She has essentially two options: hang on to her determination to
win the nomination by any and all means necessary, which, as I will
explain below, will almost certainly result in the election of John
McCain, or let go of her personal ambition and join a united effort to
elect a Democratic President in November. Winning both the nomination
and the general election is apparently out of the question.
Most
objective observers of the campaign agree that Barack Obama has a
near-mathematical lock on the nomination, provided the contest
continues according to the party's rules. In compliance with a signed
agreement by both candidates, the unauthorized and uncontested Michigan
and Florida primaries are out of play. Any likely compromise resolution
of the Michigan and Florida controversies will be of negligible
advantage to either side. Obama’s 150 pledged delegate lead can only be
overcome by unobtainable two to one Clinton majorities in all the
remaining primaries followed by the support of a majority of the super
delegates.
Clinton can play fair, or she can play dirty. If she
plays fair by following the rules and refraining from smear tactics,
she will surely lose the nomination. Given Barack Obama’s unassailable
lead among the pledged delegates, it is clear that the super-delegates
will not overturn the people’s will as expressed in the primaries and
the caucuses.
Nancy Pelosi, who leads more than two-hundred
super-delegates, has recently announced as much.
So if Clinton
is to be nominated, she must overturn rules that she has agreed to,
persuade most of the super-delegates to ignore the will of the voters
and caucus participants, and to accomplish all this she must diminish
Obama’s stature through negative campaigning. Because such tactics also
devastate the public opinion of her (not very high to begin with),
those same tactics employed to gain the nomination will almost
certainly deprive her of the presidency in the general election.
In
sum, this is Hillary's dilemma: Hold on to the bait, and both Clinton
and the Democrats lose. Let go of the bait, and Obama wins. Hillary
Clinton’s victory in November is not an option.
Clinton began
her campaign with the pollsters projecting that about half of the
voting population would not vote for her under any circumstances. So to
win the presidency, she must somehow reverse a widespread negative
public perception of her. And what is this perception? Among other
things, that she is shrill, self-serving, unprincipled, manipulative,
and untrustworthy. And yet to win the nomination, how must she behave,
and thus appear to the public, if she is to overcome Obama’s commanding
advantage? She must be, as she now appears to be, shrill, self-serving,
unprincipled, manipulative and untrustworthy. In short, in order to win
the nomination, she must behave in a manner that will validate a public
opinion of her that will surely deprive her of victory in the general
election.
And even if her negative campaign against Obama,
both overt and covert, fails to capture the nomination, it might well
sufficiently damage Obama’s stature to deprive him, along with numerous
Democratic Congressional candidates, of success in November. Hence
Obama's guilt by association with Pastor Jeremiah White, and her
favoring of McCain's "experience" over Obama's "speech-making." Justly
or not, there is a suspicion spreading among rank-and-file Democrats
that Hillary’s attitude is “it must be me, or nobody!” Meanwhile, as
this bitter rivalry continues we can see a fracturing of the party:
Support Clinton? “You’re a racist.” Support Obama? “You’re a sexist.”
It’s nonsense, of course. Most of Clinton's supporters are not racists,
and most Obamaphiles have no objection to a woman president; just not
that woman. It's all nonsense, but mischievously divisive nonetheless.
Then
there is the issue of “playing by the rules.” Early in the campaign,
Clinton, along with the other candidates, signed a statement agreeing
not to recognize the delegates of, or to campaign in, the rule-defying
states of Michigan and Florida. Now that she desperately needs these
votes, she is ignoring her agreement and is demanding as her own the
delegates in Michigan, where she was the only candidate on the ballot,
and in Florida where Obama, by agreement, did not appear. Having lost
in the Texas delegate count, she is attempting to overturn this result
in the courts, perchance to be eventually bailed out by the Supreme
Court, as was George Bush.
Not content to defy these party
rules, she now proposes her own rules. For example, because the “caucus
delegates,” have been chosen by an allegedly “less democratic process,”
they should not be regarded as equal to “primary delegates.” It just
happens that Obama has been more successful in caucuses than in
primaries. And now we are told by the Clinton campaign that the
Pennsylvania primary should be treated as decisive. Fortunately, not
many Democrats seem to be buying that one.
After seven years of
Bush/Cheney violations of treaties and international law, of trashing
the Constitution, of defying Congressional subpoenas, and of nullifying
acts of Congress with signing statements, it is not likely that the
American public will have much stomach for another President that
regards herself as unbound by rules or, by implication, by laws.
The
Democratic Party is caught in the grips of a tragedy, in the classical
sense, described by Alfred North Whitehead as “the solemnity of the
remorseless working of things” which rational agents can see at work
but are helpless to intervene and avert. Historical examples include
the drift of the European powers into the First World War, the
uncontrolled growth of world population, and the onset of catastrophic
climate change. Now a prospective candidate of one of the major
parties, consumed by personal ambition, is set upon a course that might
well cripple the party and destroy its otherwise excellent prospects of
success in the presidential election.
Or possibly not. But in
order to put the brakes on this potential train-wreck, the Democratic
party elders, which is to say the super-delegates, must take the
initiative and intervene. And sadly, the Congressional members among
the Democratic super-delegates have not distinguished themselves
through their initiatives and interventions against the Bush/Cheney
crime syndicate.
What the supers might do, however much I
despair of hope that they will, is announce to both candidates: “Either
this orgy of party self-immolation and this violation of party rules
ends now, or else we will end it forthwith.” They can do so if a
sufficient number of the super-delegates endorse the innocent candidate
to put that candidate’s total “over the top.”
Failing that, or
perchance in addition, the rank and file Democratic voters must voice
their displeasure, loud and clear, at the behavior of Hillary Clinton
and her campaign.
Only then might Hillary Clinton loose her grip
on the prize that she has already lost and cannot regain: The
Presidency of the United States.
Copyright 2008 by Ernest Partridge
Writings 
Some African tribes have devised an ingenious method of capturing monkeys. They cut a small hole in a coconut, large enough for a monkey’s hand but too small for a monkey’s fist. They then put a few peanuts inside the coconut. When the monkey reaches inside and grabs the peanuts, it is unable to extract its hand.
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