Hillary’s ultimate plan to win the nomination

Although I am among those die-hards who still hope against hope that Hillary can somehow stop Obama, I have to admit that this cartoon seems to capture the reality of her situation.

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James N. writes:

Actually, her real ultimate plan is not a bad one. Any rational actor who is a Democratic Party superdelegate should conclude, based solely on primary election returns, that she is the obvious choice. She has won every state (except Illinois) that the Democratic nominee must win, and she will surely win Illinois in November. She has demonstrated that, in certain must-win states (Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio) that move than 20 percent of core Democratic voters have such antipathy to Obama that they are likely to vote for McCain. It is obvious that Obama is an extremely weak, even a dangerous, choice for the party, AND HE CAN’T WIN A MAJORITY OF THE DELEGATES THROUGH THE PRIMARY PROCESS. What else can she do?

I’m interested in your opinion about the extreme aversion to intra-party conflict which we are seeing this year. The media and leading Democrats are in a panic about letting the process go on, even when it is obviously not over. On the GOP side, everyone was very anxious to “have a nominee” by Super Tuesday, TEN MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION!

This is unusual because it is so new. My mother was born during the 75th ballot of the 1924 Democratic convention. Floor fights in 1964, on both sides, were protracted and passionate. What’s the big deal about letting the factions that exist within the parties fight it out? That’s the way we’ve always done it.

LA replies:

A short answer: Modern liberalism, because its highest values are equality, non-discrimination, and inclusion, is increasingly against democracy, in the sense of majority rule and self-government, because such democracy means that a majority asserts itself over the minority, which violates equality. So they want managed elections, they want nomination processes resolved quickly, they want campaign finance reform restricting political speech during an election, and ultimately they want EU type managers running humanity.

Remember Washington Post reporter Dan Balz’s barely suppressed anxiety last OCTOBER over the fact that the Republican nomination race was still “unsettled.” In OCTOBER.

James N. replies:

Yes, this quote from Balz did not receive nearly enough attention at the time : “But the Republican contest remains unsettled just three months before the first votes will be cast.”

You said: “Liberals want elections to be decided before they even occur, because an election implies the existence of a majority that possesses power—a power outside liberal control. Also, when things are decided by election, that means the majority has control and the minority doesn’t, which is unequal and unfair. The only way to avoid such inequality is to have the unelected elite running everything, in the name of good principles and for the benefit of all.”

That’s true as far as it goes, but I think politicians in general hate elections (they can be fired from the best job they ever had, or ever will have, by ignorant rubes back home not fit to wipe the tires of their limousines). So, although liberals have an ideological reason to hate elections, all elected officials everywhere have a non-ideological personal interest in making elections more predictable. That’s why Democrat-majority legislatures create safe Republican districts, and vice-versa.

Florida 2000 was the first time (as far as I know) that we saw Democrat operatives proclaiming that simple arithmetical counting of votes was insufficient to establish legitimacy. This is, I believe, at the root of much mischief since then. The view expressed by Gore’s operatives, over and over, was that “everybody knew” that the Florida voters INTENDED to elect Gore and that therefore any vote tally arrived at by simple counting which said otherwise was illegitimate. This is very close (and they’ve gotten closer since) to declaring themselves the embodiment of the General Will, with all that that implies.

LA replies:

Yes to both your points.

And I agree that the Dan Balz quote deserves to be famous. Just think: only three months left before voters were to vote in the first primary, and the nominee hadn’t been chosen yet! At the least it belongs in a book of quotations, perhaps on the front wall of a museum of managerial liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 16, 2008 11:06 PM | Send