After claim of victory, conciliation required
It’s all over but the shouting in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but you can bet there still will be plenty of shouting between now and Hillary Clinton’s coronation at the convention in Philadelphia in late July.
Clinton removed any reasonable doubt about her nomination Tuesday when she scored victories in four states, including New Jersey and California. The former first lady, senator and secretary of state declared victory that night, saying, “We’ve reached a major milestone: the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee. Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.”
Clinton’s opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, didn’t make a concession speech, but he is making concessions to the reality of the situation. The New York Times reports half his staff will get layoff notices this week.
That said, there seems to be little chance Sanders will go gently into that good night. His candidacy is a movement, and he is determined the movement will be recognized, and respected, when Democrats gather at the convention next month.
“We’re going to fight hard to win (next week’s) primary in Washington, D.C.,” Sanders told his supporters Tuesday night. “Then, we take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia.”
Sanders might well want to pick a fight over the nomination system, itself.
Clinton has won more votes and more pledged delegates than Sanders, but she would not be in the position to claim victory were it not for the “superdelegates,” those party insiders who can align themselves with whichever candidate they please, at any time and regardless of how the people of their state vote in a caucus or primary. Many of them already had lined up behind Clinton before a single vote was cast anywhere in the country.
Sanders’ only real hope of maintaining his push for the nomination was a win in California Tuesday night, and the superdelegate card was played against him once again on the eve of that vote when the Associated Press rounded up enough superdelegates who were willing to say they’d back Clinton for the AP to write a story saying Clinton had the votes needed to claim the nomination.
It would seem that the main motivation for the AP to run such a story at that time was to allow the news service to say, “Look what we did!” A more accurate lead on the AP’s story would have been, “We found a few more superdelegates who say they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton seven weeks from now.” The top editors of the Associated Press had to know that their story would influence potential voters in Tuesday’s primaries, perhaps keeping many from even voting because they felt that casting their ballots would be useless. The AP put itself in the position in which critics might say it was doing the bidding of the Clinton campaign. It was, plain and simple, irresponsible journalism.
These superdelegates who have been so critical to the Clinton campaign and to the AP’s story are party bigwigs whose votes mean nothing until they actually are cast at the convention, and it’s been known for months that the vast majority of them were lined up behind Clinton. In fact, it appears a main purpose of the superdelegates is to help ensure that the party insiders’ anointed candidate gets the nomination, barring a collapse of their campaign.
In February, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman and longtime Clinton supporter, this question: “Hillary Clinton lost to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire by 22 percentage points, the biggest victory in a contested Democratic primary there since John F. Kennedy, but it looks as though Clinton and Sanders are leaving the Granite State with the same number of delegates in their pockets because Clinton has the support of New Hampshire’s superdelegates, these party insiders. What do you tell voters who are new to the process who say this makes them feel like it’s all rigged?”
Said Wasserman Schultz: “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
In other words, they don’t want someone like Sanders rising up in a populist movement to derail their carefully laid plans to crown the king – or in this case, queen – they want. It’s really no wonder that many Sanders supporters are less than enthusiastic about supporting Clinton in the general election, even with a candidate as distasteful as Donald Trump on the other side.
Safe to say, there are fences to be mended, and the Clinton forces would be wise to be very solicitous of Sanders and his supporters when the party platform is cobbled together and in public remarks at the convention.
The unrest among those from the left wing of the party also might influence Clinton’s selection of a running mate. At one point, it was thought that the Democratic nominee might need to find a Hispanic running mate to shore up support from that growing sector of the electorate, but Trump, through his racist and xenophobic comments, already has made it unlikely that the GOP will succeed with that demographic. Clinton could tap a running mate from a key swing state, such as Virginia or Ohio. But now it might be more likely that, rather than seek a partner who will attract votes from a particular ethnic group or appeal to moderate independents, she’ll need to make a move that will bring disaffected members of her own party back into the fold.