Via Oliver Willis, I found this post on Salon.com. I recommend going to Oliver’s site for the commentary, but you don’t want to miss the title of the pro-Hillary piece in Salon. It’s classic Hillary-think:
Why Hillary Clinton should be winning
You see, while Hillary is not actually winning, she really should be. But reality is well-known for having a pro-Obama bias.
And the subhead reads: Under a winner-take-all primary system, Hillary Clinton would have a wide lead over Barack Obama — and enough delegates to clinch the nomination by June.
As Oliver points out, “If Senator Clinton wished to run for the nomination of a party with a winner-take-all nomination process, she would be well within her legal rights to do so – she simply needed to have changed her party affiliation to Republican.”
Well, yeah. And actually, Demetrius told me a while back that he saw Paul Begala on some cable news show saying the Democrats should have a winner-take-all system like the Republicans, because it has “built-in momentum” or some such.
Wouldn’t that be rather, well, “undemocratic”? Especially coming from someone associated with Hillary, who is currently presenting herself as would-be champion of the downtodden, disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan.
I also saw this earlier today, via Pho’s Akron Pages. Part of the plea Hillary is currently sending out to her mailing list
With 14 days to go until the people of Pennsylvania vote, the Obama campaign has decided to go all-out. They’re trying to end the race for the White House with an unyielding media blitz. Right now, we’re being outspent 4-1 on Pennsylvania television.
So now, here’s what we have to ask ourselves: Have we come this far in our history-making contest for the Democratic nomination only to see the race decided not by the quality of our ideas but by the size of our opponent’s media budget?
Maybe I’m misremembering this, but isn’t that how Hillary was planning to win the nomination? By crushing any and all challengers under the weight of her mighty campaign war chest?
But, I do understand. What it comes down to is that Hillary Clinton really really wants to be president. She wants it so much that she seems unable to even consider the possibility that it won’t happen.
I am reminded of a moms’ group I attended when Son and Daughter in Ohio were much younger. One of the other mothers was asking how to respond to her little one’s meltdown over being denied something s/he desperately wanted. Like maybe the child wanted a pony, but couldn’t have one. The group leader suggested saying something like, “You wish you could have a pony.” When I first heard that suggestion, I couldn’t help laughing, because it sounded like sarcasm to me. “You wish!” But I learned to say it in a way that didn’t feel that way to me. “You really wish you could have…” It was kind of Rogerian, actually. A way of acknowledging kids’ feelings and making sure they know they’ve been heard…even if the answer is still “no”.
I’m glad I had some good role models to teach me the importance of showing empathy toward toddlers and preschoolers. The “you can’t always get what you want” lesson is a tough one for little kids, and they deserve our compassion as they are learning it.
But when we’re talking about 60 year old senators, my patience and compassion wear a bit thin…
Here’s your pony, Hillary.
Now get out of the damn race!
“If she splits the 10 remaining contests with Obama, as seems plausible”
Uhhhh. yeahhhh, dream on!
Ponies indeed.
Well, a split doesn’t have to be 50-50. Like in bowling, for example.
Or maybe that alternate meaning of the word muddies the matter. I’m still amused, though, by the big deal that was made of Obama’s poor bowling performance. Better to suck at bowling than at some other things.
But I’m sure “splitting” the remaining state means Hillary wins even one of them.
It probably depends on the meaning of the word “is”…
and Nevada, in the end, so the math doesn’t work. (Only MSM hasn’t changed their charts yet.)
If all states had closed primaries, and it was a real hassle to change party affiliations (like in Pennsylvania) she’d have taken the first part of Texas and done much better in Ohio.
And if Kos hadn’t encouraged a few Dems to vote for Romney in Michigan, it would be about 50/50 Clinton vs. uncommitted, and it would be easier to resolve that state’s issues.
And if I had just won the lottery last week, I could spend all day on blogs and forget work.
The lottery system is patently unfair. It requires that I remember to buy a ticket. Like, ever. I’m too busy for that.
But that clearly indicates that I really need to win the lottery.
I might even deserve to win the lottery, if I could fully immerse myself in HillaryThink. But I can’t quite get my head there just yet.
Take it a step further. Any mathematician will tell you that in practical terms, you have pretty much the same chance of winning the lottery whether you buy a ticket or not. So since you really need to win the lottery, and really deserve to win the lottery, you obviously are going to win the lottery, even though you haven’t bought a ticket.
So go out there and spend that money! And buy me a pony while you’re at it. But not the one up top, please. There’s no way a guy my age and weight could ride one of those. Seriously.
Apparently, even at her rather mature age, Hillary still hasn’t learned the toddlers’ lesson. She can’t always get what she wants no matter how hard she stamps her feet. Even if she holds her breath.
Don’t make me stop this car!
She doesn’t throw a tantrum. She can’t even scowl for more than 10 seconds without breaking into a self-conscious giggle (when I scowl back).
So, when told she can’t have something, instead she comes up with a new rationale why she deserves or wants it. Respectfully, we then discuss the situation some more. Those conversations usually end when she finally can’t come up with any other creative reasons to support her case.
It’s a game of attrition…kinda like the primaries. And my daughter is no more successful than Hillary in her attempts to reframe her case!
The interesting question might be: If the Republicans used the proportional delegate system like the Democrats do, would Mitt Romney and/or Mike Huckabee have been able to get enough delegates to still be in the race?
Any of the Democratic candidates other than Hillary, if they’d been able to generate the same delegate counts as she has, would have looked at The Math and graciously withdrawn by now. All the other candidates, even Obama, understood from the start that there was always the possibility that they wouldn’t be the nominee at the end. I don’t get the impression that Hillary ever doubted she’d win — ever. Because she wanted it so very badly, and isn’t that what winning is really all about?
Sorry, Hillary. Wanting it isn’t enough. Sometimes democracy is about what a majority of other people want. And we in the Democratic party LIKE our proportional-vote delegate system. (Some of us wish the electoral college worked that way too….)
And she needs her pony…