I note the stunned reactions of those who watched Senator Clinton's stunning speech last night, and I'm not at all stunned.
Not by the depth and breadth of Hillary Clinton's intelligence, competence, and magic; nor by the media's bewilderment at those qualities. She's never been given her due and we can all argue about the reasons why, but chief among them, in my book, is her gender.
But that's not the focus of this blog. Before the one candidate for president who could have truly pulled us back from the brink slips out of our grasp, I'd like, one last time, to remind everyone of the principal reason why she's not being nominated tonight.
The caucuses. And the mangling of them.
By their nature, they're unrepresentative but a smart tactician (or campaign) could game the system with knowledge, numbers and strategies set in place at each location. And that's exactly what Senator Clinton's opponent did. With the eager aid of the Fourth Estate, Senator Obama gloriously gamed the flawed system.
His campaign knew that those who could spend the rigorous hours of daylight at the caucuses could largely be targeted as the young, male, college-educated. Hmmm. Those aren't the segments of population that are likely to favor Senator Clinton...
So his campaign expounded on that fact and then pulled out the dirty deeds. They bussed people in to the caucuses. They locked others out. They bullied the Clinton delegates and told them to go to the wrong rooms. They ran out of ballots...too many standing for Clinton? Imagine that!
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to state...Clinton delegates were often intimidated and sent letters with reasons why they shouldn't attend. So lots didn't. But the Obama delegates did, so numbers out of counties that looked like this—13 for Obama, 12 for Clinton—became this at the state level—14 for Obama, 11 for Clinton.
Another funny thing happened on the way to national...out of Iowa, there were 15 Clinton delegates, 16 Obama delegates, and 14 Edwards delegates. When the counts went national, magically, Obama had 25, having been given 10 of Edwards, while Clinton lost one.
Finally, two interesting facts: Senator Obama won 13 of 14 caucuses. He lost 21 of 28 primaries. Fascinating thing that when people could step up to the voting machine and cast private, safe ballots...they chose Senator Clinton.
Senator Clinton, you are stunning. Your courage and determination are surpassed only by the strength and grace with which you've gifted us at the close. I'm not surprised, but I'm proud.
Live to fight another day.
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2 comments:
Your numbers re caucus wins vs primary wins surely offer pause for thought. I was flim flammed at my caucus...I was uncommitted as Kucinich was my first choice and he was not viable so I joined a group of 8 other uncommitteds on the first alignment.
I made a deal with them that if I could get the Edwards people to give me one of two potential delegate spots to the convention (they had 21 people and with those 9 would have gained another delegate spot) would they come over to Edwards. They agreed within a few moments and I turned around 180 degrees and two steps to the Edwards group, made my pitch to which they immediately agreed all of which took about 90 seconds and maybe even two minutes. Well, guess what, in that time an out of state BO volunteer came down out of the cordoned off area (only precinct members are allowed on the floor) and talked 3 of the uncommitteds into going for BO...which gave him one more delegate and negated Edwards getting an additional one.
Very aggressive...I was quite surprised at the speed and bold audacity displayed by the volunteer, not to mention ignoring the rules.
With your numbers in mind, it becomes clearer how clever these guys were in their strategy and how their drive to the nomination seems to have been predicated upon manipulation rather than outright vote count advantage.
Guess that's politics...
Doubt Nothing...Question Everything
The same sort of thing happened to me, paulrevere! I'd brought a good friend and longtime supporter of Senator Clinton's to the caucus; she was from my precinct. She is also a sweet, elderly woman and can be easily manipulated. As I looked around to count the Hillary clan I was heading up, I saw my friend--in the grouping of another precinct, IN CAMP OBAMA. I ran and got her, asking her why she was there and she pointed out one of the young Obama volunteers who'd told her to go there. And just before the delegate count was to be taken.
At the time I was perturbed and thought, 'how odd'. But no big deal.
My, was I wrong. It was just a tiny intimation of the biggest deal of all.
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