Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Party leaders, now is the time to intervene

It appears that Senator Clinton cannot win the nomination without the superdelegates overturning the will of the voters. And the only way she can make a convincing case that she is "more electable" than Obama, despite trailing in both the popular vote and the delegate count, is to tear down Obama so much that his campaign is too badly damaged to compete in the general election.

It is time for this to stop.

Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi need to step in and ask Clinton to exit the race for the good of the party. Those two have the necessary clout to pull it off.

I'm not anti-Hillary. I will vote for whichever candidate is the Democratic nominee in November. But she can't beat Obama without the superdelegates.

And more than one observer has noted that if the superdelegates overturn the will of the voters, thus shutting out the only black person to ever have a real shot at the presidency, the party will spend years recovering from the ensuing scandal. Yes, the whole furor about race has entered the campaign and you can't get rid of it now. It's out there. And if the party perceives Clinton as "more electable" than Obama, there is a large constituency of the party that will hear "more acceptable to whites." Fairly or not, that is how it will be perceived.

Leaders, it is time to lead. The Republicans are licking their chops in a year they should be resigned to a punishing loss.

4 comments:

SM Kovalinsky said...

BRAVO: Well, well spoken. I second this.

Kevin L. Richardson said...

Agreed that party leaders need to provide Hillary with a graceful "exit...stage left". It's been a good fight, focused on the issues until now.

And, we now have the media getting involved in that wedge driving activity which will only further hurt the Dems. Meanwhile, McCain keeps raising funds and building his general platform.

All that said, it's still time for a change. Joe Average is going to base this election on a couple of things: (1) Who is Bizzaro Bush, (2) Who will make a massive change to Health Care.

The Dems will come out of the wordwork to ensure that these two things happen.

Politics is cyclical. While I have my favorites, I also believe that history has shown that the right leaders (for the most part) have found their way into office at the right time. The country needed Kennedy to set the vision and lead the nation to become the proud super power it became. Likewise, we needed Reagan in the 80s to again drive the direction and quarterback the country.

While my politics definitely lean to the right, I just don't see another 4 years in office for the GOP...no matter what happens with the Dems current infighting.

Brian said...

Bizarro Bush! I love it! Some folks are already labeling McCain as "McBush", which I think is a little unfair.

My expectation of the main issues that will drive the election:
1. the economy
2. the war

I think the Dems can win on both.

Kevin L. Richardson said...

Fabulous discussion FV!

McBush is unfair. McCain is far more moderate than Bush to be a Bush clone.

The economy will no doubt be a big player. Always is. Then, when the next president oversees a bull market we can debate whether it was the change of the guard or Bush's plan finally taking effect :)

I'd love to move on to the general debate...if only we could decide on a Dem candidate...