Cowboy Confessional

For a political party that talks constantly about unity, the Democrats seeming strive for divisiveness.

And there is a reason for it.

In the blood sport of American politics, Democrats clearly represent the worst aspects of democracy. Stripped of flowery rhetoric, democracy is merely organized mob rule whereby the tyranny of the majority subjugates and steals from the minorities. I have to give the Republicans half credit for retaining some slim adherence to the functioning of a republic and egalitarianism.

But only half credit. They too often err.

The recent sausage mill of Democrat intraparty politics has shown the divisions quite clearly, and the only aspect uglier than the divisions themselves are the naked pandering to various groups and the wholesale rule-changing that exaggerates the gulfs between the groups. It is like watching a herd of cattle stampede off a cliff …. in slow motion.

Yesterday, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) Rules Committee (out motto – “We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!”) decided to put Florida and Michigan back into play. Originally, the DNC decided to disqualify all Floridan and Michiganite votes because their state governments (not the state Democrat committees) had moved their respective election dates up in the calendar. The DNC Central Committee (for you readers who love the parallels between the Democrats and the Soviets) originally decided to not count votes of their own members because of the actions of state legislators, only of which was almost complete composed of Republicans.

Strike one against fairness.

Reinstatement is what the Clinton camp wanted because Hillary campaigned in both states, won votes in both states, and reinstatement would give her trailing campaign a boost. Funny that she didn’t care much about the fairness and “counting all the votes” early in the campaign when all pundits thought she would be coronated by acclimation. When Queen Hillary’s carriage did not come she sent her foot soldiers to storm the castle.

Naturally, the Obama campaign complained. Since they did not campaign in either Florida or Michigan, and even withdrew Obama from the ballots in Michigan, they knew reinstatement would work against them. So despite a complete lack of interest in running in those two states, the Obama camp demanded to get votes from both. In Florida this made sense since Obama got 59 delegate votes there … a might lower than Hillary’s 105. Michigan is a different horse. He wasn’t on the ballot in Michigan. He did not run, did not obtain a single vote, and thus did not earn a single delegate. So the DNC awarded Obama 59 delegates (46%) from Michigan for reason nobody could articulate.

Strike two against fairness.

Clinton apparatchik Harrold Ickes did offer an opinion of his own party leadership:

“I am stunned that we have the gall and the chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters.”

Michigan used to have a lot of manufacturing work. Now it has a lot of rust, and that rust is maintained by blue collar ex-workers. Many (including your humble commentator) note that blue collar Democrats dislike Obama, seeing him as an elitist. This is a clear demonstration of the wisdom of the common man. When the DNC shifted 46% of the blue collar’s votes to Obama without their permission, this widened yet another division in their party.

“I won’t cast my vote in the general election for the first time in my life, primary or general,” said Mike Grady, 53, a factory worker from Scranton, Pa. “I don’t understand why the DNC hasn’t received that message yet.”

When your own party members are sitting out an entire election cycle, you have problems. If this were not terrifying enough for the Democrats they may have created an unnecessary black/brown divide as well (and folks, this is the end result of having a national policy of anointing and rewarding one group over others).

Being a rather colorblind fellow, I hate race politics. Or class politics for that matter. But race politics is an amplification of existing race relations in America and how one party bribes one or more races. I’ll again give a nod to the Republicans. They may suffer the racism of utter indifference, but that is a damn sight better than the active racism of pitting one group against another — a Democrat expertise.

Strike three against fairness.

In the States, there is some friction between people of African decent (blacks) and those of Latin American decent (browns). I won’t detail these differences, but note that in most cases the friction comes from how politicians have pitted each race against the other by giving one or the other unfair legislative advantages. Hell, if the government said I would get less than my neighbor because of my skin color, I’d be annoyed too.

Thankfully I avoid interacting with government and thus I rarely suffer from their neglect.

Hillary understand the black/brown wedge. She swam over to Puerto Rico and campaigned there, knowing that the place is primarily populated with Latinos. It worked too as she swam back home with 2/3s of the Democrat vote. This will not win her enough delegates to take the party’s nomination, but it gives her a talking point for the party’s “super delegates”, the party chieftains who will ultimately decide everything … despite the popular vote, despite the delegate count, and despite any sense of propriety.

Strike four against fairness.

After bagging the Puerto Rican vote, Hillary said to the media and through them to the super delegates:

“Which candidate best represents the will of the people who voted in this historic election?”

Rephrased to remove ambiguity: “Are you going to give me the nomination and win the growing Latino vote, or let Obama win the nomination and lose to McCain in November?”

It is a calculated argument. Anyone who looks at demographics and attitudes comes to realize that Latinos tend to be on the conservative side of the spectrum, embracing basic liberties, strong family ties, and a solid work ethic. This also explains why Latinos enroll in the Republican party with regularity, a situation that has caused DNC chairman Howard Dean to continue screaming. Given a choice between Obama and McCain, Latinos would likely drift to the GOP in November. Hillary was trying to prove to super delegates that she could halt that tide. In other words, she is pitting her clout with Latinos against Obama’s connection to blacks.

Strike five against fairness.

This all assumes that a message of fairness doesn’t surface. Already the blogs on the left and right are hitting a fever pitch about the Libertarians and Bob Barr’s candidacy. And if Bob can wipe that dower expression off his mug, he might communicate the basic Libertarian message to these overly manipulated groups. The messages is namely “Less government results in less political favoritism, and is fairer to everybody.” The media is picking up on it and Barr is appearing on the Sunday news shows with some regularity, including this morning.

Letting a third party candidate get quality television coverage? That’s fair.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.