I’m someone who still believes that more voters in Florida intendedto vote for Al Gore rather than George Bush in 2000 regardless of what the conflicting methods of recounts say. And that if the election wasn’t stolen, it was certainly botched and decided on a partisan basis by the Sandra Day O’Connor who voted for Bush in the Supreme Court case to make it easier for her to retire, because a Repbulican would name her successor.
So what lesson do the Clintons learn from this: stealing works! Only they’re foolishly stealing from themselves. Or so I think. I’ve written on this blog before about how I had a certain admiration for Hillary’s machiavellianism, but became disillusioned when I began to think she was a second rate machiavellian (in dissing Iowa voters after she lost)–and that what this country needs in a dangerous world is a first rate machiavellian.
Reently it’s seemed I was wrong, that the pathetic machiavellianism of her campaign’s swarming attacks on Barack Obama has succeeded.
But maybe they’ve finally gone a trick too far. This latest attempt to steal delgate votes from Michagan and Florida could win her the nomination but result in such revulsion at its sheer amoral shamelessness that it costs her the election. She’s stealing the wrong vote!
You know about this ploy, right? The Democratic National Committee punished Michigan and Florida for pushing back their primaries by depriving them of presidential nominating convention votes.Agree or disagree all candidates said they’d abide by the rules.
Candidates were required not to get involved in those states’ primaries. In Michigan, Obama and Edwards took their names off the ballots. Hillary’s campaign didn’t. They claimed they were abiding by the DNC rules by not campaigning there, that removing the name was not technically required by the rules. So Hillary won delegates in Michigan (even though a majority refused to vote for her and chose “uncommitted”) and she’s now decided that she thinks it’s important that those votes count. Same thing in Florida, although recent reports say sample ballots show Obama and Edwards on it. Still by arguing right before the Florida rimary (in which she’s ostensibly not campaigning) for the “rights” of the illegitimate Florida convention slate, she’s pulling a fast one on the rest of the field and will be able to steal a symbolic popular vote wi. And by any but the very lowest standards Michicgan is a pure steal.
She moved for the post facto legitimization of the Michigan delegates she won by default (and in fact it’s de fault, so to speak, of the other campaigns for letting her get away with this, if they do) only after it became apparent that the nomination might not be decided before the convention, that every vote, including the dubious illegitimate Michigan votes (and the otential Florida votes) for Hillary might make a difference
So suddenly she discovers herself deeply concerned about the way the people of Michigan have been “deprived of their voice’ (everybody loses and finds their voice so many times in this campaign). She wants to give them a voice for her. Needless to say she’ll pick up the Florida delegates by her brave fight for theirvoice too.
This is such a transparent shabby machiavellian maneuver it may win them the battle (the nomination) and lose them the war (the election). turn off so may in her own party who finally have had their fill of this unethical couple and their enablers that she loses the whole thing.
Who knew the Democrats (my party, alas) could find another way to lose a stolen election: steal it from themselves.
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