In an Indy Star article, Mary Beth Schneider reported that "Some party members call the Democratic presidential primary fight trouble. On Saturday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called it good for democracy."

Not quite. We usually see this kind of killer campaigning during the general elections--not during the primary season.

Ronald Reagan posited an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." I think that Camp Clinton can take a leaf from this book. I was in Senator Clinton's camp, but that was before the negativity started. Not any more. This was her candidacy to lose and I fear she's losing it...for everyone, seeking to make the Democratic candidate (if not her) unelectable.

About who gets to vote in primaries and caucuses (caucusi? hell!), the DNC made a rule and the states of Florida and Michigan violated it. At the time they chose to go off-script, no one thought that states like Indiana would even matter--they thought the nominee would have already been chosen and wanted to go on record before it was "all over but the shouting." Here's the rub: the voters didn't ask for this, though they elected those people, for the most part, who did make those decisions (yeah, for the most part). It's not their fault. We have had a curious squad of superfriends, superheros and superduper heros in the DNC, the delegates and the superdelegates that we didn't know all that much about before. Now that we've shone the light on them, the whole hot mess looks pretty ripe.

To my mind, we're in a perfect storm about these states: the people shouldn't have to pay for a do-over (Michigan is trying to stop the bleeding in its depressed economy--it doesn't have the money); the DNC told them NOT to move their elections (avec consequences); the candidates didn't ask them to move their elections, either.

As sad as this seems, I'm not sure that the Democratic voters of Florida and Michigan are the only ones who will lose out on their chance to cast a vote that will make a difference in the nomination process: that shadowy cabal of delegates and uber dels will do as they please and suggestions are being noised about that the nominee must be selected "with a quickness" (and not in late August) so that said candidate can make a good run for the White House.

I do wish Senator Clinton and her people would stop trying to make this Senator Obama's fault. He had just as little control over this as she did.

Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments