Democracy for Vancouver

Bloomberg Gore

Far more likely is that Clinton remains in the race, keeps it competitive by staying within range delegate-wise, and marches all the way to Denver fighting for the nomination. Then she plays some card, or combination of cards, in order to effectively steal it from Obama, despite his having won more states, more votes and more pledged delegates. Perhaps she does it using superdelegates. Perhaps she manages to get Florida and Michigan counted. Perhaps she sues to invalidate her loss in the Texas caucuses. Perhaps John Edwards (with anywhere from 12 to 61 delegates pledged to him, depending on whose count you believe) wants very badly to be Vice President or Secretary of State. Perhaps Bill cuts some sort of deal in a smoke-filled room somewhere. Maybe it goes to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people in black robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in her favor. Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and collectively they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow technical (and very Pyrrhic) victory.

If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that.

As much as I would hate to see the Democratic Party destroyed by undemocratic processes, it may be that Clinton needs to run and lose against McCain. It it quite obvious by the voting patterns in this country that far, far too many still do not really get what is happening.

And four years of McCain if Obama is denied the presidency would have one very positive potential effect as Green points out:

In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he (Obama) can’t win in 2008, the country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills. There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way.

And in the end what Hillary may do for us all if Green’s conjecture comes true:

So, let me see here. We’d have a destroyed Republican Party, a destroyed Democratic Party, and a new progressive, “Fired-Up!” party rising out of their ashes. We could do a lot worse than that. And we could thank Hillary Clinton for it all, if it happens.

He is sounding a lot like this blogger’s reasons a while back for stating I would vote for Giuliani (now replaced by McSame ) if Hillary is nominated. But really America, how many hard lessons do we have to learn before we awaken from our sleepwalk and start having progressive electoral landslides? Even with a few percentage points of voter fraud which gets thrown into the ballot results nowadays, ultimately the failure to vote in sufficient numbers for politicians who are willing to stand up to the status quo is what ails us.

Postscript: Rob Kall has an excellent analysis over here about how Howard Dean is now the person who is going to decide if McCain is our next President and if the Democratic Party survives this dilemma. It is time for you to “take your country back” Dr. Dean.

Post Postscript: And here is some stuff about Hillary from Firedoglake that is helping to speed up the demise of the Democratic Party:

I know Scarecrow hit this too, but this is the kind of thing that loses elections (emphasis mine):

 

“I think that since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

This again? Apparently, it wasn’t a one-off.

Look, this isn’t some slip-of-the-tongue, made in the heat of the moment, that some staffer advisor has to apologize for. Hillary is repeatedly building up the Republican nominee, at the expense of her own party — and her own candidacy. It’s unforgivably self-destructive and Democrats should just not stand for it.

If you look carefully at what she said, she’s actually arguing that St. McCain would make a better president than she would. “Certainly” trumps “I believe.” What the hell good does that do her? What good does it do Democrats if Obama is the nominee?

Hillary should be arguing that St. McCain wants to continue Bush’s reckless, destructive and wildly unpopular foreign policy and refuses to defend the constitution, and that disqualifies him as commander-in-chief. Period.

Call me crazy, but generally speaking, it’s a good campaign tactic is to draw contrasts between yourself and the other side — not repeatedly praise them and say how much you’re alike.