They’ve Asked Us For No Less Than Our Nomination, We Have The Right To Insist On Them Swallowing Their Pride To Give Democrats The Best Chance To Win by Anthony McCarthy
I.

I have come to believe that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. I believe he will almost certainly have the most votes in primaries and caucuses and is likely to get the majority of the votes of the super delegates*. Unless something happens in the next week or two that proves this wrong, Hillary Clinton should suspend her campaign and pledge her support for the nominee chosen by the voters. Both candidates should tell all of their supporters to cut the attacks right now and cut loose anyone who continues. I am sorry that the combination ticket that I’ve supported, without regard to order of appearance, has been made so much less likely due to the tactics used on both sides. The combination of these two candidates would be a strong ticket to run against McCain, though it is probably not the only possible combination that could win.

There is a lot in this column by Mario Cuomo that I agree with, I think both of these candidates owe Democrats and the American People enough to be able to overcome their pride to unite for the good of the country.

If either or both of these candidates are unwilling, in 2008, to put the good of the party, the country and the world before their personal interests and feelings neither of them should be given another chance. One election of the importance of the presidential election, blown for any but the most vitally important of reasons, should mark the end of the presidential career of even the best politician. No one should assume that they can withhold their full support from the Democratic nominee in hopes of running again in four years.

II. Putting The Donkey Before The Cart - Having a Democrat In The Oval Office Is The Only Reason For Having Any Process Of Any Kind.

But even if I didn’t believe that Barack Obama will be our nominee I would still be in favor of seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic Convention. Those who say that to do so would be a violation of the party rules agreed to by the candidates are insisting on a minor point of order which should never have been adopted.

The nomination and the elections that produce the nominee don’t belong to the officials who adopt rules or the candidates, the nomination as well as the seat for which they are running belong to The People.

The mechanisms of state primaries and caucuses are not determined by the parties or its bureaucratic functionaries, those are set by state legislatures and governors. The rule attempting to get some hold on the schedule of those primaries was stupid and wrongheaded. The people in the Democratic National Committee who pushed it through on the basis of “principle”, were handing a gift to Republican dominated legislatures. They smilingly took that gift and used it in an entirely predictable way, to sandbag us, yet again.

The damned party rules aren’t worth losing an election for city council over, they certainly aren’t worth losing the presidency over. The trade made by those responsible for this idiotic mess was to not offend New Hampshire and Iowa by excluding their delegations from the convention if they insisted, as they always do, on going first. In making Florida and Michigan an example of the might of the rules bureaucrats of the DNC, they sacrifice the chance at a likely forty-four electoral votes against the eleven held by New Hampshire and Iowa together, when it really counts, in the general election. Michigan alone has seventeen electoral votes.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling against the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington State provides a face cloth to those who are more realistic than the fuss budgets who infest rules committees in our party. It is undeniable that those fixated on gaining control of the nomination schedule were insisting on having a power that doesn’t belong to the parties. The grown ups in the DNC should point this out as they say that all delegations chosen under the laws of the states, which have the legal power to set their own dates for these elections, will be seated at the convention. The egg on the faces of the process-obsessed will be a lot easier to take than a President McCain bombing Iran. Their short term, one-news-cycle, embarrassment is no less than they deserve, you might even enjoy seeing them being the ones to finally take what they’re begging for.

* Get rid of the stupid super delegate rules at the earliest possible moment. No one who is not chosen directly by voters in primaries and caucuses has any business deciding the nomination. What a stupid idea that one was. It should be studied as a symptom of what happens when those more concerned with process than with winning elections are given rule making power. No one who does not understand that winning the election is the point of the whole effort should be able to make decisions for the Democratic Party.