posted on June 4, 2008 06:41:30 AM new
The following was written by a British reporter and entitled "No Shame, No Gain". I found it on RealClearPolitics. I think he hit the nail on the head.
The lead story tonight - my "lede," as we spell it here - should have been about the remarkable fact that a black man has been nominated by a major party to lead a developed Western nation for the first time in the history of the world. A man - in whose lifetime people with his shade of skin were denied the right to vote and to use public accommodations - who is now on the cusp of the presidency. It says something good about America, and I would like to have been able to dwell on it.
But no. Once again, it's all about Hillary Clinton, who delivered the most abrasive, self-absorbed, selfish, delusional, emasculating and extortionate political speech I've heard in a long time. And I've left out some adjectives, just to be polite.
Here's an interesting point for you. Barack Obama's speech, which featured a long and gracious nod to Clinton toward the beginning, was posted on various websites as early as 8:10pm East coast time. That means that Clinton - who didn't start speaking until 9:31pm, noticeably missing her introductory cue - and her staff had more than an hour to read Obama's speech and see that he was going to be more than kind to her.
But Clinton, who did not post her speech in advance, gave Obama a much briefer and more perfunctory nod. She congratulated him on his well-run campaign, but not on his victory, which is historic and assured. She told her crowd that, though she is now defeated, she "will be making no decisions tonight." She urged her voters - naturally nudged up to 18 million, which exaggerates the matter by about a half a million votes - to visit her website and send her messages, a piece of demagoguery that merely ensures that a week hence, if she wants to, she'll be able to say, "more than 10 million of my supporters have written to encourage me to go on to Denver". And speaking of the convention city, when her audience began chanting its name, she did not of course try to stop them and say that a convention fight was not in the interest of party unity.
What's her game? It's this, I think. It's not merely to be vice president. Although apparently it is that. I take it she and Bill have decided that being Obama's vice-president for eight years is the most plausible path to the presidency. But she did not on Tuesday night merely try to make a case for herself as a good vice-presidential candidate. She held a rhetorical knife to Obama's throat and said, in not so many words: I'm still calling some shots, buddy. You offer me the vice-presidency, or I walk away. But she has also forced Obama into a situation whereby if he chooses her now, he looks weak. So that's the choice she is hoping to impose on the nominee: don't choose me, and Bill and I will subtly work to see that you lose; choose me, and look like a weakling who can't lead the party without the Clintons after all. Now that's putting the interests of the party first, isn't it?
Democrats had better understand what this means, and they'd better not kid themselves. With any person other than a Clinton, this whole thing would have been over in late February - that is, any other candidate who lost 11 primaries in a row and ran out of money would have been shamed out of the race at that point. Or if not then, after May 6 (North Carolina and Indiana), when it became obvious that she could not come within 100 delegates of Obama, no matter what happened with Florida and Michigan.
But the Clintons know no shame, and more importantly, there has been no referee who could end this game, no one who could say to a Clinton, "Enough now." Well, Democrats have to say it. Now. Enough.
I really wanted to write a happy piece tonight. I wanted to write about Obama's amazing victory and about Clinton's tenacity being finally tempered by an acceptance of reality - reality that she'd lost and reality that, while there are indeed good arguments for her being on the ticket, the person who won the nominee has the right to choose the running mate.
Obama, after a slowish start, ended up giving a good, fiery speech aimed at John McCain. And McCain's speech, though flat in delivery, laid out his themes reasonably well. A race between these two men will be a race between two people who - whatever you think of their politics - are presenting substantive cases to the country and asking the people to choose. That's going to be a good show. But someone has to send that sore loser on the sidelines off to the showers once and for all.
posted on June 4, 2008 08:31:09 AM new
As you suggested, Cherishedclutter, Michael Tomasky nailed it! Hillary is a manipulating machine unto herself...nothing more.
posted on June 4, 2008 09:50:11 AM new
Amen! I agree with this writer on just about every point. Was watching MSNBC til 2 AM, waiting for some congratulatory word from Clinton, but nope. It is all about her. She is selfishly putting Obama is a no-win situation. If he does choose her for VP, he will look weak, if not he risks the ire of her rabid supporters (not to mention the Clintons themselves.) What a piece of work!
posted on June 4, 2008 02:33:23 PM new
Oh heavens, we ALL know she'd have been smarter to be gracious! It's a given, isn't it. When I lost my last city council race, the jerk who beat me was being inaugurated, and I made a very gracious speech to him, wishing him well, saying he'd beaten me fair and square, etc. etc. etc. I think the Bible calls it heaping coals of fire on his head.
If you lost graciously, people will remember. But they'll also remember if you're snide and mean! We need to go out gracefully, not burning our bridges.
Someone said this morning that Hillary probably wants to give her pledged delegates a chance to vote for her in public at the convention.
I think she's making a mistake, feeding the hunches some misogynists have about women being mean and catty. Too bad. So many of us said we'd vote for either of the two, whoever won the nomination. Sad.
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