Robert Owens
There's a Word for This
By
Jun 11, 2008 - 11:43:48 AM

Some old sayings frame my comments: “I haven’t got a horse in this race,” “The fix is in,” and “That dog won’t hunt.”

Did anyone see Recount, the mockumentary dressed up as history?  With what was going on in the marathon primary, all I could think was, “there’s a word for this.”

Barack won the Chesterfield and Virginia primaries.  But did he win the nomination?  If Hillary won the popular vote, how did Barack win the nomination?  What are Super Delegates?  Why’d they keep everyone holding their breath for 17 months and then a surge they could believe in just before polls closed in the final primary?

Super Delegates are what Democrats call insiders, elected officials, and functionaries who’re given Super status in the party’s nominating apparatus.    They’re to make sure the party nominates the most electable candidate.  If the Supers decide people made a mistake giving too many votes or delegates to who they consider the wrong candidate, the Supers over-rule the voters installing the right candidate.  In a party bold enough to call itself the Democratic Party, there’s a word for this.

A summer of contention followed by a convention floor fight held the promise of deep bruises and perhaps irreparably hurt feelings, but without intervention by the Supers, there was no alternative. 

Every Super remembers the tumult and result of Kennedy’s campaign against Carter in 1980.  Kennedy said Carter was unelectable and only he could defeat Reagan.   Kennedy wouldn’t surrender fighting in the Platform Committee and on the floor.  But Carter had the delegates and carried the day.  After the landslide defeat of Carter, the Super Delegates were born in 1982 to stop such a thing from happening again. 

Ever since the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Washington’s talking heads called for Hillary to quit, ceding the race to Barack as she won four out of five contests, racking up lopsided popular vote wins.  Calls coming from reporters who admitted they felt chills running up their legs as Obama spoke, who lambasted Hillary for her memory lapses while failing to ask questions about recurring explanations of long-term relationships with questionable characters consisting of, “That’s not the man I’ve known all these years.”

Why were two states given only half votes?  We’re told the reason for half-and-half was the sanctity of party rules.  In reality, theses rules changed many times.  They changed to reach this half-and-half compromise costing Hillary votes actually cast for her and awarding Barack votes cast for “Uncommitted.”  There’s a word for this.

Isn’t it the same people who said “Every vote must count!” and “Who disenfranchised these people?” who’re now speaking about Barack’s win as if it were the second coming?  Why was it necessary to short-circuit the will of the people?  Weren’t the people of the Democratic Party still trying to decide in a Democratic way, should we make history this way or that?  Why was it necessary to cast Super votes before all the non-Super people had a chance to vote?   There’s a word for this.

The last day of the last primary and still neither one had the required number of delegates.  So how did Obama win and Hillary lose?  Let’s go back to that surge of Supers just before the polls closed in Montana.  If the Supers would’ve waited till the day after the last primary to declare, it would’ve been obvious what had happened.  Since they declared before the polls closed when Barack won Montana, the chatocracy piously proclaimed he’d won the Democratic nomination! There’s a word for this.

I won’t detract from the fact that for the first time an African-American’s been nominated by one of the big-box parties.  This is an achievement as ground-breaking as nominating a woman.

Listening to the Camelot comparisons, the rhapsodies of brilliant strategy and flawless campaigns, it seems the same people who’re today shouting from the rooftops that Barack won the nomination are the same ones who shouted for years, “Bush was selected, not elected!”  There’s a word for this. 

Is this how Democratic democracy works?  Appointed Supers choosing what’s best for the little people after telling us for years the power of special interests threaten our democracy.  There’s a word for this: hypocrisy.


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