But the reaction to the Clinton Super Delegate strategy in some quarters has been to act as if Hillary Clinton is attempting a coup d'etat. The Opinionator notes:
Josh Marshall, perhaps the ur-blogger for online Democrats, writes at Talking Points Memo that Mrs. Clinton is “carving a path to the nomination through the heart of the Democratic party.”
Marshall is one of many liberal bloggers who object to the Clinton campaign’s attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination with superdelegates instead of with victories in primaries and caucuses across the country.
(Emphasis supplied.) This is rather an ironic objection to me. Of course, Clinton is trying to maximize the Super Delegate count in her favor, as is Obama. But what really struck me was his line about "carving a path . . . through the heart of the Democratic Party." From that one would think that Clinton is losing overwhelmingly with Democrats in this race. Of course, as Lukasiak demonstrates, it is Obama who is losing handily to Clinton among Democrats. One could argue that it is Obama who has carved a path to the nomination through through the heart of the Democratic Party.
And indeed, this leading progressive blogger did in January 2008:
Who is the best defender of progressive ideals?
Edwards, by a landslide. Not the 2004 edition, but the new and improved 2008 model. From a rhetorical standpoint, no one has come close to articulating the nation's ills and why progressive solutions are the best salve. This is important -- Democrats have been poor at branding their ideology, thus ceding that ground to demonizing conservatives. Long term, our movement cannot survive another Bill Clinton -- someone more interested in making David Broder and Joe Klein happy with triangulating rhetoric that undermines rather than bolsters progressive values and policies.
Clinton isn't horrible on this front, but Obama has made a cottage industry out of attacking the dirty [effing] hippies on the left, from labor unions, to Paul Krugman, to Gore and Kerry, to social security, and so on. People think I was being ticky tack with the Gore thing, and in isolation it would've been but a minor non-event. But it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for me, yet another in a pattern of attacks against Democrats and their constituencies. [Obama] is the return of Bill Clinton-style triangulating personified. Now I'm willing to consider that this is all a front, and that he'd govern as progressively as Bush governed conservatively after his 2000 bullshit about being a "uniter" and "compassionate". He can even pull a Bush, I suppose, and claim a "mandate" on policies he blurred or ignored on the campaign. But we've seen how a lack of true mandate has crushed Bush's presidency and made him the most unpopular and least effective president in history. I'd rather have our candidate elected promising progressive reform, especially in a year where the American people seem to crave such solutions.
(Emphasis supplied.) It seems that Democrats voting in these contests may have agreed with that assessment. They have not gone Barack Obama's way. But to hear some quarters on this issue, even DISCUSSING this is "cheating" or "changing the rules."
Ironically, defending Obama's version of 1990s triangulation is a Lieberman man,
Dan Gerstein:
The Kossacks and their activist allies -- who skew toward the Boomers -- believe that Republicans are venal bordering on evil, and that the way Democrats will win elections and hold power is to one-up Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics. Their opponents within the party -- who skew younger and freer of culture war wounds -- believe that the way to win is offer voters a break from this poisonous tribal warfare and a compelling, inclusive vision for where we want to take the country.
Ron Brownstein noted
this dispute about Obama:
"We are ready," Obama told his reverent audiences, "to come together as Democrats and Republicans and independents and say that we are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come."
That dispute no longer exists. What happened? Gerstein speculates:
[Y]ou might say that Mr. Obama did not kill Kos-ism so much as co-opt it -- by harnessing its most powerful forces and channeling it in a more constructive, convincing direction for a new political moment. He recognized early on that the primary electorate was changing in the wake of Mr. Bush's departure, and that it was hungry (post-Boomer voters in particular) for something bigger and better than the same polarization wrapped in a blue ribbon.
(Emphasis supplied.) The Netroots made into a force for post-partisanship, triangulation and unity? Apparently so. Certainly that has become the practical effect.
Think for a moment about the attitudes now taken on open primaries. It was long the consensus of the Netroots that Open Primaries weakened Democratic values by diluting the voices of true progressives. One of the reasons Joe Lieberman was vulnerable in Connecticut was that it was a closed primary. Indeed, if it was an Open Primary, a challenge of Lieberman would never have occurred, he would never have been defeated in the Democratic Primary, and even today, he would be a "leading Democratic voice" in the Media.
This is not to discredit the Obama wins with non-Democrats. He is operating in the system local Democratic parties have chosen. And he is winning. Winning within the chosen system is the primary consideration. But the national Democratic Party also chose the super delegate system. And appealing to these Super Delegates is ALSO a part of the system chosen. Making an argument that, all else being relatively equal, choose the candidate that DEMOCRATS prefer seems a very legitimate argument to me.
And it would be surprising that strong proponents of the Politics of Contrast, which describes much of the Netroots, would take affront at an argument they once championed.
