Yesterday the New York Time's Adam Nagourney rolled out an alarmingly objective analysis of the delegate-primary-caucus-superdelegate-state-count-popular-vote race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I say "alarmingly" objective because journalism -- even first-rate journalism, which this was -- in the guise of a legal brief can easily smother the outrage -- which this did.
His analysis essentially took every concept of fundamental fairness that we've been taught since kindergarten and sequestered them from public consideration. For this, so goes the excuse, is hardball politics, folks. And although one of its possibly winning practitioners would soon claim to represent the redawning of authentic American "values" after eight years of everything but, a sense of fair play isn't among them. Neither is an adherence to plain, authentic democracy.
Instead, we're witnessing Bush-style hardball politics, where it's the insiders who count, the secret deal that rules, the arrogance of raw power that dominates.
The closest that Mr. Nagourney's piece came to unleashing the proper outrage that yearns to escape was this line: "With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers ... made it clear [to him] that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count."
What is chief among those "incendiary steps"? Screw democracy. Simple as that.
"Mr. Obama’s campaign began making a case in earnest on Wednesday that if he maintained his edge in delegates ... he would have the strongest claim to the backing of the 796 elected Democrats and party leaders known as superdelegates." Yes, that would seem to follow in any democratic process, would it not?
Well, not according to the Bush-style Clinton camp. It says, with some contemporary polling validation at hand, that it could still score victories in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. Yet it also "acknowledged that it would be difficult for her to catch up in the race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning" those states by anything less than inconceivably staggering margins.
The situation is conceptually akin to a football team that's down 14 points in the fourth with 10 seconds to go. It has the ball, and though it may indeed acquire another seven points in those remaining seconds, it would still lose if it did not, in fact, outscore the other team. Right?
Not in the Clintonian mind. It need merely appeal to the referees that it had gotten close enough. And hell, it usually wins these things, and is more likely, it further argues, to go on to win in the big game -- if only the refs will cut it some slack in this one.
"We don’t think our lead will drop below 100 delegates," revealed Obama’s campaign manager to Nagourney. "The math is the math."
Yes, and logic is logic. And one would think that the inviolable, agreed-upon logic of the Democratic Party would be that democracy rules. Fifty-two beats 48, as 51 beats 49, and no matter how you slice it, even 50.1 still beats 49.9. End of game.
Except when the special pleading to the refs comes in. "Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they were looking to bring the margin down significantly below 100 in hope of arguing that the result was too close for delegates to consider in deciding how to vote." That non sequitur speaks for itself.
Even better was that the same advisers said they would "argue to superdelegates that they should give less deference to a lead from Mr. Obama because much of that had been built up in states where there were caucuses." One assumes these advisers knew the caucus-primary breakdown when they got into the game, but along with canceling the application of basic American fairness, they're also swinishly chucking the rather prudent, all-American Boy Scout maxim: "Be prepared."
In addition to these "incendiary steps" is another -- one that would blow any hope of party unity into the disingenuous James Frey's million little pieces. The Clinton camp "is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules."
Disputed? What an odd characterization, since they're not. And their participation at this late stage would merely represent our losing football team's introduction of a couple ringers. Whether or not the delegations are ultimately seated, or whether or not some sort of rules-violating do-over in these states takes place, no one knows. But the greater outrage is that the Clinton camp would even demand such an after-the-fact rules change.
At the bottom of all these outrages, however, is something even more fundamentally outrageous -- a realization that transcends mere sorrow over the devious infighting, the insider maneuvering, the undemocratic debauchery of it all. And that inexorable conclusion is this: If the Clinton camp is willing to play the nomination game in this, the most squalid of ways, then it unquestionably would be willing to govern in the selfsame manner.
And eight years of raw-power arrogance is enough. On that, I think we can all agree.