but I don't feel fine.
According to Howard Wolfson, communications director for Hillary Clinton, even if the Clinton campaign is behind on pledged delegates (and I assume the popular vote) she will be pushing the connected insiders and elected officials to vote with her to push her over the top.
According to Wolfson:
"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.
"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.
"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period,'' he added.
Which in a vacuum might make sense since the rules do provide for that. However, it's clear we don't operate in a vacuum and it's also clear that how this plays out will be noticed by many in the Democratic party including African-Americans, of which I am one, and new and young voters.
In my opinion back room deals and insider games that swing the nomination to the Washington insider at the end will severely damage the party.
With HRC's strategy of winning just enough to put her over the top it will only take a small percentage of people staying home to sink her chances.
In the longer term, enough disillusioned voters staying home will hurt the Democratic party in election after election.
Mark Penn disagrees of course:
"This is a nomination system that exists of caucuses, primaries, superdelegates and also the issue of voters in Florida and Michigan,'' states whose delegates currently will not be seated at the convention because they broke party rules by moving up their primaries to January, said Mark Penn, senior strategist for the Clinton campaign. But "whoever the nominee is, the party will come together behind that nominee,'' he said.
And we know how good that guy is...
source
To me this is purely about power at this point.
HRC is losing so many states the process is now undemocratic according to their camp. They didn't have a problem with it before they started losign. They'd also like to sit states that were punished for moving up their election dates, with full knowledge that the punishment would be that their delegates would probably not be seated, despite the fact that HRC was the only name on the ballot in MI and that the FL vote was a beauty contest going to the candidate with over a decade of name recognition. Also despite HRC not having a problem with the DNC rules before hand and only after she needed the votes did she decide it was unfair to strip the delegates from that state.
Well I'm not some super political guru (who is paid 5 mil to win a few states and lose a whole bunch more with the most recognized politician in the Democratic party and perhaps the country) but I can't help but think that these sorts of games are going to kill the party if they succeed. But what the heck do I know? I'm just a voter.
So it's clear HRC is going to try to burn the place down if she has to. The only remaining question is whether the superdelegates will put the long term health of the Party ahead of their insider loyalties.