Is Hillary Clinton a Democrat?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

You're the person who deserves - indeed, is absolutely entitled - to be the Democratic Party's nominee for president of the United States.

You've worked for decades to reach this point, kept your eyes on the prize, suffered through the travails of being married to a philanderer, and taken abuse from misogynists and "the great right-wing conspiracy."

Most importantly, America needs you to clean up the mess following eight years of George W. Bush!

Then along comes this young, charismatic African American, seemingly out of nowhere, and you're in danger of seeing it all slip away. You have run a rather uninspiring campaign and have now lost eight contests in a row. You are behind in both the popular vote and the pledged delegate count.

You've already forfeited the black vote, thanks in part to the rants of your husband, the ex-president, whom you've allowed to campaign on your behalf. And now even core support groups such as Latinos, working-class whites, and women are beginning to desert you.

What to do? Well, if you're Hillary Clinton, it's simple: just circumvent the democratic process.

It requires a total of 2,025 delegates out of 4,049 to win the nomination. But almost one-fifth of the delegates, 796 people, are "unpledged" so-called "superdelegates," ex officio Democrats who hold various elected offices or other positions within the party. They are not bound by any rules and can back whomever they choose.

Clinton has made it clear that, even if Barack Obama ends up with more pledged delegates going into the Denver convention in August, she sees nothing wrong with having this "back-room nomenklatura" make up the difference and crown her the victor.

Not everyone is happy with her tactics. Donna Brazile, a commentator and superdelegate herself, told CNN that "if 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party."

As well, Clinton is now shamelessly demanding that the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries, which were held in January in defiance of the party's rule, be counted and their delegates seated at the convention.

The Democratic National Committee stripped the two states of their delegates - 156 for Michigan and 210 for Florida - because they held their primaries prior to the "Super Tuesday" Feb. 5 schedule.

All of the candidates agreed to this and none of them campaigned in these two primaries. In the case of Michigan, Clinton's chief rivals, Obama and Jonathan Edwards, even removed their names from the ballot.

As the only major candidate on the Michigan ballot, she got 55 per cent of the vote. She also won in Florida, and thus would gain the lion's share of the delegates from these two states. In other words, Clinton is demanding that the party treat as legitimate, elections in which she had virtually no opposition.

The prospect of a fight over seating the two delegations will gravely wound the party. As the Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent black activist, pointed out, this is like trying to change the rules of a football game when you're behind in the third quarter.

He also said that many people in those two states did not go the polls because they assumed their votes would not count.

Clinton's role models seem to be the old party bosses who used to run the big-city Democratic Party machines, dispensing favours and patronage.

They became known collectively as "Tammany Hall" politicians, named for the building in Manhattan out of which the New York politicos operated.

Hillary Clinton may be a Democrat, but it's clear she's no democrat.

Should she get away with these shenanigans, the party's left wing will argue that the nomination was "stolen from a black," many African Americans and other progressives will sit out the general election in November, and the nearly impossible may happen: the Republicans under John McCain might actually win the presidency.