letter to Speaker Pelosi because of her comments about the role of superdelegates, but I chose not to hold the Senator responsible for that particular lamentable tactic.)