 If Clinton Loses, We'll See Her In Court By JOHN HERBERT From Where I Sit Published: Apr 25, 2008
Hillary Clinton survived the Pennsylvania primary big-time to fight another day, and another day, and so on. If she winds up losing at the ballot box, though, we'll surely see her in court.
Still, the question on everybody's mind is “Why can't she put it (the Democratic nomination) away?
The answer is in the numbers. Nationwide, a majority of polled Democratic voters have a basic mistrust issue with Clinton. “Mistrust” is Clintonese for “experience.” It goes way back, before the First Lady years, to her days “misplacing” documents as an Alabama lawyer and Wal-Mart board member.
The question on my mind is, rather, “Why can't Obama put it away?” After all, he maintains a healthy delegate lead. That question might be easier to answer — with other questions.
Obama suffers from real or imagined patriotism and elitism issues. Why doesn't the candidate wear a lapel pin of the American flag like just about every other Democratic or Republican politician worth his salt? And, when did he last recite the Pledge of Allegiance?
What's with his long relationship with a documented anti-American pastor? The pastor's filmed political tirades have certainly cost Obama blue-collar votes. He also made some ill-advised assessments of how the American “working class” prefers to handle its problems. “With God and guns,” he's alleged to have charged.
The poor guy doesn't even have his name going for him. How can a red-blooded American patriot ever vote for someone who's middle name is “Hussein?” And Obama certainly can't help it that his surname reminds voters of America's public enemy No. 1?
Actually, Clinton is about as “elitist” as you can get. Remember how she dispatched the all-American housewife 15 years ago? “Stay home and bake cookies,” she famously snarled.
The Obamas may be products of so-called “elitist” colleges like Harvard and Princeton, but Hillary's once-stuffy alma mater, Wellesley, isn't far behind in that category. Producing the kind of girls you could proudly show off to your mother 50 years ago, ivy-clad Wellesley is now actually more likely to be featured in a “Girls Gone Wild” video.
Obama also gives number-crunching pollsters nightmares. Many white liberals will pledge to pollsters that race will not be a factor in their decision-making. But, in the secrecy of the voting booth, those very same white liberals turn around and instinctively vote for Clinton.
Like it or not, racism is part and parcel of this primary election. TV's cable news talking heads quoted pollsters who could confirm more or less what I suspected.
The assumption among leading political pundits is that the remaining primaries will not produce a clear winner in the Clinton vs. Obama sweepstakes. Barring the unlikely, that Clinton will run out of cash, we're going to witness a dead heat.
Clinton will claim the Florida and Michigan votes as her own, wielding as motives that the results were overwhelming and the turnouts were record-breaking. Her backers have conveniently ignored that a simultaneous referendum on property taxes, Amendment 1, most likely pushed Florida voter participation into the stratosphere.
Long before the Florida primary, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) set the rules that would bar our delegation from being seated at the nominating convention in Denver. The DNC will have to live with that decision; it can't go and change the rules in the middle of the game.
Clinton's camp, of course, has a different opinion. That's why you'll no doubt see her in court this summer. If the judges have any smarts, they won't even touch what's a DNC issue and not a constitutional matter.
A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.
| |
