2008 What He Said
posted by on April 30 at 8:53 AM
The Jed Report:
For most of this campaign, the Democratic Party has been unified by optimism that our eventual nominee would trounce the Republican candidate in November, 2008. That began to change towards the end of February, when the contest between Senators Clinton and Obama began to turn sharply negative.The media and the Clinton campaign deserve their share of blame for this. And Obama is not perfect, either. But the people who deserve the most blame are the superdelegates, for it is their indecision that has made this mess possible in the first place.
Since late February, it has been clear that the Clinton campaign’s only hope for victory rested in their hands. Over the past two months, the sole uncertainty about the campaign has been whether or not superdelegates will stage a coup against the voters.
At any point during the last two months, superdelegates could have made it clear that they would support the will of voters. Instead, by declaring their indecision, they provided Clinton with a new rationale for her campaign. Effectively, they encouraged her coup attempt. It was if they said to her: if you can prove to us that Barack Obama is unelectable, we will overturn the judgment of voters.
It is now clear just how foolish and unwise the superdelegates were for offering Clinton such a destructive path to the nomination, for she has tried to meet it with unrestrained vigor. Two months later, a party that was once unified is now divided. The septuagenarian Republican presidential candidate who devised the Iraq war strategy and wants to stay there for one hundred years is leading or tied in most polls.
And the ultimate blame for making this possible rests with the very people who are supposed to lead the Democratic Party: the superdelegates.
Via Sullivan.
we'll get a nominee, eventually, and that nominee will make mccain look like the presenile, doddering, adulterous fool he is and always was.
This election is so over for the Democrat Party and if we can not win in these circumstances we should go the way of the Whig Party.
Seriously, we have this lost already unless McCain's temper explodes before November...wait if that happens he wins by a landslide given which country we live in.
Yeah, that's right - it's all the fault of those damned superdelegates. We should riot in the streets of Denver this August to protest this outrage.
If you line up behind Obama and Clinton wins, she will take revenge. Too risky. If you line up behind Clinton, you could be held responsible for nominating the only Democrat who could find a way to lose this election. Too risky. If you wait around for somebody else to decide, you duck responsibility and all is well.
Which is why this idea that having super delegates in the nominating process will save the party from the foolish rank and file is absurd. The system is already rigged to make sure that nobody with political courage becomes a super delegate in the first place.
The Democratic Party should go the way of the Whigs. The left in this country needs a reboot.
@5, @2 beat you by 11 minutes. Too little too late. Egg on you face, bigtime.
@3 - I'm sure there will be a Free Speech Zone about four miles from the convention center for all of us to express our outrage.
Ahhh yes... those Super Delegates...
You know... those super smart "party elite" folks who are there to help all us dumb hicks out when we don't make the "right" decision for a nominee for the Democratic Party.
Nice of them to implement that Super Delegate rule to help all us ignorant fucks out when we might fail to give the party they vision it needs....
How can we blame the superdelegates for remaining uncommitted when there are still legitimate democratic primaries left on the schedule? When Hillary seriously does have a chance of winning? (Just imagine seating or re-voting Michigan and Florida -- HRC could easily win both the pledged delegate count and popular vote in that scenario.) Can't we just as easily blame the voters?
I think the blame here rests solidly in two camps: everybody, for their unquenchible lust for political bloodletting; and the press, for their extreme enthusiasm in promoting and selling this tournament of gladiators. I think everybody's pretty much been acting in accord with their moral and economic imperatives; this race has been exceptionally American. How could this have been different?
Can anyone still remember the days when we thought both of our candidates were kick-ass? Um, they still are. (Except HRC really is starting to bug the shit out of me with that gas-tax pandering.)
I still think the Democrats are going to CRUSH McCain come November. I know I'll vote for Hillary if the alternative is more ass-wiping with the constitution and the middle class. Who out there won't?
@7: Close. The free-speech zone will be about a mile and a half away.
@9 Your answer is me and a whole host of others who refuse to vote for the bitch.
And yes that is the very nicest thing I can think of to call her for her current behavior.
Anyone who condones or justifies her behavior is a fucking hypocrite.
@11, call Hillary what you really want to: Hillary Clinton is a CUNT!!!!!
Democratic party leadership has been sorely lacking; is that any kind of surprise? The bone headed decision to eliminate all delegates from Michigan and Florida, instead of counting half of them as the Republicans did, is another example; there was no reason to completely disenfranchise two important states, and there's now no good way to undo the decision.
Superdelegate shenanigans have gone on too long for one main reason - the desire of individual superdelegates to maximize what they get in return for their vote, rather than consider the good of the party and the overall election.
In neither case were decisions made to serve the will of the voters. This is also no surprise.
#2, is there a point to your incessant pessimism?
This is a lame article. What proof is there that the party is divided? The media says so? Why is it that we were voting 50-50 all primary season, but we're just now divided?
Look, polls this early are bullshit. We know this from 2004, 2000, and every other election. This will all shake out when the nominee is chosen. With all of the attention Democrats have been getting in the media, McCain has been flying under the radar. After Democrats are able to shift the focus to McCain's negatives, he hardly has a chance.
@11
Well, that would be extremely stupid of you. Not voting for Hillary in a match with McCain -- for someone who holds liberal (or progressive or whatever the hip kids are calling it these days) views -- well, that's the sort of activity the phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face" was coined to describe. If I was prone to your type of overstatement and absolutism, I might say that it would amount to an act of treason.
I WANT Obama to be President -- I've never been able to say that about anybody. But I LOATHE the prospect of McCain in the oval office. And I'll do whatever I can to stop it.
And, if you think Clinton's attack dogs are disingenuous and mean, check this out from a McCain spokesperson yesterday (from the NYT):
"It’s clear Barack Obama’s not strong enough to provide immediate relief at the pump, and it shows he doesn’t understand our economy or have the ability to deliver for hard-working Americans. Senator Obama’s arguments against John McCain’s gas tax holiday are complete fiction, and the reality is that he used to support a gas tax holiday before he was running for president.”
See if you can trace a single cogent argument there. Nope? Well, that's the sort of shit he's going to have to deal with and answer as though it wasn't a pile of false argument. Clinton's barely a warm-up for McCain.
andrew, seriously, knock off the sexist slurs.
McCain is really projecting his lack of economic knowledge isn't he?
Wouldn't it have been better illustrated if Obama had just admitted he doesn't understand our economy? Something like this...
I suppose he might have finished the book since then.
I have a daydream...
It involves going into the convention in Denver completely divided, and reaching no clear winner on the floor vote. In an unprecedented but perfectly legitimate move, the party as a whole turns to someone who can unite the party and nominates a third candidate.
Al Gore.
Gore lost.
I think it's totally appropriate for the super-delegates to wait for all states to vote before making their decision. Whether they're actually basing their decision off those votes I don't know. But as far as I'm concerned I think the voters voices should be heard before the super-delegates. We know that the SD's votes are going to matter, but how about they take into account the rest of the country instead of counting them off.
I'll admit that I'm a little worried. The hostility between Obama and Hillary has gotten a little out of hand. I'm a long way from giving up hope though. Pretty much all of the polls show McCain neck and neck with either Obama or Clinton. If he can barely pull off any real margin on them when he gets to pound on them with impunity and they're busy pounding on each other he's probably screwed.
Think of it like this. Right now Clinton is taking heat from Obama and McCain, Obama is taking heat from Clinton and McCain but McCain has a free ride for a while. Even with nobody attacking him he can't pull off more than a marginal victory in the polls. He's wasting his time right now. While Clinton and Obama are constantly in front of us McCain's falling off our tiny little attention spans. I think that as soon as we make the Democratic decision and can start focusing on him he's going to drop like an old man with a heart problem.
@18
Seriously, can we just get off the whole Gore thing? If he wanted to run for president he would have run. He's already lost once there's no reason to throw him back in the ring.
@20,
Agreed. They have no other choice at this point. I think enough Hillary supporters have become convinced that she still has a legitimate shot at the nomination. (More than 40 percent of Pennsylvania voters said they think she'll be the nominee.) If the SDs step in now and hand the nomination to Obama, I think it'll piss off Hillary's more ardent, and less knowledgable, supporters.
But, I swear to the FSM, this shit better be over by June.
The whole point is to win in November. This knuckle headed hostility to one candidate or the other seems to me childish. "I won't vote if..." is the stupidity that gave us Bush. Grow up.
I guess I don't really understand this criticism. If the superdelegates are simply supposed to unquestionably vote for whoever won the most delegates in the primaries/caucauses, then what's the point of having superdelegates?
You can certainly criticize the Democratic Party for having a nomination system in which superdelegates exist... but since that system is in place, and has been in place for over 30 years, it hardly seems fair to blame the individual superdelegates for doing what they're supposed to be doing.
It ain't indecision. They're waiting too see who gives them the best offer, and who looks to have the best coattails to ride on.
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