You can slice it. You can dice it. You can look at it upside-down and sideways. But you cannot spin it away. With last night’s victories in the Potomac Primary by 23, 29, and 51 points (in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., respectively), Barack Obama has secured the overall primary lead by every measure: pledged (elected) delegates; all delegates including the "supers"; popular vote; money raised; states won. What’s more, according MSM mainstay Howard Fineman, a pledged-delegate win for Hillary Clinton no longer a realistic possibility.
Indeed, Fineman reported last night on MSNBC that Hillary Clinton’s strategy has now boiled down to trying to overturn the will of the people through a superdelegate putsch. In other words: Her only path to victory would be to destroy the Democratic Party.
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According to Fineman, Hillaryland now has given up the notion that they can win the pledged delegates — those delegates elected through the process where the American people get to vote. As of today, their loathsome new plan is to stay close enough in the pledged delegates so that they can strong-arm the superdelegates into overturning the will of the voters – you and me alike.
Josh Marshall sums it up thusly...
Both sides agree that it's highly unlikely that Clinton can end up with more pledged delegates than Barack Obama. And the issue now is how close she can keep the margin.
If she can keep it within a couple dozen delegates, he argued, it would be credible to try to make up the margin with super delegates.
Fineman says it all here...
If Clinton were to succeed in overthrowing the democratic process, and taking the nomination through an insider coup, what would happen to the Democratic Party? What would the effect be on the hundreds of thousands of voters who have braved long lines and bad weather to make their voices heard?
Remember, we’re talking about the same Democrats who watched George Bush steal the presidency from their nominee Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote in Florida and the U.S. a mere eight years ago. That election was instead thrown to Bush by an elite group of insiders known as the Supreme Court — perhaps the ultimate superdelegates.
Now Hillary Clinton is openly embracing this strategy of nullifying the will of voters. I find it hard to believe that, if successful, her tactic would result in anything but the victory of John McCain and the shattering of the Democratic Party as we know it.
In fact, this utter, open contempt for the will of the American people and the voters of the Democratic Party makes George Bush’s 2000 shenanigans in Florida look downright Jeffersonian.
Yes, it seems that for Hillary Clinton, personal ambition trumps everything. I believe her ambition to be president lead her to vote to authorize the war in Iraq. It has lead her to embrace a divisive, race-based Rovian strategy to win the Democratic primary process. And now, with that effort in ruins, her ambition has driven her to seek the annihilation of the party she purportedly seeks to lead.
For her supporters and political allies, now is the time to ask yourself: Is Hillary’s political advancement really worth it?