When Wishes Come True

The DNC leadership has put itself into a jam. After fighting tooth and nail to defeat the most popular candidate running, Hillary Clinton, it has found that it has only succeeded in delegitimizing itself and its preferred candidate with a growing number of Hillary supporters.

Unlike the Obamacans, these voters are lifelong Democratic stalwarts, like me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of us were very favorably disposed to The Precious a little over a year ago, and looked forward to a contest of great ideas on progressive programs for the next President. (Hell, I wrote several blog posts defending the guy from attacks on MyDD and FDL (among many places), back when Left Blogistan said Obama was a "DLC shill".) Then we hit primary season, which has become open season on Hillary. I said long before the Iowa caucuses that Hillary was running for president and all the others were running tro beat her. We watched, slack-jawed as Golden Boy Barry and Mr. Goodhair joined forces with Tim Russert and Chris Matthews to trash her with right-wing talking points, as the A-List Blogger Boyz cheered from the peanut gallery.

The decision to disenfranchise Michigan and Florida in favor of Iowa should have set off more warning bells. The Precious has nothing to stand on from a policy perspective, having stolen it all from Hillary and Edwards, only the argument that he is the white knight (ahem) to defend us agains the evil Hillary Mommy Monster. His gutter tactics are justified because "we all know" she'll do anything to be elected, including getting the votes, that bitch! How dare she win New Hampshire and upset the coronation! Time to take her out. When Barry's campaign, with the tacit approval of the DNC, went out in force trashing the Clintons as racists to drive up margins in southern states, HRC supporters knew the fix was in.

A funny thing happend on the way to the honor killing, though. Hillary kept winning the big states and kept garnering the majority of Democratic votes. The Democrats for Life are strongly behind her, and she is drawing an increasing number of Republicans and Independents who appear to actually be voting for her, rather than voting against an opponent. In contrast, the Democrats for a Day ^TM tactic was never anything other than Vote Your Hillary Hatred, and has done nothing to build the party. It was purely strategic and it has run out of steam.

The interesting number to me is the steady increase in the number of Hillary Democrats who are taking the brutal treatment of their preferred candidate and the deliberate and cynical disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida very seriously, enough that they will not vote Democrat in November. It is the combination of the two that has created the backlash conditions, I think. If The Golden One was simply getting more votes in the same contests, then, yeah, sucks to be on the losing team, but the votes are the votes. However, the fact that the inclusion of these two states changes the math completely and that the votes are being blocked by Obama and that the press is brutalizing Hillary and making shit up and that we need both those states in our column come November and, well, yeah, we're getting pissed.

As I have also said time and again, it all comes down to political legitimacy. A nominee who will not willingly face the voters in all 50 states is not considered the legitimate nominee by a substantial (and growing) portion of the party. As long as The Golden One prevents the revotes, he is the one responsible for delegitimizing the process and will not win in the GE, even if he can bully his way to the nomination.

Thus, Dean has painted himself and the party into a corner. The only solution that will be seen as legitimate is a revote of Michigan and Florida, and Dean is allowing his preferred candidate to block that option. As I've said before (dang, but I'm prescient...) if Obama has popular support, he would welcome the revotes. The fact that he is fighting hammer and tongs to prevent this from happening, despite the support of the party leaders, the pundits, the MSM and an alleged huge advantage in cash, tells me that he knows he will bomb. The frontrunner is on his way to being a has been.

To keep from losing everything in November (and I'm beginning to think we may lose control of the Seante at our current rate), Dean and the DNC leadership are trying to beg/cajole/threaten Hillary into conceding the nomination before she becomes any stronger.

Somehow, I don't think she will.

I want her to make The Precious fight every step of the way in order to teach Howard Dean that a 50 state strategy includes all the voters of all the states, not just those who support Howie's favorite. I want her to continue to stand up for the millions of voters Golden Boy Barry has declared to be untrustworthy and undeserving of a vote because they may not vote for him. And, after Obama's forces descend on the Denver convention in buses chartered by Obama to haul half of Chicago accross the plains, and hold a made-for-the-media "riot" (kind of like 1968 crossed with the Florida recount), and threaten the super delegates into voting for The Precious, I will grimly watch the crushing defeat of Obama, Dean, Pelosi, Brazile, Richardson and all the other idiots who succumbed to Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

This is what the DNC deserves for having turned a campaign to promote our party into a witch hunt to politically murder the person most popular with the Democratic rank and file and the most qualified to lead the nation in a time of growing crisis.

Be careful what you wish for. You may just get it.

Anglachel