The current Hillary Clinton campaign strategy could have easily been predicted back in 1999 when her husband, questioned about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, famously said "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Yesterday Hillary and surrogates started blathering about her having won more votes than Barack Obama. To her, it all depends on what the meaning of "votes" is.
While most of us who are keeping track, including Democratic Party officials, see Barack with more delegates and more of the popular vote, Hillary – like her husband – calculates things differently. She doesn't count the actual votes from some of Obama's caucus wins, and she counts the votes from both Florida and Michigan. Since Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, it is impossible to even see that as a contest where votes should count. And since she agreed ahead of time that Florida and Michigan wouldn't count, she's pulling a Bill Clinton by wanting to count them now.
She's also trying to change the rules of the game – rules the Democratic Party set up and she agreed to - in other ways.
For instance, she thinks popular votes should count more than number of delegates.
She thinks the votes in large states should count more than votes in small states.
She thinks she should be nominated because she has won in the states the Dems need in November.
She thinks pledged delegates should be free to change their votes from Obama to her.
She thinks superdelegates should overrule the pledged delegates if necessary for her to win.
Some people who are calling Clinton on her dishonest tactics say she is trying to move the goal posts, making it impossible for Obama to get a touchdown and put this game away. Since Americans like to use sports analogies, let's use two more to explain what Clinton is doing.
She's saying that free throws shouldn't count in basketball because they give the shooter an unfair advantage.
She's saying that a baseball team should be able to win a game if it put more people on base, rather than got more people to home plate.
Here in America, we use sports metaphors for a reason. We like the idea of fair play, of adhering to the rules of the game. Clinton, however, is not playing by the rules. She is trying to change the rules in mid-game, and most Americans reject those kind of tactics.
She IS not playing fair. But then, I guess it all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.
