Every morning I wake up hoping to be able to focus on something else - like how we are going to defeat McCain in November, what an Obama administration will look like, how amazing it will be to see him take the oath of office, and what kind of for-the-ages type of Inaugural Address he will give.
But nearly every day for the past few weeks, even months, I have woken up each morning to hear something on the news that brings me back to this unending nominating process in the Democratic Party. The media wants it to go on, the Republicans want it to go on, Hillary supporters want it to go on, and apparently the superdelegates want it to go on, because they alone could end it now if they wanted to, or had (to use James Carville's phrase) the cajones to do so.
If Hillary keeps throwing around her philosophy that only she can get white support this Fall, if she and her husband keep making this about race, she is going to do irreparable harm to the fragile coalition that is the Democratic Party.
And the only reason she is doing it is because she believes she and her husband ARE the Democratic Party. It is THEIR party; it belongs to them. This is obviously their attitude. No other candidate would stay in the race when it was obvious there was no way they could win except by overturning the will of the people. No one else would do that to the party, because no other candidate believes they own the party. But the Clintons do.
This narcissistic couple, regardless of how Hillary says she cares about YOU, only care about themselves. If the majority of the people in the Democratic Party will not see it their way, well tough patooties. They ARE the Democratic Party and no one or nothing else counts: not the majority of states and voters who have chosen Obama, not the issue of racial unity, not the importance of pulling the party together in order to win in November.
It reminds me a lot of how Bill Clinton acted during the entire Monica mess. First he lied to the people, firmly and shamelessly, on television, with his finger pointed directly at the camera. Then when he finally had to admit what he had done, instead of resigning for the good of the country and the party, turning the presidency over to Al Gore, who would have been a great president and would have been poised to win in 2000, he pressed on and forced the country to go through the spectacle of impeachment and exposure to his sexual immorality. And that cost the Democratic Party the election in 2000 and has given us an eight year nightmare.
Bill Clinton's refusal to depart with some dignity and selflessness meant the country was distracted from all the other important issues (most importantly doing someting about al Qaeda) for over a year. His victory rally on the White House lawn after he was impeached is something like the victory lap Hillary is taking through the remaining primary states even though she has lost. Just as Bill refused to see reality and resign after he was impeached, Hillary is refusing to concede after she has all but lost the nomination. And not only is she continuing to compete in this hopeless cause, she is fueling racial animosity as she is campaigning.
This is unconscionable, yet the media is not attacking her for it as they attacked Obama for his "bitter" comments, or for the comments of his pastor. It is as if the media also believe the Clintons own the Democratic Party and are afraid to cross them. Why is everyone so afraid of Bill and Hillary Clinton? I understand what they can do to Barack, and to the Democratic Party, because they are doing it. But what can they possibly do to the media?
Where's the fairness here? Where's the honesty? Why is everyone in the media kowtowing to Clinton, saying she needs "time" to resign in her own way, in her own time? Why must her ego be so massaged? No one thought it important to massage Obama's ego when they were talking non-stop about his pastor problem. Is Hillary that fragile, or that vindictive?
I'd really like to know.
