As the Obama movement proceeds to overtake Hillary’s support base, Hillary has done a good job convincing voters that her campaign is struggling. In January, Hillary had to loan her campaign $5 million of her private funds, which contrasts just a bit with the $32 million raised by Obama. Then, Hillary gets trounced in 6 primaries and caucuses over the weekend and her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle ‘quits.’ Nothing says ‘desperation’ like firing your go-to-gal in the heat of battle. If voters were not convinced enough that the once overwhelming inevitability of a third Clinton White House was all but a memory, she gets a lashing in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia just a few days later.

What is most troubling about Hillary’s demise is her offensive against the nomination system, a system that has its pluses and minuses, but was adopted by the DNC to act as the rules of the game for this primary. Now that she is losing, Hillary does not like these rules very much anymore. Hillary’s excuses for failure wreak of desperation and a callous disregard for the rules of the game when they do not work in her favor. She must have learned this from her husband; a man who thinks he can get away with anything by questioning the definition of the word ‘is.’

According to Politico, Hillary “has sought to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process by which pledged delegates are chosen, arguing that caucuses aren’t true reflections of the will of the people, and that the exclusion of Florida and Michigan voters because of a dispute over the primary calendar taints the official tallies.”

 

An article at MSNBC states: “Clinton has struggled to explain her string of losses to Obama, finding reasons to justify her poor showing in so many contests.

“Caucus states, the former first lady says, are undemocratic and cater only to party activists. Southern states, like Louisiana, have “a very strong and very proud African-American electorate,” naturally predisposed to favor a black candidate.

“And so-called “red” states like North Dakota, Idaho and Kansas — all of which Obama won on Super Tuesday — will never choose a Democrat in the general election anyway.”

Right, Hillary, because any Democrat can’t win New York and New Jersey, and, just a couple of weeks ago, we weren’t wondering if you were going to capitalize on the support of black communities that your husband had built. Maybe you and Bill have forgotten that politics is not about what you have done in the past, but about what you have done for me lately.

My anti-Hillary position is not about these excuses, but about the weak attempt to feign allegiance to principles only after it becomes clear that those principles can be of some assistance to your private interest. Lets review two statements made by Hillary’s ex-campaign manager:

 

Summer, 2007: “We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process, and we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role.”

Tuesday, January 29, 2008: “There are more voters in Florida alone than there are in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina combined.”

Solis Doyle didn’t “quit” the campaign because of these statements; Hillary continues to push for the “rights” of Michigan and Florida voters today, and she will do so tomorrow as well. Hillary has done her part to earn my vote for Barack Obama by proving her profound lack of respect for the procedures by which politics are played. Democracies are made healthy by strengthening the processes, procedures, and institutions that are intended to function irrespective of the people in office.

Hillary is of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush ilk. She believes that her benign impact on politics justifies bending the rules when it suits her. Such beliefs contradict the foundational principle of democracy: the structuring of uncertainty. In other words, democracy derives from people saying ‘lets agree not to kill each other’ and becomes a complex system, like that found in the U.S., which protects people against far more than simply killing each other. As a result, when you play by the rules, your opponents have an incentive to play by the rules. When your opponents don’t play by the rules, you have a choice: you can either follow their lead, or, given the opportunity, you can strengthen those rules so that they cannot break them in the same way that they did in the past. Americans are sick of the tit-for-tat strategy that foments the takeover of democratic practices by political expediency.

I overheard someone in the precinct I worked at yesterday say that he thought people in this particular precinct would have voted for Hillary because she is more “sophisticated” than Obama. I beg to differ.