| When I talk to my classes about the manner in which we choose our President, I always point out that we do not have a single national election, but rather we have multiple statewide elections simultaneously. The results of those elections are used to selected "electors" who cast their votes in the electoral college. However, this being America, there is always the opportunity for a delegate in the electoral college to buck the system and cast their vote for someone other than the candidate to whom they are pledged - a phenomenon known as a "unfaithful delegate".
The party nomination process can be viewed as a variation of a theme. Although each party determines the nomination process and delegate count independently, it comes down to statewide contests picking delegates who cast their votes based on the results. And now we have a variation of the unfaithful delegate in the personage of Caren Z. Turner.
Turner began the campaign season as a member of "The Group" - which is, if I may say so - a name that simply reeks of a sense of entitlement. "The Group" rushed to clear the field for Hillary Clinton, believing that all she lacked was a corronation process for her ascension to the throne. Having been spanked by the reality of the electoral process, Turner is now publiicly considering switching to supporting John McCain.
It's her right to do so. She is the one who has to live with her conscience and that, ultimately, is supposed to be what guides our vote choice. I have to say, however, that her justiications for doing so are quite thin, and some of them are outright based on falsehoods. More after the jump. |
For example: The people involved in Together4Us have a general dis-comfort with the way the Democratic process and the Democratic caucus system went down, with the Florida, Michigan representation, with apportionment, generally.
Funny, but until Hillary Clinton began losing in caucus state after caucus state, there were no Democratic voices calling for a change at all. As far as "the Florida, Michigan representation" is concerned - well, just this Sunday Barack Obama called for those states to have their delegations seated. With full voting rights.
Uh-oh. Obama is "flip-flopping". Maybe the interview published in The Record occurred prior to Sunday. Maybe. But Charlie Stile doesn't normally sit on a story.
This is another example of a less-qualified male getting a promotion over a more qualified female. I have been in Washington and doing federal legislation longer than Senator Obama has. That's not very comforting. Frankly, from a war perspective and a national security perspective, I don't feel safe with him.... I'm not comfortable with the people who he has chosen to affiliate with - the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, et cetera.
"A less-qualified male"...? Wow. Well, I suppose if we are going to actually toss out the democratic process in picking someone, then we would go with Joe Biden, who has been in Washington even longer than Hillary Clinton. Or maybe we should prop up Senator Byrd.
Talk about denigrating someone's service! If she was worried about someone "from a war perspective and a national security prespective" then why was she backing Senator Clinton in the primary, who has next to no experience in those fields? Clinton never served in the military. Her only military expertise has come from serving in the Armed Forces Committee in the Senate - but Joe Biden served even longer on the Foreign Relations Committee and so did Chris Dodd. So why go with a less qualified female candidate?
[Obama's] positions seem to shift.... He has shifted on campaign finance and he has shifted on FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] ... and he has shifted on a whole bunch of things, so I don't know where he is.
I'm not going to defend Obama's votes on individual issues. I'll simply say that no one candidate can possibly vote the way millions of voters want them to. Any candidate has to vote against some of their supporters once in a while, and if Turner can't admit this about Clinton, then she's simply being dishonest. The truth is that they have remarkably similar voting records.
But, to be fair, not all votes are equal, and the two Senators voted different ways on FISA.
However, if you'll remember only four years ago, when Republicans were charging that John Kerry was a "flip-flopper", Democrats were saying that it was a good thing for a politician to not be battered into a corner where they couldn't allow their positions to evolve. We've had almost eight years now of a President who just doesn't change his mind, no matter how wrong he is shown to be. Frankly, I don't want to see any more of that.
I would say that all Democrats are not created equally and all Republicans are not created equally
This is true. But this very year, John McCain has voiced his opposition to Roe v. Wade (a flip-flop, if anyone is interested) and has promised to appoint conservative judges that will roll back affirmative action and attack abortion rights.
John McCain is about as centrist a Republican as one can find. Hillary Clinton was the most centrist contender for the presidency.
Not according to Progressive Punch. When ordered by lifetime scores, John McCain ranks as the 60th most Progressive Senator currently serving - behind Republicans Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Richard Shelby (Alabama), George Voinovich (Ohio), Gordon Smith (Oregon), Norm Coleman (Minnesota), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). McCain's lifetime score is 13.86. Senator Ted Stevens' lifetime score is 13.66.
Moderate? Centrist? Not John McCain.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's lifetime score of 90.87 ranks her as the 20th most Progressive member of the Senate. Barack Obama's lifetime score of 87.10 ranks him as the 27th most Progressive member of the Senate. Hillary Clinton actually ranks higher on that scale than does Russ Feingold. Twenty three Democratic Senators - and Joe Lieberman - rank between Obama and the closest Republican Senator.
If you look at the range of 0 and 100 being the limits on extremism, then Hillary Clinton is actually the most extreme of the three - she is only ten points off of the limit while McCain and Obama are each 13 points off. I wouldn't say any of them are "centrist", but Hillary Clinton can't be considered "more centrist" any more than John McCain can be called "Progressive".
The ratings also give the lie to any claim of ideological drivers as being the reason one would defect from Clinton to McCain. There is a vast difference.
This doesn't have to do with Hillary Clinton. This has to do with fixing the Democratic Party, which is not functioning properly...That has nothing to do with Hillary. It has to do with infrastructure that is broken. There is infrastructure in the DNC that is broken.
Sure, things are broken. But you don't fix it a "my way or the highway" approach. And, if we are going to be 100% honest here, Hillary Clinton has had a very large say in how things are governed in the Democratic Party for the last sixteen years - she is a member and guiding force in the DLC, after all.
The problem with trying to find Turner believable when she says it isn't about Hillary Clinton is that, as a member of Together4Us, it obviously is. From HRC's visage in the header to the entire list of demands, it is nothing but a device to insert Hillary Clinton into Barack Obama's campaign.
One last point: No one is entitled to be either President or Vice-President, regardless of the achievements. Coming in second does not give you an automatic claim to the second-in-command position. Yes, John Kerry picked John Edwards in 2004, but Al Gore did not pick Bill Bradley in 2000. Bill Clinton did not give his Veep slot to either Paul Tsongas or Jerry Brown in 1992 - the next two top vote-getters (in fact, Al Gore got only a single delegate vote for President). Carter did not offer the position to Brown, Wallace, or Udall. In 1972, McGovern did not unite the party with Humphrey (who actually got more popular votes).
So there is no "tradition" of the first also-ran becoming the VP candidate. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.
I believe that everyone should support whoever they want for whatever reason they want. That is the heart of the democratic principle. But I'd have more respect for people like Turner if they just said that they want Hillary Clinton because she's a woman and they want a woman on the ballot. It would be more honest and they wouldn't end up looking stupid when all the paper-thin reasons they give are exposed for what they are.
Together4us isn't interested in uniting the Democratic Party. They are in it for "us", as their name indicates. They should just drop the false premise and deal with it. They gambled and lost. Move on.
In the interest of full-disclosure, I do not support HRC's placement on the ballot for any reason. I believe she undermines Obama's position as an agent of change and that she will turn out twice as many people to vote against her as for her. I do like her individually and hope that she gets a position in the new Democratic Administration. |
