The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting

I just watched about 8 hours worth of the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting - because I'm a masochist. There are many Hillary supporters who feel that Barack Obama is a weak candidate for the general election, to which I can only respond; Hillary Clinton is obviously a weaker candidate than Barack Obama, because she is losing to him. There's a sense that somehow, Barack Obama needs to do more than simply beat Hillary Clinton, as though Hillary Clinton were the default candidate - she's not. At this point, there is simply no way she could be the nominee. If she was made the nominee, it will have been through artificial means.

There was a 3 hour "break" in the meeting that was originally supposed to be a lunch break, but apparently ended up being a meeting amongst the committee members on how to finish the event - who would propose what motions that were going to be put to a vote. When they returned from the break, the first thing they did was put forth a motion on seating Florida's delegates at 100%. It was plainly obvious that a large group of Hillary supporters thought that they were announcing the motion had passed, because they flipped the fuck out with cheering and applause. They didn't realize that they were merely doing a sort of "theater" where they were putting the motion up for vote, knowing full well it would be voted down, before introducing a second motion to seat the Florida delegates at half a vote each, which passed unanimously. At that point the Hillary supporters had completely turned on the committee.

Those Hillary supporters are likely gone - done with Barack Obama, done with the Democractic Party. Why? Because Hillary and Harold Ickes and her inside supporters want to cause disruption. Because Hillary Clinton's campaign sucked and she lost what could have been a sure thing - the old "Casey at the Bat" story - classic hubris. Because they feel that even though they majorly flubbed the campaign, they're still entitled to the nomination. Damage has been done and it may yet haunt the Democratic Party in the general election.

However - if the Democratic Party were to somehow swoop in and hand the nomination to Hillary Clinton, the loss to the Democratic Party in the long run would be much greater. Barack Obama represents a new infrastructure for the entire party to win on for generations to come. The old DLC - that's Democratic Leadership Committee, an independent entity separate from the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee - their infrastructure only ever got Bill Clinton elected, and one must keep in mind, both times there was Ross Perot on the ballot. But down-ticket Democratic candidates suffered during their reign, and in the end, it led to total Republican domination of all three branches of government for a few years. There are those who say that the 2006 election year gains were inevitable for the Democratic Party, however I do believe that had the DNC chair been another DLC person, like Terry McAuliffe or Ed Rendell, both of whom are now Hillary supporters this election, they would not have competed in all 50 states like Howard Dean did - and therefore would not have made the extraordinary gains that the Democratic Party made under his leadership. The DLC style Democratic Party was a top down thing that conceded way too many congressional districts to the Republicans. Howard Dean and Barack Obama both represent a ground-up style of funding and organization and their successes in fundraising are unprecedented.

It is really unfortunate, seeing those Hillary supporters led out of the meeting by security screaming their heads off. They're completely ignorant of the issues before the committee, why Florida and Michigan were stripped of delegates, who voted to strip them (Harold Ickes for one, despite his rhetoric today), Hillary Clinton's support of those delegates being stripped, and how inappropriate it really was to even restore any of these delegates when voters in those states were told the election results would not count. Yet they have their opinions, and their assured self-righteousness - somehow if Hillary's not winning, well, someone screwing them. They are completely oblvious to the fact that they are pawns of a failed political campaign grasping at straws.

And, likely, in the general election this fall, they will not be voting. They'll be convinced that Barack Obama somehow stole the nomination from Hillary Clinton - never mind that Hillary Clinton was the one who had all the connections to party insiders and Barack Obama was the outsider. Hillary would practically have to hold a concession speech where she admitted to every dirty trick and tactic she pulled and told her most ardent supporters "I was playing you all like a fiddle during the primary - I wasn't really screwed out of this nomination, I was just acting like a dick so you'd fight harder on my behalf! Now I support Barack Obama and you should too, and I fully apologize for all the shit I pulled on him!" I guarantee her concession speech will have no such self-criticism and no such admission of the propagandist wordplay she used during her campaign - after all, she'll be thinking of 2012.

But even if Barack Obama loses this fall, come 2012 there will be another candidate supported by the grassroots, who will raise more money from small donors than the richest DLC donors could ever match - and Hillary Clinton will find herself losing by even bigger margins in that primary, because she is part of an old-style of Democratic politics that has been discredited and is on its way out. Howard Dean and Barack Obama have created the blueprint for the future of this party - the Clintons are the past. As time passes, those who support the Clintons will be fewer, while the next generation flocks to the next successor.

If the DNC were to give in to Hillary and her supporters and artificially hand her the nomination this year - all that will die for a generation. And she will lose the general election against John McCain as I predicted on this blog way back in February. The party will be completely discredited as an organization able of governing, and she will be irreversibly tainted as the "selected-not-elected" nominee. Scores of would-be Democratic voters will flock to third party candidates or not vote at all - better to tune out than to be complicit. Trust me, I know. In 2000 I was 19 years old and voted for Ralph Nader rather than a Gore/Lieberman ticket. Al Gore ended up being an alright guy in the end, but you wouldn't have known it back then, but Lieberman is now endorsing John McCain. (There you go, DLC fuckers, I was right, you were wrong, unless the purpose of your organization is to get Republicans with D's next their name elected.)

My point, I guess, is that we may be on our way to losing the 2008 election - assuming that those two dozen Hillary supporters/protesters are representative of some larger movement - but it's too late for Hillary to win this and her candidacy will do nothing for the future of the Democratic Party. Win or lose, Barack Obama gives this party a way to win future elections for the rest of my life - something the DLC/Clinton machine never was and never will be capable of.