(TPJ 187)
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – 04.09.2008
Day-by-day the pressure builds on the Clintons to quit the
race for the Democratic Party nomination for President. It does become
more obvious everyday that it is the Clintons who are running, not just
Hillary. Sort of like McCain is running for the third GW Bush term as
some observers characterize it. It may be that by the time you read this,
they will have caved in to that pressure. But I very much doubt it.
For despite the fact that Hillary has virtually no chance of winning the
nomination, the operative word here is “virtually.”
As is widely known, she still has a chance, small as it might
be, if: a) she can get the rules, under which the Florida and Michigan
delegations would not be seated at the convention as they now stand, changed;
and/or b) she can reverse the growing tide of super-delegates who are declaring
for Sen. Obama; and/or c) some irrefutable and totally crippling information
about Sen. Obama comes out (you know, at the level of the possibility that the
charges being leveled, off-the-main-screen so far, against a certain
Presidential candidate that when he was held prisoner in a certain country his
nick-name was “songbird”) although if the Clintons had it you can be sure that
it would be out by now; and/or d) she can persuade elected, committed Obama
delegates to change their votes to her, at the Convention; and /or e) she can
persuade the Democratic Party that its nominee should be chosen not in the
usual way, through state-by-state primaries choosing committed delegates, plus
the votes of the super-delegates, but rather through some “special” primary
among so far un-committed super-delegates, or by the total of the popular votes
in all of the Democratic primaries. This latter approach would of course
in some states include the votes of anyone who wanted to vote in that primary,
including Republicans mobilized by Rush Limbaugh’s self-styled “Operation
Chaos” to vote for Hillary because he and every other Republican operative
knows that McCain would have a much easier time beating her Obama (an item
which recent polls have confirmed as the view of those polled, of both parties).
And so this column is about why she keeps
running. Right now it looks to me as if Hillary, the way she is playing
it (racism, personal attacks on Obama and/or surrogates, “oh poor me,” “kill
the messenger,” and etc.), would rather get the nomination through the
variety of machinations listed above and lose the general election (which she
almost surely would), than have Obama get the nomination with a very good
chance of winning the general election. I am not the only observer who thinks
that given the turnouts in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in the Red
states where he has won, he has something of a chance of winning a few of
them in the general election as well, which happening would almost assure him
of victory. But why would Clinton actually want Obama to lose, should he
indeed get the nomination? Stay tuned until the end of this column.
Listen first to what a few other folk are saying about the
Clintons’ politics and what is happening at this time. PM Carpenter, a
daily columnist for BuzzFlash, recently said
(http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/016):
“Hillary reminded us that the war has produced exactly what
progressives predicted in 2002 that it would produce. Mrs. Clinton was a
knowing voice in the institutional body that handed Mr. Bush a blank check to
prosecute this militarily and economically sapping, security-damaging,
life-taking and human-disfiguring war, nevertheless she knowingly sided with
the neocons -- and all for the Scoop Jackson-, Joe Lieberman- and Ronald Reagan-Democrat
vote” (otherwise known as the prime vote and policy targets of the Democratic
Leadership Council).
Brent Budowsky, himself a Center-Right Democrat, had this
to say : “My personal opinion is that Hillary would rather elect a one-term
Republican of advanced age than a two-term young Democratic leader as
president. Of course, the corollary of the Hillary scheme is that a President
McCain would give America the most anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-environment
Supreme Court in history. But that is not Hillary’s concern in her campaign of
personal attack and destruction.”
Andy Borowitz (for the uninitiated one of the best political
humorists currently writing) weighed in with this comment (“Breaking
News,” Borowitz Report, March 30, 2008): “Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton stunned voters at a town hall meeting in Erie, Pennsylvania
today by telling them that she was prepared to stay in the nomination fight for
an additional century. ‘How much longer will I stay in the race?’ she responded
to a voter’s question. ‘Fifty years? How about one hundred years?’ When asked
to clarify, Sen. Clinton replied, ‘I’ll stay in this race for a thousand years.
A million years. A billion years.’ Sen. Clinton added that she was refusing to
announce an exit strategy from the race because ‘that would send the wrong
message to the enemy.’ The New York senator’s comments echoed a strategy
outlined in a recently leaked internal campaign memo, which calls for her to
remain in the race long after the Democratic National Convention, even if Sen.
Barack Obama (D-Ill) becomes the party’s official nominee.” Well, if Mark
Karlin, Editor-Publisher of BuzzFlash, and I are right, and Hillary is actually
angling for the Vice-Presidential nomination on the McCain ticket (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/105),
Borowitz could prove to have been a visionary.
But enough kidding around. What is really going on
here? Let’s consider the possible explanations for just why it is that
she is hanging on in the campaign.
1.
She and her advisors really think that she can still win the
nomination. However, they can count as well as anyone. So
unless they have some bombshell to throw at Obama, much more explosive than the
Rev. Wright (and as noted above, if they had one, one can presume that they
would already have thrown it), that cannot explain it.
2.
Her ambition and ego-mania and those of her husband are so over-weaning that
neither of them can keep them under control. So it is ambition and ego
that just keeps pushing them along, come what may. Possibly, but both of
these people have through almost the whole of their public lives shown what
control-freaks they are (and yes, Monica is the exception to that rule).
Another unlikely explanation.
3.
She is positioning herself to run in 2012, should Obama lose. Given the
extent to which she has antagonized the Party leadership as well as major
elements of the rank-and-file, and she knows that that antagonism is becoming
more extensive every day, this too is an unlikely explanation.
4.
A variation of 3, she knows that Obama will get the nomination and she wants him to lose so that she can get it in 2012. This one, on its own, is
as unlikely as 3, for the same reason.
Which brings me to my guess, which is a variation of 4. She knows that Obama will
get the nomination and she wants him to lose alright, but for a much larger
reason than giving her a chance at the nomination in 2012, which chance would
be a rather thin one. That larger reason? To maintain the control
of the Democratic Party by the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, which
has effectively run the Democratic Party since the Carter Presidency (Jonas,
S.: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/016;
The Political Junkies, Oct. 20, Nov. 10, 2005, June 1, 8, 2006).
Way beyond the top Clinton donors who recently threatened the
Democratic Party with harm if their candidate was not chosen (http://pol.moveon.org/democracy/o.pl?id=12391-1881637-c1cmTC&t=273),
the DLC represents major corporate interests in the United States. These interests include that thought
that four of the major “accomplishments” of the WJ Clinton Presidency, NAFTA,
the WTO expansion, the “end of welfare,” and the proclamation by him in a State
of the Union message towards the end of his first term that the “the era
of big government is over,” were just wonderful ideas. If Obama wins the
Presidency, the leadership of the Democratic Party will move into the hands of
a different group. Hardly totally anti-corporate, but much more
forward-looking in terms of the Constitution, the War, global warming, and etc.
The DLC will be politically dead if that happens. The Democratic Party
will return, in contemporary terms, to its Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy/Johnson
(before Vietnam) roots. The Clintons are fighting hard to prevent this
from happening. Their sabotage-in-advance of the Obama campaign is not
accidental. And if in the end they fail to prevent him from becoming
President? Their next move will likely be to attempt to split the Party,
just as the pro-slavery reactionaries split the Whig Party in the 1850s.
In summary, as I said in a note on this subject that I sent
to Mark Karlin, Editor-Publisher of BuzzFlash (who is now writing frequently on
this subject) concerning the Clintons’ recent outrageous statements vis-a-vis
McCain: “Clinton knows that she cannot win the Democratic nomination, unless
she manages to break a variety of Party rules. If she were to be able to do
that, she would, of course continue the tradition of flouting of the rule of
law followed by every occupant of the Oval Office since Reagan whose
"distinguished" ranks she wishes to join. (Bill Clinton
too? See the Bosnia intervention.) Given her recent statements
about McCain's great foreign policy leadership abilities (apparently those
honed in his five years as a POW in Vietnam, for he has had none since), she
may be well on her way to “pulling a Lieberman.” He, who recently
“blasted the Democratic Party as protectionist, isolationist, and
hyperpartisan” (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/31/).
Stranger things have happened in American politics: see the
Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.
Note:
This column is based in part on: “Dr. J.'s Commentary: Why Does Hillary Run?”
which appeared on BuzzFlash on 04/02/2008 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/108).