Apr 23 2008
My non-prediction about the Pennsylvannia Primary
Quite a lot of people are pressuring Senator Clinton to drop out from the race if she doesn’t win by double digits. Anything less than that and, according to the Democratic leadership and talking disembodied heads on the boobtube, means that Senator Clinton would have less justification to stay in the Primary. I’ve written before at length how in the sheer math of this election, unless something drastically changes in the rules, neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton can clench the nomination on superdelegates alone. The rest of the Democratic Primaries will decide that.
The constant irrational demand for her to drop out and preclude the voters from electing their own Democratic nominee strikes me as being singularly undemocratic and elitists. Last I checked, we have a Republic not an oligarchy of overlords. The way Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi insist on cutting short the primaries smacks of a master/ peasant relationship between them and the American people. The “do as you’re told” mentality among the Democratic leadership does not historically sit well with the American people no matter the political party. This is the same party that demanded Dennis Kucinich sign a “Loyalty Oath” in order to appear on the Texas ballot. This is obviously ludicrous and it flies in the face of 500 years of decency and culture on this American continent (this includes the colonial period); in fact, this leaves a particularly acrid smell of totalitarianism in my view. This high-handedness belongs somewhere else, not in America.
This hasn’t sat well with Americans throughout our history and it shouldn’t sit well with the Democrats today. If the Left entirely succeeds in taking over the Democratic Party and succeeds in elbowing out moderates like Zell Miller and Joe Liberman, I don’t see how the rest of America can countenance such extremism.
If the Democratic Party truly represents the interests of the people and not a party dedicated to fractionism and tribalism, then let the people they claim to represent vote.