CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER Who'll stop the reign?
By Muhammad Cohen
NEW YORK - As others see the nomination race coming to a close, Hillary Clinton
see plenty of running ahead. She's in a marathon and it's only mile 18. The
finish line won't come until August, then the dash for the White House begins.
The New York senator's quest for the presidency won't end with the final two
primary contests on Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana. In her victory speech
after trouncing Barack Obama in the Puerto Rico primary on Sunday despite a
disappointing 20% turnout, Clinton correctly asserted that neither candidate
would have won the currently required 2,118 delegates to claim the nomination
when the voting is over.
Obama's campaign brain trust hopes it will gain enough support from the
remaining 200 uncommitted superdelegates to claim the
nomination this week. "One thing about superdelegates is that they change their
minds," Clinton told reporters on her campaign plane, before leaving Puerto
Rico to campaign in South Dakota. But whatever Obama claims, Clinton is
unlikely to go quietly into the night.
Popular pick
"We are winning the popular vote," Clinton said after outpolling the Illinois
senator by a margin of better than two-to-one in Puerto Rico. "Of that, there
can longer be any doubt." Obama's camp disputes the Clinton count, which
includes vote counts from the invalid primaries in Florida and Michigan, where
Obama did not appear on the ballot. Obama has a wide margin in pledged
delegates over Clinton.
On Saturday, the Democratic Party's rules and bylaws committee voted to seat
the delegations from Florida and Michigan, but penalize them half of their
votes. Clinton's side disputed awarding Obama four delegates from Michigan and
has reserved the right to challenge the party ruling.
Ignore the noise about the precise number to claim the nomination. Instead
remember that there are nearly three full months to go before the Democrats
will officially select their nominee at the convention. Clinton will likely
keep pressing her case for the nomination, no matter what the unofficial
scorecards might say.
Clinton's case
In Puerto Rico on Sunday night, Clinton repeated her case for why she, and not
Obama, should be the Democratic nominee. After claiming her questionable
popular vote mandate, Clinton asked a series of questions aimed primarily at
superdelegates.
"Which candidate best represents the will of the people who voted?
"Which candidate is best able to lead us to victory in November?
"Which candidate can best lead us as president in the face of unprecedented
challenges at home and abroad?
"We are winning the popular vote because we are running on the core principles
of our party," Clinton contended, a dig at Obama's weakness among working-class
voters and his contention that he can rewrite the electoral map.
"We are beating [presumptive Republican nominee] John McCain in the key states
to win the electoral vote," Clinton said, based on her primary wins in swing
state Ohio, bellwether Pennsylvania, solidly Democratic New York and
California, plus her unsanctioned victory in Florida. Primary victories don't
necessarily translate to winning in November, but Clinton has plenty more
tricks up her sleeve.
Showing legs
The remarks a week ago Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Christ by guest
preacher Father Michael Pflegler - "there is a black man stealing my show" -
led Obama to resign his membership in the church last week. But this latest
Chicago church controversy gave legs to Clinton's narratives.
Obama is the black candidate who will not win white votes. Obama is a fringe
figure, with friends like Pflegler, Trinity's former preacher and Obama's
self-proclaimed spiritual mentor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, ex-Weathermen
bombers, and who knows who else. (The Republicans surely must know.) Obama has
skeletons in his closet, the moral of equivalent of Bill Clinton's "bimbo
eruptions", landmines that can destroy his campaign by the time he reaches the
November election.
Despite 16 months of campaigning, we just don't know enough about Barack
Hussein Obama, the Clinton line continues. Facing yet another winnable race for
the presidency, do the Democrats want to risk another tragic loss - not just
for the party, but for the country that Hillary loves so dearly - by putting up
an untested candidate?
Whichever way superdelegates declare allegiance now, they won't cast their vote
until the Democratic convention that begins on August 25 in Denver, Colorado.
The so-called Democratic Party leadership want to get Clinton out of the race
now to remove the temptation for superdelegates to change their minds. But
there is no Democrat leadership.
Will of the people
In the 1920s, Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized political
party. I'm a Democrat." His words still ring true. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are drags on the party, vote losers in
any national campaign. Whatever power they wield on Capitol Hill doesn't matter
in the presidential race. Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean,
whose stewardship of the party machinery helped create this whole mess with
Florida and Michigan, has even less juice.
The Democrats have built a legacy of losing. Can anyone name a major policy
initiative the Democrats have enacted in this century, or even a major policy
initiative the party has undertaken? Their only moderate successes have been
beating back Republican excesses, such as privatizing social security, while
being complicit in President George W Bush's monstrous tax cuts and the
disastrous war in Iraq. Only a party of losers could even worry about not
trouncing John McCain or anyone else the Republicans might have run in 2008
carrying the burden of Bush's sub-30% approval rating.
The pressure is not on Clinton to get out of the race, it's on the Democrats to
get her out. She has nothing to lose at this point. Unliked and far down on the
senatorial pecking pole, she stakes little by pursuing the nomination all the
way to the convention. She's already been dissed by the people who never liked
the Clintons, and by many she and Bill counted as friends. Yes, she's carrying
millions in campaign debt, but the big expenses of the primaries are nearly
behind her, and she's rich. Once the campaign is over, she and Bill can go back
to raising money full-time from big donors, and they've proven very good at it.
The longer Clinton stays in the race, the bigger the prize package the
Democrats must offer for her surrender. She's hoping, not foolishly, that the
prize will eventually be the presidential nomination. Her ace in the hole is
that it's been 32 years since any Democrat has won the presidency, except for a
candidate named Clinton. In a party of losers, desperate for a winner, that
could prove decisive.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
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