My Clinton post of the week

O.k., so I wasn't going to write anything serious this week because I'm on vacation, but we did watch Hillary Clinton's victory speech last night, and I did happen to see the headline on the Boston Globe today that read "Clinton crushes Obama in WV Primary," and then I saw this:

Those who are responsible for putting Democrats in the broken place we are in right now with regard to Barack Obama had better own it to the end. Leave those bumper stickers on and wear those campaign pins until the bitter end folks because YOU OWN IT. And people are going to want to know whose to blame.

And as for the superdelegates, just an FYI, we have the list with your names, you will be held accountable on Election Day and beyond, too. This time around, everybody's going to be looking for accountability.

What's even more astonishing is that this post was on HuffingtonPost, of all places! (Well, the incorrect grammar should have been a tipoff, I suppose.) The article, "You Broke It, You Own It, Obama Style" is by Kristen Breitweiser. She continues:

Flash forward to Election Day 08. Can you imagine the backpedaling going on when it comes to explaining how Barack Obama -- the Democratic nominee by math not by sensibility -- loses key states? What will those pundits say?
...

In August when the Republican attack ads unroll with a screaming, ranting, raving, railing, and dancing like a chicken lunatic Reverend Wright juxtaposed with an angry Obama with an outstretched pointing finger overlayed by Obama's voice saying that he can't disown Wright anymore than he can disown his grandmother, will the superdelegates feel good and justified about their decision to try and kick Hillary out of the race before she won a state like West Virginia or Kentucky? Will those same superdelegates apologize for their bad judgment in thinking a candidate who lost 40% of the Democratic vote in a state primary -- a mere 5 months before Election Day -- should even still qualify to be the best candidate in a general election?
...

To me, it's the difference between buying cereal for the picture on the box rather than the ingredients on the nutritional label. Clinton supporters want to know what they are eating for breakfast--they don't get swayed by the fancy packaging that often hides the sugar and artificial additives hiding inside. They check the label. They read the ingredients.

The fact that Clinton won by such a landslide last night is important. I don't know what the Democratic powerful should do. But I do know that if they try to pretend that once Clinton drops her campaign, Obama will win the presidency, they are wrong. They (and we) need Hillary Clinton. So instead of insisting she drop out, let's figure out a win-win solution. For the country.

Obama's delegates: California dreamin'

If you think this election season has been out of control, you ain't seen nothing yet! Are you ready for today's civics lesson? Good! Today we'll examine California's system of electing delegates to attend the Democratic Convention this summer. You probably thought California voters already did that, right? No, silly, it has to be much more complicated than that, because if you really understood how our election process worked, you'd be storming the Bastille! From The RawStory:

Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate — 134 for Clinton and 107 for Obama, for a total of 241. More than 2,000 candidates are running statewide.

So in the California primary, voters gave Clinton 134 seats at the convention, and Obama 107. Who will be sitting in those seats will be decided in yet another vote this Sunday. And here's where the fun begins. Yesterday, it turned out that the Obama camp had purged almost a thousand names from the list of potential delegates. And most of those names were "progressives," the kind of people who work for causes and issues rather than for candidates. The kind of people who could potentially be swayed on the convention floor.

Earlier this week, Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign took advantage of party rules to purge scores of potential delegates in a bid to ensure that only their loyalists travel to the August convention in Denver where the party will anoint a presidential nominee.

Most of the cuts, about 900 names, were dropped by Obama, leading supporters to complain that they had been unfairly excluded. Clinton's campaign dropped about 50 names from its list of prospective delegates.

There was much unhappiness in the land of Obama! Supporters blogged with stories like Obama Slashes and Burns Through the Delegate List, and even the Obama lovin' Huffington Post ran this story: Obama's "Big Tent" Campaign Cuts Out the Little People in California.

That's pretty bad when Huffington Post gets on the bandwagon. But Obama's team has seemingly realized how dangerous it just might be to piss off the hardworking campaign staffers in the field, and so we have this:

Obama reinstates Callif. delegates

Facing a backlash from supporters, Barack Obama's presidential campaign reversed course Thursday and reinstated hundreds of people to lists that will be used to choose California's delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said in a letter to potential delegates that all names would be restored to ballots that will be used Sunday to elect the delegates, overturning the earlier decision. The letter did not refer to the complaints.

Driven by fears that some prospective delegates might be concealing their true allegiances, the campaigns searched campaign finance data, scoured the Internet and made telephone calls to weed out people they believed to be dubious candidates.

Excuse me, but my Cynic-o-meter just short-circuited. The candidate of change looks like he's bringing old-style Chicago politics to the national stage ....