Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Two Faces of Hillary Clinton

Yesterday morning, I woke up to NPR. My husband and I have found that it is easier to enter coherency when we reach consciousness already aggravated.

Surprisingly, they were not showing Hillary Clinton in the best of light.

The Democratic National Commitee had punished Florida and Michigan for bumping up their primary elections by making it so that the elections were null, and their delegates wouldn't count at their national convention (basically disenfranchising two highly populated states...two states full of minority voters). NPR played a tape of Hillary Clinton saying that these states weren't a big deal, because it will be clear who the frontrunner will be. She didn't bother to remove her name from the ballots of these two states because it wasn't worth the effort (and of course, still winning in those states would be good publicity).

Guess what? It is close. Obama and Clinton are neck and neck, and it even looks like Obama might take the nomination, if things go as they are. So Hillary has taken a reverse turn on these two states. She needs the delegates, and now she is concerned about their disenfranchisement.

The DNC is in a hubbub about what to do. It wouldn't be fair just to hand the delegates over to Clinton, because in Florida, she was the only candidate with her name on the ballot. The other candidates complied with the DNC's request. Redoing the elections probably wouldn't happen either. It is quite possible, that if it isn't adequately settled within the DNC, that this could go to the Supreme Court, though no one is saying that....yet.
This reverse stance happened recently as well, though we heard less about it. In Nevada, there was a big push by Democratic state leadership across the board to have caucus locations where everyone could vote (with the tourism industry being 24 hour in Las Vegas and Reno, a significant number of voters would be working while the caucus was taking place.

However, when Culinary Union Local 229 came out in favor of Obama, something significant happened. This union chapter is, I believe, the largest union chapter in the United States, and almost all of those who work in the food industry in the Las Vegas casinos belong to it. But all of a sudden, the Clinton campaign was very opposed to the idea of putting caucus sites in the casinos, where these people could vote, and effectively blocked that from happening.

It is clear that Clinton only cares about the rights of citizens when it effects her outcome, and she also doesn't care about reversing a position that she is on record to holding.

Is it just me, or is anyone else having a deja vu moment to the last time the Clintons were in office?

3 comments:

Anna said...

"...when we reach consciousness already aggravated."
My children are quite good at helping us with this.
The DNC's decision seems to have been not well though out. There's no good outcome to this, at all. Consideration of that fact may have persuaded them to keep Florida and Michigan in the race.
Anyway, is it possible that there wouldn't be any Dem candidate in November at all? And, what are the outcomes of THAT?!

RPW said...

Yeah, my children used to be as well...but now they are in their own rooms and sleep in more than they used to, so now I need NPR!

I agree that the DNC's decision was not well-thought out. In fact, I am surprised that Michigan and Florida didn't end up taking them to court over it.

Thursday's Child said...

You might enjoy the cartoon on my blog today. ;)