In the October 17 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Lanny Davis writes that Democrats should be glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because she made Senator Obama a better general election candidate. THIS is why Clinton supporters - most of whom were presumably Democrats - should be glad she stayed in the race?
Mr. Davis, we were glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because we watched her win the popular vote. Many of us believe that if the Democratic Party had followed its own rules and the superdelegates and regular delegates had not been coerced by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Obama's campaign (who Chairman Dean turned over the DNC to in June when no candidate had actually won the party's nomination), Senator Clinton might very well have been the party's nominee.
We were glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because we thought she would make a superior President to either Senator Obama or any Republican, including Senator McCain. I still believe that.
If the best you can say about Senator Clinton's campaign is that it helped Senator Obama then you really are not saying much about the millions of voters who cast their ballots for Senator Clinton, the thousands of us who donated money, time, and energy to Senator Clinton's campaign. I assure you we did not do it so that her run for the nomination would help Senator Obama. We did it because wanted Senator Clinton to represent our party this November.
I am not sure, Mr. Davis, if you realize how insulting it is to those of us who are not "prominent" or "key" Democrats for you to define Senator Clinton's campaign as some sort of testing ground for Senator Obama. Please give Senator Clinton some respect and some credit: presumably she stayed in the race because she wanted to win. She wanted to win. And it was perfectly ok for her to want to win, and to want to win because she thought she would make a better President than would Senator Obama.
I certainly agree with you, Mr. Davis, that the "the cartoon caricature [of Senator Clinton] created over the years by extremists left and right has nothing to do with reality." But although I have not known her personally over over the years, as you make clear you have, I did not need to see Senator Clinton keep her word about campaigning for whoevever became the Democratic nominee to recognize here as "principled and authentically committed to progressive issues". I saw that when I first learned about Senator Clinton, which was before her husband ever ran for President, and was studying the lawyers who worked to prosecute Richard Nixon's participation in the Watergate break-in.
Finally, Mr. Davis, I must take issue with this particularly offensive passage in your commentary:
There always was a danger that certain working-class/rural voters who strongly supported Mrs. Clinton in such state primaries as Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia would not easily transfer their support to Mr. Obama. The same worry was often repeated about Democratic women who were angry or simply grieving about Mrs. Clinton not being picked as the nominee.
Mr. Davis, I incontrovertibly do not qualify as on of "certain working-class/rural voters" you disparage with the remark. But let me make it perfectly clear: I am not angry or "simply grieving" about "Mrs. Clinton not being picked as the nominee." I am distressed that the Democratic Party rigged its own nomination process and PICKED a candidate rather than ELECTING one.
You began this election cycle supporting Senator Clinton, Mr. Davis. And as the tagline in the WSJ article states you are ending it as an Obama supporter. Given the patronizing and dismissive tone of the passage I quote above, I imagine you feel much more comfortable with the candidate you now back than the one you originally preferred.
As for me, I worked for months to try to keep the DNC and the Democratic Party from tossing out the Party's own established rules for nominating a candidate, precisely because I thought that ANY candidate who was PICKED rather elected via a free and fair roll call vote would be illegitimate and viewed as such. And I, along with thousands of Democrats from every demographic group you can imagine, still feel that way. Regardless of whether Senator Obama wins or loses,t he people we hold responsible for hijacking democracy from the Democratic Party are the people who corrupted the process that was supposed to be used to determine the Democratic nominee: chiefly, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Obama himself.
